UB Soul Friday: Celebrating Paula Abdul’s ‘Forever Your Girl’

This weeks “UB Soul Friday” celebrates the accomplished Paula Abdul.

This week in 1989, her breakthrough album “Forever Your Girl” hit #1, 16 months after its release.

“UB Soul Friday,” spotlighting artists, albums, singles and videos that left a mark in R&B and Soul music!

Paula Abdul grew up in the San Fernando Valley, California and pursued her childhood love for dance and cheerleading through high school & college.

In high-school she directed and performed in a multitude of musicals, and later studied with renowned vocal coach Seth Riggs to perfect her voice.

Paula once formed a girl group and recorded a demo with three of her friends. Their group was called the ‘Cheer Girls.’

They sent copies of their demo to several recording labels.

One of the labels, Motown Records reviewed the girl’s demo and was not impressed.

Motown didn’t think the group had what it took to be successful. At the time, girl bands were thought to be unpopular.

After college, Paula was ready to take her dance skills to the next level and joined the Los Angeles Lakers cheerleaders, where she so impressed the team ownership that she became head cheerleader/choreographer after only a few months.

Very quickly, she became widely known as “re-inventing” cheerleading by combining classic cheering with contemporary music and dance in a way that had not been seen before.

However Paula‘s first real career ambition, was to be a Basketball announcer.

Paula Abdul loves sports. “The job with the Lakers was the perfect part-time job,” she explained. “I was an avid sports fan, and what I really wanted out of it was to take my family to the games and sit on the floor. I had no intentions of doing the choreography. In school I’d become a radio-TV film major. I wanted to be a sports commentator really. I thought maybe I could dance, and maybe get an internship with Laker announcer Chick Hearn.”

Soon she found herself assigned the job of Laker Girl choreographer.

Paula Abdul geared her routines toward dance, training essentially non-dancing cheerleaders to become a tight dance ensemble.

A style of her own began to emerge featuring a lot of athletic moves combined with isolated movements.

One family of Laker fans, the Jacksons, wanted to meet the Laker Girl choreographer.

They asked her to choreograph the “Victory” tour and the Torture video.

Soon she was approached by A&M’s John McClain who felt her style would be great for Janet Jackson. “My style of choreography worked well with her music because it had a tough edge. Neither of us realized the impact the videos would have. This was the first time the public would see the new Janet Jackson. Her career boomed, and all of a sudden I was a choreographer.”

Jeff Ayeroff, then at Warner Bros., contacted her about directing videos. Jeff put her together with ZZ Top and Duran Duran as a choreographer.

Later, when Ayeroff and Jordan Harris formed Virgin USA, they asked her to start working a little faster on her song demos—a record deal was in the works.

“Jeff and Jordan both pushed me to make the transition a little earlier than I expected. I worked very hard to become a professional choreographer, and it was time to reap the benefits. They were very supportive of my choreography and allowed me to work around it.”

The shift from choreographer to singer took some mental adjustments. Paula once shared: “As choreographer, I have total creative control, I’m calling the shots. But you know it’s nice sometimes to take direction from someone else. My attitude was ‘Produce me, I trust you.’”

Paula’s voice was discovered in New York while she was working with Duran Duran on their “Notorious” music video.

Label executives who were launching the new Virgin Records heard about Paula and invited her to dinner to discuss the ‘Cheer Girls’ demo.

They liked the demo but decided they wanted to hear Paula sing solo.

Just as Motown Executives had stated, Virgin didn’t think girl bands had what it takes to be popular.

They asked Paula to perform a solo-test. She did as they requested and days later Virgin Records signed her onto their label.

She was choreographing “Coming to America” with Eddie Murphy.

During that time Virgin put together a compilation CD of artists coming out for Gavin.

They included her one finished song, L.A. & Babyface’s “Knocked Out.”

The rest, as they say, was history. She had to cancel everything else after the movie and to work on the album.

It was a stressful period for Paula Abdul. “Certain producers would only work at night. Others would only work during the day. Getting the schedule together was tough. I was still involved with the Tracy Ullman show. It was a trying time for me. I want to be more prepared mentally and physically for the next album. I want to be involved more with the writing and producing. I was frantic working under pressure. But then again, I may not have achieved what I go without pushing like that.”

Executives from the label informed Paula that she would have to work fast on preparing her album because they wanted it ready for a summer release.

As it was, Paula’s schedule was already hectic!

In order to achieve the goal set forth for her by Virgin, she altered her schedule so she could record the album at night.

Here is a sample of what her schedule looked like:

From 10am to 2pm she worked on “The Tracy Ullman Show.”

From 3pm to 5pm she choreographed George Michael‘s “Faith” tour.

She took an hour break to rest and have dinner, then worked with dancers from the movie “Coming to America” from 7 to 10pm.

She recorded her album from Midnight to 4am.

Paula Abdul’s story is more than a story of personal achievement—it’s a classic tale of a label and radio talking to one another, finding a big hit together, and sharing the wealth.

As a case study on how to break a record big, Virgin’s “Forever Your Girl” campaign combined elements of savvy promotional skill, timing and just plain good luck.

