Music and Songwriting: Switching Genres and the Girl Group

In 2001, a couple months before my 10^th birthday, I moved to the San Fernando Valley. In Texas the only music I listened to was mostly R&B and some rap. I never in my life would turn the dial to a KIIS type station, but that all changed when I arrived in Southern California.

• Aerosmith – Jaded
• Madonna – Music
• Faith Hill – Breathe
• Christina Aguilera – What A Girl Wants
• P!nk – There You Go
• ‘N Sync – Bye Bye Bye
• Macy Gray – I Try
• Shakira – Whenever, Wherever
• Britney Spears – Oops!…I Did It Again
• Lee Ann Womack – I Hope You Dance
• Jennifer Lopez – Waiting For Tonight
• Eden’s Crush – Get Over Yourself
• Dream – He Loves You Not
• Dido – Thank You
• CrazyTown – Butterfly
• Craig David – Fill Me In
• Enrique Igelsias – Hero
• Creed – With Arms Wide Open
• Ricky Martin & Christina Aguilera – Nobody Wants To Be Lonely

Those are some songs that I faithfully watched TRL to get a glimpse of. VH1 became my best friend around that time as well. I still went to BET’s 106 & Park to get my daily dose of Lil’ Bow Wow & Sammie. But the song that caught my attention more than anything was ♪I’m Like A Bird♪ by Nelly Furtado. Her voice was so unique and I felt the lyrics were genuine. Shakira was another person who voice I liked because of the uniqueness. I later learned that everyone doesn’t agree with you on who can sing or not and vice versa. Some people have voices so unique that I feel that these people are awesome for learning to accept it, live with it and push forward. The best part is that they get their break and end up learning that there are people that like their voice as well. I ended up moving back to Dallas, TX 2 months later and I remember being so different musically. I finally changed the dial to KIIS FM. My friends thought my musical taste became hella weird. Luckily, I moved back to Cali after the summer ended: Pasadena, CA. My 5^th grade year had my friends and I going crazy over the new girl in Murder Inc., Ashanti. 3 of some of my closest friends and I ended up performing ♪Foolish♪ and won 1^st place. What made it even better was getting to meet her some months later with one of the girls that was a part of the group. You know I had to let Ashanti know that we performed her song and won. She was so nice. Winning that talent show inspired me to do what I had always wanted to do: Start a girl group. My favorite girl group then and now is still Destiny’s Child, but it was 5 of us. We looked through the dictionary to find a name and we ended up calling ourselves “Ability”. There was really no lead singer, but I took it upon myself to become the songwriter for the group, after all we had to have songs to sing. We had a few practices but my dad was so not supportive of the group. He would always say, “Do you know how many girl groups want to make it?” Uh duh, I know but that doesn’t mean we’re going to give up. My 6^th grade year came and we already lost three members because they decided to go to another school. My elementary was the only school in the city that still had 6^th grade attached to it. I decided to recruit three new members. We ended up practicing Jennifer Lopez and LL Cool J’s ♪All I Have♪ with a male friend as the rapper. It ended up causing drama because the rapper was one of the girl’s boyfriend, but the teacher over the talent show felt it would be a better performance if he rapped to me since we were around the same height and all the other girls were short. It ended up not mattering because I hit puberty. Whenever my voice decides it’s going to change, it leaves completely and that is what happened. No performance for me that year and I lost all hope on being in a girl group. But I can say that before I turn 30 I want to scout, manage and write for a multi-cultural girl group. Anyway, I never stopped songwriting. The funny part is my songs back then were always about making this boy I liked my “boo”, boo was an extremely popular word back then, and about catching my man cheating on me. Lmao! I was fat! I was getting no play…I wasn’t writing from experience, I wasn’t even writing about other people’s experiences that I knew. It took me until 8^th grade to realize what makes a good song, and how writing based off experiences and other people’s experiences are the best inspirations and they make the best songs. That’s why to this day I am an extreme observer/people watcher and I pay close attention to my dreams and my imagination. Daydreaming is also important; I have a very vivid imagination.