How I Fell In Love With: Tiffany

It's just unfathomable that I haven't, until now, composed the Tiffany entry in my "How I Fell In Love With" series. So, after a remarkable performance from my favorite redheaded pop singer the other night, it is time to correct this travesty!
Said performance took place on Tuesday, Oct. 27th at Upright LA Cabaret, in the bar of Vermont restaurant. I'm ashamed to say that I almost considered not going to this show, as I have been to so many Tiffany shows during my time in LA that I thought I'd sit this one out. I am so glad I didn't. The show was Tiffany's most intimate to date, just her and a piano player on a small stage in a cozy venue with just the right amount of tables set up for her friends and fans to witness her belting out a selection of her hits, songs that inspired her, and a few surprises. It was simply awesome to finally hear her sing "Here In My Heart" and "Landslide" but I was really happy to hear her sing "Delta Dawn" which has often been cited in articles and interviews as the first song she ever sang. Also, she really got to talk a lot during the songs and seemed very at ease. It truly was a cabaret show, something I don't know if I could have fully appreciated before my boyfriend introduced me to cabaret, via Kiki and Herb (although they are a much different style).
It got me thinking back on me and Tiffany's time together (or at least the time in my head) and how long it's been. So, without further ado, here's the story of how I fell in love with Tiffany.
At the tender age of 10, I was really starting to pay attention to the radio. We would go on lots of long car rides, living in Western Kansas, and I also discovered that if I listened to the top 40 countdown, I would know what artists and songs my classmates would be talking about long before they would. I clearly remember hearing one song and one voice on the radio that jumped out at me. It was "I Think We're Alone Now" and the artist was Tiffany, who turned out to be a 16 year old red-haired girl. I immediately felt a bond because of our red hair, and because of her young age, I thought "she could be my older sister." The fact that she was so young, although soon causing her to be the butt of many jokes and put-downs, to me was inspiring. I was already very interested in music but always had thought I would have to be a grown up before I could really do anything about it. Here was a girl just a few years older than me that was already being played on the radio and turning into a star! Plus, I just really loved the song, and her voice.
As soon as Tiffany blew up, the backlash began. People complained that she hadn't written her own songs (Debbie Gibson came along at the same time and wrote her own songs and played the piano) and that she was just manufactured and relied on "cover" songs. Of course most kids my age didn't know the original version of her hits, which by this time also included "I Saw Him Standing There," her take on a Beatles' classic. Most people nowadays forget that "Could've Been" was a #1 hit and although it wasn't written by her, it was her who made it a hit.
I collected all of Tiffany "cassingles" which were a new thing at that time. The recording industry was trying to kill of 7" singles in favor of these new cassette singles, and at the beginning were really pushing them by packaging them in cases just like regular cassette albums, with full inserts and including bonus tracks not available elsewhere. At the mall in Salina, there was a big display with new cassingles, including Tiffany's last three releases from her debut album, "Could've Been," "I Saw Him Standing There," and "Feelings of Forever." At the end of 1988, the first single off her second album was released, "All This Time".
Her second album, "Hold an Old Friend's Hand" was released and was not as big of a hit as her first album and even as a die-hard fan, I thought it could have been better. There were some songs on it that I just didn't think were that great, and one of them ("Radio Romance") ended up being released as a single! By this time, record companies realized they could save a lot of money by packaging cassingles in a cardboard sleeve, and just tacking on album tracks for the b-side. I was pretty disappointed with the "Radio Romance" single all around, and I wasn't the only one; it only made it to 35 on the charts. By the time the title track was released as the third single, most people had already moved on, and the song didn't really chart at all. Even so, they decided to release one more single off the album, "It's The Lover (Not the Love)," which also failed to chart and is one of my least favorite Tiffany songs ever. It sounded dated to me like some bad early 80's Sheena Easton song.
Tiffany's last cassingle that I bought was "I Always Thought I'd See You Again" which was from the movie "The Jetsons" in which she voiced Judy Jetson. I saw the movie with my siblings at the theatre in Russell, a good childhood memory, but after that, I kind of moved on with my life. By this point I was about to be a teenager, and trying to discover what it meant to be "cool"... and clearly Tiffany was no longer cool.
