tiffany-singer

REOCRDINGS; Perfect Pop From Tiffany - Seriously
By PETER WATROUS
Published: Sunday, January 8, 1989

Seriousness has hit pop music big. Whether in the high-mindedness of Tracy Chapman or the industrial, mass-produced ditties of Tiffany, seriousness is the flavor of the day.

Tiffany's second album, ''Hold an Old Friend's Hand'' (MCA-6267; all three formats), has her looking longingly and adult-like out from the cover; the lyrics of the songs - none by her, and all about romance, not sex - are printed on the inside cover, as if they were worth scrutinizing like some newly found canto of Ezra Pound. All this for a 17-year-old California kid who has nothing to do with the writing of the music she performs. Nor does she play any instruments. Yet the presentation makes claims; the music is meant seem as if she had created it, as if it were a product of her innermost soul.

We'll be hearing Tiffany on the radio for some time to come, and who wrote or played or conceived her image is irrelevant, since it is the hologram of authorship that counts, along with the melodies and the beats and the textures of the music. ''Hold an Old Friend's Hand'' is flawless pop, easily remembered and repeated melodies that will give high-culturists Orwellian nightmares and the young masses plenty of pleasure.

Tiffany's music is not radically different from any of the mass-produced pop music of the last several decades, but her records have telling details. In their insistence on sobriety and love over ecstasy and lust, they perfectly capture the changed mood of young American culture. It is music so far removed from rock impulses that it could make the claim that the 60's (Tiffany was born in 1972), with all its social experimentation, never existed. The 80's, with shuddering economies and the fear of AIDS, have won out, at least for Tiffany.

''Hold an Old Friend's Hand'' follows in the footsteps of ''Tiffany,'' which sold over four million copies. When it came out in 1987, ''Tiffany'' joined a long list of records by young women singers - Debbie Gibson, Shanice Wilson, Lisa Lisa - who were second-generation versions of Madonna and Cyndi Lauper. But where Madonna and Ms. Lauper made their mark creating their own images and managing their own careers, the second generation is the product of an industry reacting to fill the public's demand for women singers. Record companies set their producers working overtime to fill albums, and where Madonna and Ms. Lauper had an unusual set of icons to represent their personalities, the new crew fumbles along as predictable young-innocents-with-spunk.

There isn't a moment on ''Hold an Old Friend's Hand'' (which is essentially the work of Tiffany's producer, George Tobin) where the needs of the artist conflict with the needs of the record company. They are one and the same, and there isn't even a glint of the traditional tension between an artist's ideas and the record company's need to sell the music. Tiffany (whose last name is Darwisch) isn't at all resistant to the idea of stardom on a record company's terms; she works hard for her money. By 1987 she was singing 20-minute sets to pre-recorded tapes of her first album to audiences at malls across the country. Last year, she instigated a lawsuit to free herself of her mother's control in her business affairs.

In some senses, the record industry is a little like Detroit in its heyday, where the same cars, with a built-in obsolescence factor, were manipulated every year so as to have a different look on the same chassis: tail fins were just made a bit longer or shorter. Tiffany is an updated version of the sentimental pop singer best exemplified by Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac, to whom she has obviously listened; she often sounds very much like her.

In true 80's fashion the arrangements of the songs are all referential, and Mr. Tobin's constructs hint at original styles of music. It's institutional, international pop with muted dance music, muted ballads, muted country-pop and muted rock, all calculated to play with listeners' memories and sense of nostalgia.

It's music that projects no more specific sense of place than perhaps the Western world; it seems to have floated in on the ether and taken over. It is the type of music that will be found, if the record company does its job well, in small towns around the world. Teen-agers with no understanding of English will be pining to the sounds of her voice; young men will dream about her in all the languages of the world.

Tiffany's voice also seems referential. It's familiar; there's nothing alienating about her. And like all good singers, Tiffany has learned a score of tricks to show how emotional she is, regardless of the banality of the words - she sounds as if she means what she sings. She'll change her tone, moving from a three-pack-a-day, on-my-last-pint moan to a clear, girlish voice to a gospelish falsetto. Tiffany can sing; the tricks producers use to hide a singer's inabilities - multiple overdubbing, echo - are conspicuously absent.

Which brings us back to seriousness. Tiffany's material isn't simple dance music. It is equally mindless (which doesn't detract from its pleasure), but it has the air of topic to it, even if all the tunes are about love. And though she's singing as an adult there are still clues to which age market the record is aimed. On ''Walk Away While You Can,'' she sings, ''Better walk away while you can . . . you're still a young girl, he's almost a man . . . it feels so right when we're together boy . . . I'd like to give myself to you but I'm so confused.''

It is music made for a young market that increasingly respects a type of obvious seriousness and sentimentality. And underneath the facade of her earnestness, it is music that is meant to sell, music that changes its shape to please the demand. On the terms it sets for itself, it is perfect.

Photo of Tiffany (Janet Macoska/Star File)
A version of this review appeared in print on Sunday, January 8, 1989, on section 2 page 27 of the New York edition.

" Nostalgia 80 The show, which will run at the Coliseum in April, will provide
an opportunity for Tiffany to find an idol, a work colleague and a longtime
friend.

She who made her reputation with the tubes I Think We're Alone, and Could've
Been at the end of the decade 80, says she can not wait to share the stage with
Rick Astley, Samantha Fox and his "rival" of the time Debbie Gibson.

"I was very happy when I was approached for this show. I am a big fan of Rick
Astley. I'm really looking forward to meeting and working with him. I also
worked with Samantha Fox in the 80s. And Debbie and I are good friends, "says
one who will return with the city of Quebec, including that she had visited when
it traveled the globe with New Kids On The Block.

"This tour houses among my fondest memories of 80 years. I could go in different
countries and see people react to my music. It was wonderful. My dream come
true. I wanted to be a singer and it happens. I loved discovering new cultures,
talk to people, see other ways of doing things. "

Tiffany recorded her first album when she was older than 14 years. She was a
member of one of the first cohorts of teen idols. She does not believe she was
too young to make career.

"I think we never really ready, no matter whether you are aged 14 or 35 years.
The industry is completely insane, "says that, to promote her first album, had
entered a tour of shopping malls in the United States

Projects

Although she admits to having made mistakes, she says that they have made her
the artist she is today. Unlike other icons of 80 years, and after taking a
break to raise her son, Tiffany has returned to show business in the 2000s. She
has recorded several albums of dance music, taking part in TV shows and appeared
in films, commercials and television series.

I continue to evolve as an artist. I have projects in mind, there are several
things that I want to do. I am sure that projects will develop in a way that I
would not expected. You should just have an open mind. I live in Nashville,
Tennessee, where he yad'extraordinaires songwriters. My next project will be an
album (which will appear by the end of the year) of country influence, very
Bonnie Rait"

This Article was taken from http://lejournaldequebec.canoe.ca/artsetspectacles/scene/archives/2009/03/20090318-192048.html