Paula Abdul Sings For Real: This Week In 1991
Nov 11th, 2002
Paula Abdul Sings For Real: This Week In 1991
11.11.2002
Courtesy MTV.com
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Dance pop star Paula Abdul launched her first full-fledged tour this week in 1991.
"This is probably the most exciting time in my life — I didn't realize that really until opening night," she said during her tour stop in Miami. "There's nothing like it. The first day, on the show day in Atlanta, I was kind of a nervous wreck, and right before the show, when the lights went down and I heard the crowd yelling, I didn't know what I was going to do. I thought I was gonna pee in my pants."
For 100 minutes before a sold-out crowd in Miami, Abdul played all her hits and showed off her nine-piece band, eight dancers and one of the most elaborate stage sets seen up to that point.
"It's a bi-level set," Abdul explained. "There's elevators and different things that happen that we are using for the first time. There's video walls. This show is physically demanding. There's a lot of dancing going on."
While the former Laker Girl was proud of all the vocal training she'd gone through and she did sing live throughout the show, backing tapes did turn up here and there — something she was up front about, given the big lip-syncing backlash that followed the 1990 Milli Vanilli scandal.
"There are a couple numbers where there's technical support, on some of the heavy dance choreographed numbers," Abdul said. "The singing for me is extremely important. The dancing I knew would be there, but I wanted to be able to project vocally so we had to change a lot of stuff. If it was up to me I'd be doing all the same choreography as my dancers, but there's no way [I can do that and sing at the same time]."