The Day I Knew I Didn’t Want to Be a Popstar

“I don’t need my tits up to my chin to sell records!!!” I lamented to my makeup artist, his assistant and my stylist. Lamar, the man-behind-the- makeup raised one eyebrow and gave me his signature “girl, please” look.

“Oh honey, yes you do.”, He said matter-of-factly. “Yes you do.”

The four of us were uncomfortably squeezed into a unisex bathroom. I had briefly walked off the set of my one and only label funded music video. I had been shooting for hours. My boobs had been stuffed, taped and pushed up to the high heavens. I was told to push them up even more by my label president. I refused and told him I was fine the way I was. He got upset at me, which made me just as upset. I was on a small record label that was family to me, which made these things quite personal.

It was a strange time in the music industry for women. The Paula Coles and Shawn Colvins of the music scene had vanished from the charts. Britney Spears had taken over the airwaves. Suddenly, there were blatant age cutoffs, size restrictions and every single woman in the industry was expected to strip to their underwear. My label was pretty cool about my age and my size. (there was a coy unspoken “don’t ask don’t tell” policy and they were always hell bent that I didn't obsess over being skinny or venture into eating disorder territory). The people who ran my label were good people whom I respected… but they worked in a business where everyone followed and people rarely led. This was a time when showing skin became the norm even for artists who never did before. Sheryl Crow was suddenly in Maxim, Jewel was posing in a bustier and Michelle Branch graced a magazine cover in assless pants while talking about her porn viewing habits on the tour bus.

Laura, my friend and stylist came in to adjust my “chicken cutlets”, double sided boob tape and bustier that was cutting into my stomach. Now that it was a woman and gay man telling me to push the “girls” up, I was less resistant.

Before I go further, let me assure you I’m no prude. I’d worked the pole in the mid nineties for rent money on more then one occasion. As a former fat kid, walking out of a club with a wad of cash as a reminder that I looked good naked was frankly, liberating. Heck, sometimes I would take that wad of cash and go fly to Miami after work to unwind. I felt sexy and it was on my terms. My stage name was “Ruby”. I had big red hair, wore red evening gowns and drank fake red wine. It would set the stage for what would become my first band, edibleRed. When it eventually stopped being fun, I stopped dancing.

So what was the problem with the president of my label telling me to push my boobs up even higher?

While my audience in the club was men over 21 (and the occasional adventurous woman), I was very aware that a significant portion of my audience as a pop singer was young girls. While my time in the club was a fleeting moment (this was before the age of cell phone cameras), my music video would be a snapshot that would last for eternity. Although I had been much more risqué in the smoke filled side-street “gentleman’s club”, I was always comfortable in what I was wearing. My sexiness and my boundaries were always dictated by me, and never a man telling me what to do. Not to mention that when it came to blatantly selling sex, I had “been there done that” at this point in my life. I didn't want to sell sex. I wanted to sell music and if I was sexy doing it, cool. True sexiness to me came from authenticity and this was not that. That is why I could watch Britney Spears gyrate for hours, while other copy-cat artist just looked like they were trying to hard. You could tell when someone behind the scenes was pushing the envelope as opposed to the artist themselves.

We were shooting the music video for “Sugar and Spring”, the first single off of our 2007 release “Welcome to My Bad Behavior”. It was the song that got us signed and would eventually go into rotation on MTV Latino. At this point I had been on the phone for hours fighting with my record label. We had spent countless days talking about my boobs, my lipstick, my under eye circles and the importance of showing skin. We spent more time talking about that then we ever did my voice, musicianship or mission statement as an artist.

Prior to the PG concept we eventually agreed on, the “Sugar and Spring” video was originally going to be a parody of the Ann Margaret “Tommy” scene. In the scene Ann Margeret loses her mind and rolls around in baked beans. I had no issue with it whatsoever until she hopped on a phallic shaped pillow and started humping it, enveloped in layers of bean- slime.

“Ok, I am not doing that, of course”. I had told my record label.

“Well let’s see how you feel once your on set. Well cross that bridge when we get there”, they said.

“No we won’t. I’m not doing that”. I wanted to make it clear just so there would be no surprises the day of the shoot.

Apparently the fact that I was OK dancing in baked beans wasn’t enough. I HAD to hump the phallic shaped pillow.

“The pillow is the whole point. It’s the climax of the scene”, they said.

“We’ll have to climax in another way. What is I stand up in the baked beans, laugh and give the camera the finger? I would rather go with a strong, tough choice.”

The phallic shaped pillow was a talking point for weeks. My record label had told my all-male band behind the scenes “Don’t worry, we’re going to get her to do it”. When the label finally figured out that there was no way it was happening, they scrapped the whole idea and went with a stop motion-abstract music video concept. I loved this concept, as it was more appropriate for all ages and a reflection of where I was at as an artist. I was having the time of my life on the set until I was told to push my boobs up even further.

