Every kid likes to sing when they are very young, usually a bit out of tune, but, if there’s a hint of interest, they stick with it and get better. Sometimes the parents will notice and encourage accordingly. My parents heard me sing and decided, no. They didn’t tell me that at the time, but I knew. Along the way, a few have said, ‘your singing is fine’ but I’ve never really believed them. This wasn’t the case with Tiffany who once revealed that her cousin taught here to sing, a song that was high in the US chart when Tiffany was born.
That song was Delta Dawn and it was Helen Reddy’s version that was number one on the Billboard singles chart in 1973, around the time when Tiffany popped into the world. That song was originally recorded by Alex Harvey, not the Scottish musician who led his Sensational band, but a country singer from Tennessee. A few have covered it along the way with an interesting frenzied version by Me First & the Gimme Gimmes in 2004.
After learning Delta Dawn, she told her mother she was going to be a singer and she was right. At the age of nine, after her stepfather urged her, she attended a barbeque in her hometown of Norwalk, California she joined a local band, the Country Howdowners on stage. They were impressed and asked her if she wanted to join them on occasions. She accepted and after a while, she realised some of the adult content of the country songs were not for a girl of her age. She recalled, to Fred Bronson, I couldn’t sing My baby left me and my life is over and have anyone believe me because I was 12 years old.” So, she switched to pop.
One person who did believe in her when she was 12 was the US producer George Tobin. She was invited to record a demo record at the San Fernando Valley Studios. Whilst she was in one studio, Tobin was next door recording with Smokey Robinson when someone suggested he come and listen to this 12-year old girl. He wasn’t keen at first, but relented and was soon amazed. He said in an interview at the time, “I walked in and listened to this powerful voice. I suggested to her that we keep in touch and I waited around a year and began to record with her when she was nearly 14.”
When they did get together they lay down over 40 songs, four of which were cover versions and one was I Think We’re Alone Now as suggested by Tobin. “It’s probably one of my favourite songs, I’ve always loved that song. I wanted to do it because I was making records in that time period and I also knew the song’s writer, Ritchie Cordell because we had all worked in the same building in New York.
Tobin played the original version by Tommy James and the Shondells to her and, because of her young age, she’d never heard it before. She wasn’t that keen on it at first. She recalled in an interview, “I didn’t hate it, but I wasn’t crazy about it either. He (Tobin) asked me to trust him and tell him what I thought after I’d laid down the track. The following week, I listened again and it sounded completely different. It had great lyrics, it was fun to sing and I ended up liking the song.”
Once finished, Tobin approached various record label and executives, but the response was lukewarm at best. He knew she could make it and, remembering being impressed when he first saw her in the studio, he invited a number of those executive to his home studio to watch her perform live. Naturally, they were impressed and a bidding war ensued with MCA winning the battle when Tobin chose them. It proved to be a right choice because they had a great, yet unusual idea of how to market her. They sent her off on a mini tour of shopping centres where many parents and their kids would be and hopefully impressed them. She sang to a backing track and she put stacks of energy into it by moving from one end of a shopping mall to another.
It worked to get her noticed, but MCA, for reasons best known to themselves, didn’t want to release and promote I Think We’re Alone Now as a single. Instead, they chose a track called Danny. It baffled all concerned. Thankfully, radio DJs, especially in the States, have a lot of influence with what they choose to play on the radio and in Salt Lake City, Utah, a DJ called Morgan Evans on KCPX gave it a spin on his afternoon show and then right there, the phone lines were ablaze. Morgan immediately called the record company to reveal the reaction only to be told they weren’t interested in that project, but thank you anyway. The radio’s station’s programme director, Lou Simon, stepped in to monitor the reaction each time the station played the song and showed MCA the results. Finally, they saw sense and after a few weeks they released it. The result a number one hit in the US, UK, Canada, Panama, Ireland, New Zealand and South Africa. It also went top 10 in 12 other countries.
She was promoted the same way in the UK and the week she hit the number one slot here, the newspapers reported that 2000 children skipped school to watch Tiffany perform the song live at the Trocadero shopping centre in London’s Piccadilly Circus.
Tiffany, in 2011, told Billboard magazine, “When I heard that my hit song had went number one, I was washing dishes. I was doing my chores because I was a teenager, of course. My manager called me and said ‘Congratulations, you have the number one single in the country.’ I said, ‘You know what? I have to get off the phone because I have to finish my chores otherwise I’m going to be busted and I won’t be able to do anything.’ And, he’s like, ‘You don’t get it’… but I had to finish those chores.”
The song has legs, Pascal featuring Karen Parry did a dance version of the song and took it to number 23 in 2002 and Girls Aloud took their version took it to number four in the UK in 2006.
Richie Cordell who had also written Mony Mony (Tommy James, Billy Idol and Amazulu), It’s Only Love (Elvis Presley), Gimme Gimme Good Lovin’ (Crazy Elephant) died on 13 April 2004.
Naturally, some of the press releases dismissed Tiffany as a one hit wonder novelty type act, even before she had the chance to release a second track. They did release a follow up and it stopped everyone who had dissed her. Could’ve Been went to number four in the UK and number one in the States and proved she really could sing. It was written and originally recorded by Lois Blaisch who had written it about an oral surgeon but the relationship never really happened so she fell in love with what could’ve been rather than him.
Tiffany had further hits with a gender-altered remake of The Beatles’, I Saw Him Standing There and Radio Romance. But by the end of the eighties, the hits had dried up. In the early nineties she toured Asia extensively where she was still successful. “Pop seemed to be going more R&B and dance which I wasn’t convinced was what I wanted to do. I’d always wanted to do rock – my idol was Stevie Nicks. I then took a couple of years off to learn how to write songs, plus I’d just had a little boy so I wanted to be mom.”
In 2001, she released a solo album, The Color Of Silence. Her new style resembled Sheryl Crow, but she was unable to shake off her original teeny-bop image of the shopping mall singer with the bright red hair, and despite good reviews, it failed to sell. So in order to show the world that she had grown up, she posed naked for Playboy. She occasionally presents VH1 in the States.