There is not a single pop star who makes it to 30 unscathed. Not a single one. Man, woman, or those outside the binary, they’re all fair game for pop’s unique blend of lust, youth obsession, and hyper critical gaze (and, in many cases, gays). Whether it’s the infamous consumption of Britney Spears on a mass scale, the sexualisation of an adolescent Justin Bieber, or the more recent collapse of Katy Perry, you cannot and should not expect grace from the media.
If you’re looking far back enough, you can see these patterns emerge earlier and earlier. Fallen angel stories litter the ancient texts, as do the failure of aging heroes. Jason leaves Medea and sees their sons burn, David pursues Bathsheba, Icarus and that damn sun. But these stories eventually became a certain kind of reality. We no longer have mythology, we have celebrity.
To bring it back to pop, the 1980s saw two things happen that created a whole new environment for these tragic figures of pop. The first was called Music Television (MTV). The other, was called Madonna.
MTV took the concept of popular music and made it a visual medium, aiming to target a youth demo yearning for something like this. You cannot overstate how much of a change that was when the channel aired 1 August, 1981. That is not to say that aesthetics did not matter to pop up until this point – the musical Dreamgirls is a testament to how obviously important they were – but more that what was presented was foundational for the upcoming era.
The rise of television in the 1950s had created a space for musicians to perform and thus, be seen within the confines of the home, rather than the concert. Then, the 1960s had created a generation of superstars, who’s presence lingered well past their initial flurry of success. The 1970s had seen a rise in many things, but names variety shows, that encouraged performances with a higher production value and increasingly theatrical presentation. By 1981, all these elements were synthesized into what MTV would become. Not performances or skits, but short films that often sought to capture the mood of the song, rather than a live performance.
Now, the story is actually a little more complicated than that. The musicals of the 1950s and 1960s had a lot to do with the format and look of later music videos. And plenty of musicians had been famous before the 1960s. But to put it simply, post-WWII, the world was increasingly ready to consume media at rapidly increasingly rates. MTV was the right idea, at the right time.
And the labels were aware of this. The music video had long since been a dabbled artform, but the 1980s saw executives willing to experience with this low risk, high reward strategy. Spending a few thousand dollars and wasting a week recording a promotional video was easy, and the expectations for those first few years were extremely low. Many videos were literally just pre-recorded performances, no different from what had been going on for variety shows in the previous decade. Even the more elaborate productions, like Tom Rundgren’s ‘Time Kills’, were not really comparable to what we consider a music video today.
Now, enter Madonna.
You cannot tell the story of this network without Madonna Louise Ciccone. If MTV facilitated a new type of pop star, Madonna was inarguably the commander-in-chief from the moment she stepped into the spotlight with tracks like ‘Burning Up’ and ‘Lucky Star’, both of which saw her establish a pop presence that was as visual as it was sonic. Pat Benatar may have been the first woman to grace the network with a music video, but it was Madonna who quickly came to dominate the medium with videos like ‘Material Girl’ (1984), the second single from her second album.
To put this into perspective, Cyndi Lauper’s second single of her second album was ‘Change of Heart’ (1986), which featured a music video shot entirely as a travelogue of performances around London. This isn’t a dig at Lauper, but more an observation that her contemporaries were either forced to catch up or be left behind. One of these women went on to have top ten hits into the 2010s. The other is Cyndi Lauper.
To be fair, I don’t think either woman looks to the other in 2023 with any envy. But the point stands. Pop was getting more competitive, and the visual aspect by only becoming more important by the day.
The stakes were raised higher and higher as MTV grew to dominate the airwaves, and pop began to edge its way against the more rocky and eclectic material that dominated the early years. Nobody met and exceeded these growing expectations like Madonna. By her third album, she was regularly churning out music videos that were as polished as cinema playing in theatres, if not exceeding them. By the end of the decade, she was releasing pieces of visual media we’re still yet to see topped, like 1989’s ‘Like A Prayer’. Every moment both built on the last and swung in wildly different directions. She started the decade dancing in a parking lot, and ended it in a field of burning crosses, in love with a black Jesus.
“She’s the re-inventor; the mother of it.” – Christina Aguilera (MTV Uncensored)
But more than just the visuals, Madonna was establishing the role of a pop star, both in content and personality. She was brash and confident, but coy and charming. Brassy in a way that allowed her to push boundaries. While stars like The Jacksons and Cher had plenty of experience of the previous era of music and publicity, she was at the forefront of modernity.
Case and point: the MTV VMAs (1984).