A few years later, in 8th grade, I was in K-Mart and just happened to go through the "T" section of the cassette aisle and discovered "New Inside" which was a new Tiffany album. I hadn't heard anything about it, and of course it wasn't being played on the radio, but I had to have it anyway. The sound was different and it didn't really excite me much. It had this really typical sound to it of a lot of other pop/r&b stuff at the time and a lot of the songs were just boring or cheesy. I really disliked the title track. I did, however, enjoy "Here in My Heart" and "Never Run My Motor Down" and I also liked the photographs, which showed a much more mature Tiffany.
But after that, it was it... for a long time! Sometime during my senior year in high school, I was going through some childhood stuff and found the debut Tiffany tape and, just kind of as a joke, decided to take it in my car with me to listen on the stereo. It seems odd to think that a high schooler could already experience nostalgia, but that's what happened! So for a brief time, I was on a second Tiffany kick, revisiting all those dusty tapes.
Then, in college, something happened... and that something was called "The Internet." For the first time ever, I had access to all sorts of information about my musical heroes. Before I would have had to scour the library, digging through old magazines and scrolling through reels of microfilm to find out what precious little I could. Now, all I had to do was go to webcrawler.com and type in "Thompson Twins" to discover they had changed their name to "Babble" in the 90's and released two album. Or to find out that Tiffany, after "New Inside" tanked, reunited with her original manager George E. Tobin and released the album "Dreams Never Die" in Asia, but had a falling out with him before the album could see the light of day in the US.
I went to my local record store, GB, and ordered the import of "Dreams Never Die" even though it was like almost $50 which was a small fortune to me as a freshman in college living away from home for the first time. From the opening notes on an acoustic guitar, I knew this album was special and would relight my fire for Tiffany, which it definitely did. I joined a Tiffany mailing list and for the first time, could communicate with others who had loved Tiffany as much as I did, and continued to celebrate her as an artist.
In mid 2000, after I moved to LA, it was reported on the mailing list that Tiffany was preparing a comeback, having recorded a rock album. There was months of anticipation, as photos and song clips began to materialize on the internet; articles started cropping up, and before I knew it, a release date was set and a website went online. This was probably the 2nd most exciting time for me during Tiffany's whole career. After having some initial trouble finding the album on it's release date, I ended up taking advantage of living in LA by going directly to the address given for the record label! The girl at the desk seemed less shocked by the fact that the record wasn't in stores than by the fact that I had found their office and was wanting to buy a CD from her.
I finally got to see Tiffany sing live, and meet her in person, shortly after the CD came out. She was doing a free concert at UCLA during the day so I took the day off work and got my brother and my friend Dudley to come with me. I was a nervous wreck, having decided to dye my hair for some stupid reason - after all it was my hair color that made me feel like I had something in common with Tiffany initially. The color did not turn out well and made my hair green. I tried to fix it but ended up wearing a cap to the show.
This was the first time I had really seen any performed that I had really been a huge fan of live so close up. I had seen The Human League and Culture Club before in a huge arena, but this was Tiffany, and I was like 3 feet away from her! She even came up to me and put the microphone out towards me during "I Think We're Alone Now." I guess you could probably saw this was the point when I really became a die-hard Tiffany fan, if I wasn't already before. From this point on, I would see Tiffany almost every single time she performed in the LA area, with only a few exceptions where I was otherwise engaged.
That record, "The Color of Silence," ended up becoming one of my all-time favorite albums, and was really something life-changing for me. Having followed Tiffany her whole career, for most of my life, this record seemed to - on so many levels - complete a circle and reassure me of so many things. Tiffany had co-written many of the songs herself, which seemed to finally let the listener get to know who she was as a person. And that person had seemed to go through so many similar things as I had in the last 15 years. There was happiness and pain, optimism and sadness; naivety and hard-earned wisdom. And there were songs like "Good Enough for Me", which along with my ever-increasing awareness that most of Tiffany's best friends were gay guys, that let me know that she would be proud of the person I had become too. It sort of felt like I had come out to my big sister and she had said "hey, that's cool with me!" All these emotions, just from listening to a pop/rock album!
From there on out, I was never ashamed to admit I was a Tiffany fan, and never minded waiting around after shows just to get to say "hi" or to have her sign something. Although she never experienced the huge resurgence in popularity that I might have wanted for her or that she deserved, there was awhile there in the early to mid 2000's where her shows were full, she was in the press, and on the road full time.
Now it's 2009, and the show the other night was sort of like a reunion for me. My friend Ryan, who I met through the Tiffany mailing list, sitting at a small table surrounded by other friends we had met through being mutual fans of Tiffany, it was a great night.
So, that's how I fell in love with, and stayed in love with, Tiffany.