Paula Abdul went from Laker Girl to teaching the Jacksons to dance
Picked from roughly 700 hopefuls to cheer for the Los Angeles Lakers, Paula Abdul was running the squad's choreography within a year. Members of the Jacksons spotted her at a game and hired her. A few years later she was a pop star whose first album yielded four chart-topping singles.
Abdul was born in San Fernando, California, on June 19, 1962. Her father, a Syrian Jew from Aleppo, grew up in Brazil before moving to the United States; her mother was a concert pianist from Manitoba. Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain lit her ambition. She trained in ballet, jazz and tap, was a cheerleader and honours student at Van Nuys High, and was studying broadcasting at Cal State Northridge when the Lakers took her on.
Choreographing the Jacksons' video for Torture, she later admitted, was terrifying: she had to tell them how to move. It worked well enough to land her their Victory tour and a run of Janet Jackson videos, including Nasty and Control. She also staged the giant floor-piano scene for Tom Hanks in Big.
In 1987 she spent her savings on a demo and was signed by Virgin Records America, despite having little vocal training; coaches and producers built up her mezzo-soprano. Forever Your Girl took 64 weeks to climb to the top of the Billboard 200, then stayed there for 10, and no debut album had produced more Hot 100 number ones than its four, among them Straight Up. A backing singer later sued Virgin claiming her voice had been blended with Abdul's; in 1993 a jury rejected the claim. Spellbound added Rush Rush, whose video cast Keanu Reeves in a James Dean role.
After a break for personal and health problems, Head over Heels in 1995 became her weakest seller, though its single with Ofra Haza reached number one on the club chart. From 2002 she sat on the original American Idol panel, the gentle counterweight to Simon Cowell. The Bravo reality show Hey Paula lasted a single season.
Source: Paula Abdul