Seven performances occurred on 14 September, 1984. Most have been forgotten to time. But one, with a young Madonna, survives on both ballsiness and it’s obvious import. A 25 year old pop star, dressed in a punk wedding dress, writhes around to a yet-unreleased single from her new album. That is the story of Madonna performing ‘Like A Virgin’. The song that cemented one vital aspect of the whole pop shebang. Sex sells.
That does not mean it was totally within her comfort zone, or that she was treated respectfully by those who profited from her performance. She herself spoke about the moment critically in later years, particularly in how the men around her responded. A story goes that during rehearsal, her breasts became exposed, and they continued to film rather than alerting her. That tape, by MTV’s own admission, circulated in their offices for years. Madonna spoke candidly about the moment.
“I’ll never forget the time you put that camera up my dress when I was rolling around the floor. The first MTV awards, remember that, I didn’t know what I was doing. I had no idea my dress was up, but you took advantage of it with your zoom lens, didn’t you.” – Madonna, MTV Uncensored
Whatever the reality, the outcome was a heightened sexuality the pop star would continue to build upon until 1992’s ‘Erotica’. But she wasn’t the only star establishing pop star norms in the 1980s. As we mentioned The Jacksons, we should look to their little sister.
Say hello to Janet Jackson.
If Madonna established and perfected the mode of a pop star throughout the 1980s, Janet Jackson perfected it. With her girlish voice and tight dance moves, she managed to insert herself into the conversation with the blockbuster album, Control. Like Madonna, she was a young woman making music with a decidedly aesthetic bent. But uniquely, her perspective to making music videos was clearly informed by her family’s history in Hollywood.
I’m not going to tell you the whole story of The Jacksons, Michael Jackson, and their role in all of this. Suffice to say, as Madonna was establishing modern pop stardom, Michael Jackson and his family were refining it and adding some more classical elements. But what I will do is make it clear that, by the 1980s, they were old hats at the increasingly dated variety show style promotion for music. They had performed with everyone, including the previously mentioned Cher, who’s career longevity has allowed her to touch on over 60 years of pop culture. But what’s important here is that Janet Jackson had a rich and theatrical background to draw upon once she took control of her musical output.
The first single ‘Control’ (1986) is a surprisingly mature track by the name of ‘What Have You Done For Me Lately’. The music itself is great. Janet Jackson’s discography is full of these slinky, sticky hooks, that stay in your head without being bludgeoning you with the chorus. But more importantly to our story, the music video featured some incredibly sharp choreography, and a performance by the choreographer in the video.
Finally…enter Paula Abdul.
The story of pop’s modern creation is full of interesting little cul-de-sacs and mini-tragedies, but none fascinate me more at this moment than Paula Adbul. The face of a pop movement that quickly outpaced her. But in 1986, she wasn’t the dominate voice of pop music she would briefly be in a few years hence. Instead, she was a friend to Jackson and, more importantly, a damn good choreographer.
Abdul came from a background of performance inspired by Gene Kelly in ‘Dancin In The Rain’ (1952) – as so much of modern Hollywood seems to have spring from. Primarily a dancer, she dabbled in independent film with a part in the terrible ‘Junior High School’ (1978), before steamrolling her way to Head Choreographer for the Laker Girls. She then stepped into the role of choreographer for The Jacksons on ‘Torture’ (1982), and eventually, quit her cheerleading job to choreograph full time.
But no matter how big the role, it was always behind the scenes. This clearly didn’t jive with Abdul’s vision of herself and in 1987, she cut a demo record. Between her industry connections, established respect, and being hot, she landed a record deal. The first single, produced by the iconic trio of Babyface, LA Reid, and Darryl Simmons…did nothing. The next did little more than that.
It’s hard to say why, considering this same album was about to explode. Maybe ‘Knocked Out’ and ‘(It’s Just) The Way That You Love Me’ lacked the hooks you’d find on the rest of the album. It might just have been an issue of oversaturation, considering both sound like ‘Control’ rejects.
That is a statement you cannot make about the third single.
Paula Abdul struck gold with ‘Straight Up’. It’s arguably one of those perfect pop songs that only really happened in the late 1980s. You’ll rarely hear it compared to Janet and Madonna’s best work of the era, but you should. It’s almost an antagonistic song, aggressive on the pre-chorus, followed by a hook that’s direct but effective. The production is astonishing, keeping it bouncy while pulling in some really great guitar work.
It's also arguably where we see Paula’s number one weakness as a pop star become evident. Simply put, she never was and never would be a great singer. That clearly wasn’t a barrier to entry by this point. Madonna was also technically lacking for the entirety of the 1980s, and Janet was no Whitney Houston (although I hesitate to call her weak), so you could be a pop star without following the pathway of Aretha Franklin. But her voice isn’t just weak – it’s strange and almost unpleasant.
