5 Embarrassing First Songs from Famous Divas
If you look at the biographies of the most famous singers of all-time, you’ll sometimes see that the world immediately recognized their talent. Take Mariah Carey. The very first demo tape she recorded led to a bidding war between rival studios. Columbia Records went all-out when promoting her, and her debut album went platinum nine times over. Her first single, “Vision of Love,” was one of the biggest songs of 1990 and indeed was one of the biggest of the entire 1990s.
With other artists? Their first song is one that you’ve never heard before and which, perhaps, they’d rather you’d never hear at all.
‘Ringo I Love You’ by Cher
Cher really was born with the name “Cher” — or “Cheryl Sarkisian,” which is close enough. For her very first single, however, she went by the name of Bonnie Jo Mason, which was the sort of wholesome moniker that could be counted on to win American hearts.
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It won no hearts, and the one song she released under that name was “Ringo I Love You”:
The song is just two minutes long, and it appears to be about Ringo Starr. The first few lines mention “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and the yeah yeah yeah refrain from “She Loves You.” But it doesn’t commit to stringing out a bunch of Beatles references, and it quickly runs out of steam.
Radio stations didn’t want to play the song, partly because it sounded like this was a man singing about loving Ringo, based on just how low Cher’s voice was. The song goes out of its way to clarify that Cher isn’t a man, ending by singing, “I want to be your girl,” but we suppose there’s nothing stopping some gay male irer of Ringo Starr from singing that very line.
’Everybody’ by Madonna
Listeners were also confused about the identity of the singer of 1983’s “Everybody,” the debut song from someone by the name of Madonna. Here, the confusion was entirely intentional on the part of the label. Sire Records decided to leave her face off of the cover of the single, hoping to let listeners believe she was Black.
This would give the song a better shot at being played on R&B stations, they figured. Instead of any imagery of their new artist, they went with this for the cover:
Sire Records
That showed little faith in their artist, who later would come to be known very strongly for her image. It certainly didn’t serve as much of a long-term plan, since if she became a success, they’d have to show her off sooner or later. Sure enough, they ended up making a music video, and it featured Madonna in person, no matter how much the label would have preferred just showing a vibrating sound wave.
Madonna’s face, of course, became very well known after this, and around 20 years later, she even became so comfortable with herself that she was able to it that she’s actually British.
‘Life’s a Party’ by Whitney Houston
The first single to officially credit Whitney Houston was “Hold Me” from 1984. She’d release a bunch of much bigger songs the following year, but this duet is pretty much in line with what you might expect from her.
Like we said, that’s the first song to officially credit her. It wasn’t, however, her first single, period. Before her self-titled debut album, she was a session vocalist, which meant she sang in the background of songs by other artists, including Lou Rawls and Chaka Khan. When she was 15, or possibly even 14, she sang uncredited in a disco song called “Life’s a Party” by the Michael Zager Band.
You might know the Michael Zager Band from their song “Let’s All Chant.” You might not recognize the title, but you’ll definitely recognize the song. “Let’s All Chant” is mercifully just three minutes long. “Life’s a Party” is somehow eight. It was too lengthy for radio, and even discos would likely not tolerate a single song playing for that long of a stretch. Here it is, but we trust you won’t make it till the end:
‘Be Divine’ by Adele
There are many genres worse than disco, chief among them being British techno from the 2000s. Here’s one British techno song from 2006, titled “Be Divine”:
That voice is unmistakably Adele’s. But that’s a 17-year-old Adele, who at the time had yet to graduate from high school (the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology).
As with many techno songs, “Be Divine” credits not the vocalist but the producer, a DJ named Ricsta. As for who exactly Ricsta is or what they did next, no one knows. It’s possible that Adele had him killed.
‘Ce n’Etait Qu’un Rêve’ by Céline Dion
If you’re from any English-speaking country and were alive at the start of the 1990s, you might think Céline Dion’s career began with the album Unison, which featured “Where Does My Heart Beat Now.” But by this point, the 22-year-old Dion had already released eight previous albums. All of them were in French. Only when she turned 20 and decided that she needed to know English to succeed outside of Canada did she learn our fine language well enough to sing in it.
Her first song (in French, of course), had been called “Ce n’Etait Qu’un Rêve.” She wrote it when she was 12.
As impressive as the song may sound from a 12-year-old, we’re not sure how willing Céline Dion would be to talk much about this part of her career. It was this song that brought her to the attention of music manager René Angélil, who was 38 at the time. He took great interest in her. Dion says they didn’t start dating until she was 18, and they waited several more years before going public about it, for fear of what people would say.
They got married in 1994 and stayed married till his death in 2016. If that sounds to you like anything other than a beautiful romance, then you are, in your heart, not truly French.