It was 1987 at the Gavin convention in San Francisco that Paula‘s first single “Knocked Out” was rushed from it’s final mix.

R&B radio programmers immediately picked up on the tune, and even before the rest of the album was cut, Virgin saw the record start to get Black radio adds.

Because “Knocked Out” happened early, Paula Abdul was initially perceived as a “black” artist.

She established her base on Black radio, and Virgin couldn’t ignore it.

“Forever Your Girl” was released June 13th, 1988.

“Knocked Out” became a Top 5 R&B record, just missing the Top 40 for all singles.

It picked up a lot of urban-crossover stations and created a base in the major markets.

At this juncture about 100,000 albums were sold.

The second single, “The Way That You Love Me,” also went Top 5 R&B.

Virgin wanted to get a crossover.

But pop radio came back and said they were playing another song, “Straight Up.”

Phil Quartararo, Virgin’s VP of promotion and marketing, commented on the process at the time: “‘Straight Up’ was a culmination of several factors. Paula Abdul had two big R&B records and videos. Both songs were also hit dance records. You had several formats, R&B, dance and video setting her up. We also kept her out a lot, doing track dates, appearances, radio stations, KMEL in San Francisco and Hot 97.7 in San Jose, as well as all the stations in Sacramento, found the record,” continued Quartararo. “We were halfway into promoting pop radio on ‘The Way That You Love Me,’ but ‘Straight Up’ was getting such quick reactions, we figured we’d take a shot at switching singles. Nine times out of ten when you switch singles you’ll end up blowing the project. It was a month before Christmas, we were taking a big chance, but we scrambled and pulled it off. We sold a quarter million records last week alone.”

Virgin’s gambled and went after the song.

Forty of the top CHR stations added it. It became the most requested song in the country.

“‘Straight-Up’ broke when there weren’t a lot of those records out, Quartararo stated, “This kind of song has a lot of competition, with Pebbles, Tiffany, Debbie Gibson etc. There was a pocket just before Christmas when a lot of those records had peaked or weren’t out yet. There was a distinctive hole for that kind of record.”

Real fame—the face-in-every living-room kind of fame—came to Paula Abdul after she made the transition to singing.

It’s funny how a #1 hit and a seductive video called “Straight Up” started folks inquiring about her personal life.

The question then was, Paula are you secretly married to Arsenio Hall? “Arsenio is the biggest practical joker,” chuckled Paula. “I’ll go to different cities and I’ll be onstage, introducing my song ‘Opposites Attract.’ Hecklers will yell‘ Arsenio Hall!’ We’ve been friends since I was a Laker girl. Once he went on Power 106 and said he’d married me. It got all over the United States! I just laugh, but people are afraid to ask me on a date.”

And the second biggest question that inquiring minds wanted to know about Paula Abdul was her nationality?

Her father, she explained, is Syrian-Brazilian, and her mother is French-Canadian. “People look at my skin color and don’t know what I am. Latins think I’m Latin. Blacks think I’m Black. Middle Easterners, Iranians… they all think I’m one of them. People will swear I am what they are, until I give up and say, ‘OK, you’re right, I am just like you.’ I’m a melting pot.”

At one point, the “Forever Your Girl” was so hot it reportedly sold over 191,000 copies in just one day.

The album broke music industry records by producing the most Top 10 Singles off of one album, let alone a debut album.

At the time, the only artist to come close to this was Whitney Houston who had three Top 10 singles on the chart.

The “Forever Your Girl” album rated #1 on Billboards Charts for ten weeks, went more than 7x Platinum and sold over 10 million copies worldwide.

The singles released; “Knocked Out,” “The Way That You Love Me,” “Straight Up,” “Forever Your Girl,” “Cold Hearted,” and “Opposites Attract.”

The latter features Minnesota‘s own Derrick ‘Delite’ Stevens, known as MC Skat Kat. A KMOJ and North High alumni.

Paula‘s singles stayed on the Top 40 charts for 66 straight weeks.

The album produced 4 #1 singles.

“Forever Your Girl” spent 100 weeks (almost two years) on Billboard charts and was the #1 album for ten of those weeks.

“Forever Your Girl” hit #1 on October 7th 1989, 16 months after its release. “That album changed my life, not just because of its success, but because it brought me closer to all of YOU. The love and support you’ve given me since has meant everything. Forever grateful and forever your girl,” Paula stated on social media this week.

Paula Abdul reigns as the second longest charting album on the Billboard Hot 100 chart; the longest charting album ever.

The platinum “Shut Up and Dance: Mixes” was released in 1990, featuring remixes of the debut albums hits.

Her most celebrated works in choreography include her Emmy-winning contributions to The Tracey Ullman Show, and Paula’s own performance as an artist opening the American Music Awards.

As well as an Emmy nomination for choreographing the Academy Awards.

Paula Abdul received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on December 4th, 1991.

Paula was honored in 2008 with a Lifetime Achievement award from the prestigious Tremaine Dance Company, as the “Tremaine Entertainer of the Year 2008” and was presented the Always Next, Forever Now Icon Award, reserved only for the most beloved of pop icons in 2010.

Take A Trip Down Memory Lane with “Forever Your Girl!”