“That girl was singing off-key, on the record.” – Whitney Houston
Some bad singers yelp, while others whine. Paula Abdul does both on ‘Straight Up’. When she’s projecting, it’s purely nasal, and when she’s speak singing, it’s still halfway up her nose. That’s just life. Even years later, she continued to creep up her throat and into her nose while singing, so it’s likely just a natural instinct. Which is fine, except she was a signed singer selling millions of records.
Even so…odd voices are what pop is built upon. In the coming years, it would not be the classically trained that would make up pop’s ranks. Increasingly, the sounds of radio were angular and somewhat off-putting when handled incorrectly. In 2023, our biggest stars often don’t even try to sound traditionally “good”. SZA and Lana Del Rey are obvious examples, but even Miley Cyrus’ throaty bellow of a singing voice spent over a decade wavering between distinctive and unpleasant before settling into its current mode. They allow the eccentricities of their voices to instead carry emotional weight and provide uniqueness.
In Paula Abdul’s case, this vocal weakness added a girlish quality to her performance. Which, considering the purpose of MTV was to sell music to teens, was an asset. It could be cleaned up into something more acceptable, but even at her most yapping, the energy was undeniable, to the point where one background singer even began to claim it for themselves. ‘Forever Your Girl’ (1988) is full of youth and vigour in a way that only a former cheerleader could have really handled. You can easily get swept away in her enthusiasm. The public certainly did. By the end of the 1980s, Abdul had four number one hits, had sent one of the initial flop singles to number three, and this was off a ten-track album.
Then, we enter the VMAs.
The 1989 VMAs were the button to a lot of 1980s pop narratives. Madonna performed ‘Express Yourself’, further cementing her status as the face of contemporary pop music. Cher placed a button on her comeback with a performance of ‘If I Could Turn Back Time’. Tone Lōc arrived on the scene with ‘Wild Thing’, which didn’t really have anything to do with pop narratives – it is just one of the best songs every released.
But for Paula Abdul, the 1989 MTV VMAs were an opportunity to establish herself as a performer. Starting with some truly spectacular tap dancing, leading into some aerial silks that predate P!NK’s insistence on never touching a stage for a second longer than she has to, and then just some truly spectacular choreography. If the vocals weren’t entirely live, it didn’t particularly matter, because that wasn’t what it was about. You weren’t watching a vocalist; you were watching a performer.
Promotion for ‘Forever Your Girl’ continued into 1990, with a few scattered performances and some last-ditch efforts to eke out hits from this monster record. Or rather, one last hit, that being the eternal ‘Opposites Attract’, featuring the rapping feline MC Skat Kat, voiced by the Wild Pair, Bruce DeShazer and Marvin Gunn. This goofy little song would prove to be just as huge as ‘Straight Up’, and arguably more enduring than anything else on the record.
If ‘Forever Your Girl’ as an album is youthful, ‘Opposites Attract’ is where it teeters into juvenile. That, however, is not a bad thing. Despite the silly premise, it’s an undeniable pop culture moment, and goofy in a very deliberate way. The track works outside of the video as a standard oppositional love song, but it’s elevated by the cartoony video, which won a Grammy. As Madonna and Janet discarded their more girlish elements for increasingly harder dance sounds, Abdul kept it light and easy.
Then came the new album.
‘Spellbound’ (1991) is an incredibly ambitious album, in that it’s an attempt to match Paula Abdul to the rapidly forming 1990s. A sophomore record is already an uphill battle in terms of quality, but on top of that, a new decade breeds dozens of microtrends that will likely die out, as everyone tries to anticipate the sound of the next ten years. Abdul had a litany of choices, from the growing dominance of contemporary R’n’B, to the rise of electronic dance music. Hell, she could even have hitched her wagon to grunge if she’d been brave enough.
She chose to make an album that was dated and messy. On one hand, you got the cloying ‘Rush Rush’, the syrupy ‘Will You Marry Me?’, and the quite frankly bad ‘Promises In The Wind’. All three were hits, and all three sound like ballads written for Madonna half a decade previously. They’re tinny and thin in a decade where her contemporaries were going lush in their instrumentation. The more upbeat tracks on the album were also a mixed bag.