“Sugar and Spring” was modestly successful. We had a couple of TV placements, a bunch of second tier music video shows. It wasn’t the breakout hit that the label or the band had hoped for. I was told that if I had played ball and humped the phallic shaped pillow that it could have “broken me” as an artist and opened the floodgates to the late night talk shows. Only thing is… it wasn’t worth it to me. While “Sugar and Spring” had underperformed, it had done well enough to warrant a budget for a second music video. Our next video would be for our cover of Outkast’s “Hey Ya”. I eagerly awaited for the first production meeting to talk concept.

“Ok, here is what we are seeing”, my label president said via conference call. “Collette is laying down and as the camera pans out we see different people attached to her, one man is at her feet, another is playing with her hair, one is kissing her neck, but as the camera pans out we see a woman attached to the man who has his head on her stomach…”

Ok, maybe I am paraphrasing, but again it was a big NOPE from me. Every single female artist was over playing the sex card and I didn’t want to be lumped in with them. It was no longer “edgy”, as literally every female artist was doing it. If anything, it was more daring not to overplay the sex card.

Our second production meeting suggested furries. Again a big NOPE. While I had nothing against furries, they had nothing to do with the meaning of “Hey Ya’, which was really about the fragility of relationships and the difficulties of staying together in the modern world.

As more and more blatantly sexual concepts were pitched to me and I vetoed every one of them. The budget would get slashed in half each time. Eventually, the record label decided they no longer wanted to do the video.

I decided I did.

With the help of my friend Michelle and her husband Philipp, we decided to shoot a no-budget version of the video and tell the story we wanted to tell. We hired a hunky personal trainer off of Craigslist (a dead ringer for my ex boyfriend), got a bunch of donated clothing from Dangerous Mathematicians and Members Only and randomly shot footage in my apartment. Through very simple shots, we told the story of a couple falling in love, falling out of love, going from best friends and lovers to strangers, parting and then finding hope for new love again. It was beautiful and simple. I sent it to my record label.

The president of the label called me. He said he had a lump in his throat when he watched it. He told me it reminded him of all the times in his career when everybody told him to go in one direction, but he wanted to stay true to himself. He told me that the label would like to promote the video. We had a meeting with our video promo company and did a big push.

The first week we were on all the indie blogs and the video was extremely well received. I received messages of congrats from people all over the world. I was informed that the video had been added to MTV “Buzzworthy” and a bunch of top tier music video shows for the following week. The popular Hip Hop show “Sucker Free” on MTV Canada featured us, making us the only rock band to cross over on that show. We were featured on the MTV “Hip Hop” page next to P. Diddy and Paul Wall. Suddenly, on other channels I was featured next to Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Pearl Jam, Miley Cyrus. It was a thrill to see the “MTV” Logo in the top right hand corner of the video I worked so hard on. Only the MTV crowd was not as excited to see me as I was to be seen by them. “Boring!”, “That was a horrible video”, “That made me want to slit my wrists” and “Modern rock? How dare you soil my genre” were common comments. For some reason, both music videos drew some very strong hate from the mainstream. I now was starting to get hate mail for the very music video I had gotten accolades for just a week prior.

Again, it was speculated that perhaps it would have gone over better if I had gone the route that the label had suggested. I realized however that even though I grew up on MTV, it had morphed into a whole new world. The pop world just wasn’t buying what I was selling. They wanted skin. They wanted furries. They wanted chicks humping pillows. It just wasn’t me. It wasn’t the MTV I grew up on. I was Patty Smyth in a Christina Aguilara world.

I realized the crass comments, the constant feeling of going against the grain and the never-ending need to stand up for myself just didn’t jive with my wants and desires as an artist anymore. The feeling of bustier-wire digging into my stomach… well, it just wasn’t worth it. Our promo budget had also run out so the placements were trailing off.

Seeing my name next to those platinum acts with the very logo that made me want to hop on a bus and move to New York back in 1993 was a thrill. It was brief but it happened. Since it happened, I was now ready to walk away.

After a lifetime of pining to be a recording artist on MTV, I no longer wanted or needed it anymore. My ten minutes of fame in that arena was enough. Shortly after, I left my band, my record label and my management company. I got a job bartending and sang in a bunch of 80’s bands. I started doing session work around town. It was much less prestigious, but I was in control of my creativity and my work flow. I felt more, not less successful.

I so often see questions on Quora pertaining to fame. “How can I become famous?” and I more or less always give the same answer.

Don’t worry about being famous. Just be creative and do you. Do what you love. Create work at the end of the day that you can stand behind. Maybe you will become famous. Maybe you won’t. It isn’t always what it is cracked up to be.

And that my friends, is the story of the day that I learned I no longer wanted to be a pop star. Just like my short lived stint as a stripper, I stopped doing it the day it stopped being fun.