The best of Abdul’s early singles were joyfully synthetic in both music and vocal delivery — and worked for that very reason. The Family Stand don’t seem to understand that simple concept. Instead, they burden Abdul with phrases like ”I’m in a funky way!” and power-to-the-people lyrics, all in a vain attempt to flesh out a personality that isn’t there to begin with. In doing so, all they accomplish is making her seem all the more limited: Spellbound ultimately proves more about Paula Abdul than she probably intended.- David Browne (Entertainment Weekly, 1991)
I don’t entirely agree with Browne here, primarily because I have positive feelings towards ‘Vibeology’, but he does make a very good point. If the goal of ‘Spellbound’ was to establish Paula Abdul as a personality within pop music, rather than a vessel for fun music, it should be considered a failure. But commercially? Abdul remained on fire.
Every single from the record would hit the top 20. Two would be number one hits, including ‘Rush Rush’, which was the longest running number one since ‘Like A Virgin’. A world tour followed, with almost 100 stops across the Americas and Australasia. And in late 1991, she was ready to cement the era with another world class MTV VMAs performance.
“We can’t allow lip-syncing anymore.” – Joel Gallen (I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution, Rob Tannenbaum & Craig Marks)
The performance was a lot of things. Live, for certain. You could not mistake the performance for a lip sync, considering how out of breath and pitchy she sounded. But worse than that, it was confusing for audiences, unsure about the vibe and unhappy with the aesthetics.
The reviews were consistent and brutal. Comparisons to Madonna against the gender-bending costume change cruelly described the result as unflattering. Abdul would later go on to say she was a “fashion victim” and the costume made her look “chunky”. The Chicago Tribune pronounced it an “embarrassment”. Rumours circulated that the pause on ‘Vibeology’ as a single was solely due to the negative response to this performance. Entertainment Weekly went as far as to suggest she had briefly fired her entire team in the midst of the backlash.
To be clear, the performance was both better and worse than it was described. The concept was interesting enough to capture focus, and the dancing was as strong as ever. But it really was just…not all there. Abdul spends the second half of her time on stage looking visibly panicked. She throws herself into it, but the magic of earlier appearances just isn’t there. For someone who continues to pride themselves on being a professional, it was bad. ‘Vibeology’ wasn’t. It was campy fun. The performance was just poorly done.
You could make the argument that Paula Abdul’s pop career stops right here. The album does well, but her entire shtick is being pop perfection, and one bad performance killed that. Once she became human, it became harder to ignore the flaws. ‘Spellbound’ is a significantly less charming album than ‘Forever Your Girl’, and following the tour, it seems she hid from the spotlight for a time.
Allegedly due to a plane crash. Definitely due to her struggles with bulimia. Possibly exacerbated by her rocky marriage to Emilio Estevez. Her third album, ‘Now Or Never’, failed to make any real impact, even as the lead single saw it’s music video playing before showings of ‘Clueless’ (1995). A 1997 comeback was scrapped midway through the writing process, leaving the hit song ‘Spinning Around’ to go to Kylie Minogue. That’s right, Paula Abdul has a credit on one of the quintessential hits of the 2000s.
It’s post-peak that Paula Abdul becomes interesting as a person within pop culture, but that is only after her pop career had died. In a fascinating way, the personality that was missing from ‘Spellbound’ started to peak out as she aged out of the possibility of having a pop revival. Her stint on ‘American Idol’ (2002-2009) saw her become increasingly loose and goofy with the contestants, and led to two final singles to round out her discography. In 2008, she worked with Randy Jackson on the track ‘Dance Like There’s No Tomorrow’, which actually charted pretty well. A follow up track in 2009 also charted – her last release to date.
The purpose of a star like Paula Abdul is to meet the moment. Some pop figures are forever, but most are just part of a larger story. When ‘Forever Your Girl’ was released in 1988, it was the culmination of everything stars like Madonna and Janet Jackson had established. You can tell the story of pop without her, but it’s just a bit less fun. She was beautiful, energetic, and ultimately, successful.
But more than that, she was Paula.
Select bibliography
MTV Uncensored - link
Is the voice on ‘Forever Your Girl’ Paula Abdul’s? by Jeffery Ressner, Entertainment Weekly
Spellbound (review) by David Browne, Entertainment Weekly
I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution by Rob Tannenbaum & Craig Marks
R.E.M WINS BIG AT A FAST-PACED - BUT DULL - MTV VIDEO AWARDS by Mark Caro, Chicago Tribune
Paula Abdul’s Vibeology by Jeffrey Ressner, Entertainment Weekly
PROMISE OF A NEW DAY\ PAULA ABDUL HAS WEATHERED THE STORM AND LOOKS TO THE FUTURE by Bruce Britt, New York Times News Service