Remembering Naomi Campbell’s Long Forgotten (And Weirdly Wonderful) Pop Album

The early 1990s were a whirlwind for Naomi Campbell.

She started the decade by appearing alongside four other supermodels on the cover of British Vogue. By the end of 1990, the same five models — Campbell, plus Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington, and Cindy Crawford — appeared in the David Fincher-directed clip for George Michael’s ‘Freedom ‘90’.

The era of the supermodel was born. Over the next two years, Campbell modelled for Versace and appeared on the cover of American Vogue three times. She also starred as Michael Jackson’s unlikely love interest in the sleazy ‘In The Closet’ clip, and posed naked in Madonna’s Sex book — a decision she was still being forced to defend a decade later.

Her diva-like behaviour was widely reported, but rather than overshadow her modelling career, it helped add to the allure. She celebrated her 22nd birthday by allegedly punching actress Troy Beyer in the mouth outside a nightclub; she had a jealous spat with Tyra Banks; she dated Mike Tyson, then Sylvester Stallone, then Robert De Niro; then got engaged to the bassist from U2.

Despite pulling in $1.5 million in 1992 alone, the following September she was fired by Elite Model Management. In a fax (!) to clients, she was blasted as “crazy, irrational and uncontrollable.”

John Casablancas — the founder of Elite and now better known as Julian from The Strokes’ dad — seethed that “no amount of money or prestige could further justify the abuse that has been imposed on our staff and our clients.”

“She has been having people around here in tears,” he wrote. “Our staff have killed themselves for her in terms of the number of lies told in order to protect her.”

Of course, she was quickly snapped up, literally the next day, by Ford Modelling Agency, whose founder explained: “She’s expanding her career into other areas and thought we could handle her better.”

Oh-uh. Other areas? Her London manager confirmed these ambitions, telling People: “She wants to go into other fields—TV, maybe some comedy, and pursue her singing career.”

And this is where things went horribly wrong for Naomi Campbell.

Enter: Babywoman

The history of music is littered with cash grab records from celebrities either too arrogant to realise they haven’t ‘earned’ it yet, or too naive to realise they are just a commodity being milked by managers, agents, record labels, and anyone that can quickly cash in on a celebrity’s fleeting fame and fickle fanbase.

Babywoman, released in 1994, is neither. I think. It seems different from the ‘90s music of Keanu Reeves, Johnny Depp, or River Phoenix, which was just mediocre wank, albeit sincere mediocre wank. It also seems different to songs by Jennifer Love Hewitt, Lindsay Lohan, or any other actress-slash-multi-hyphenate, where the artist is slotted into a pre-existing template and pumped out to the public.

It doesn’t sound like a cash grab, although to the label, the agents, the managers, and the public at large, it most certainly was. But, maybe not to Naomi. Maybe she viewed it as art.

The producers she worked with seem thoughtfully chosen, luminaries such as Youth, who helmed The Verve’s massive Urban Hymns album, and has worked collaboratively with Paul McCartney since the early ‘90s. The tracklisting is a collection of well-executed covers of tracks from PM Dawn, T-Rex and Luscious Jackson, and Donna Summer, with a few originals penned by professional songsmiths. Mercifully, Campbell’s name is nowhere to be seen in the writing credits.

Gavin Friday, who was briefly in The Fall and used to bunk with Bono when they were both in their 20s, produced four of the album’s eleven tracks. Irish music magazine Hot Press interviewed him about the project in 1994, before the record was finished or released.

“She doesn’t want to make a typical record. She wouldn’t drag me in — and I wouldn’t go into the studio — just for the sake of it.”

“She doesn’t want to make a typical record,” he told the magazine. “She wouldn’t drag me in — and I wouldn’t go into the studio — just for the sake of it. She comes from a background where she was trained as a dancer and a singer, one of those Shirley Temple backgrounds, and then happened to be picked up as a model when she was 15.”

Shirley Temple background — who knew? He then explained how they became fast friends and would go out getting drunk together when she visited Dublin.

The single ‘Love and Tears’, co-written by Gavin Friday, was the first taste of Naomi’s musical career. Released in September, the same month as her debut novel, which is an impressive move, I must admit, the song clawed its way into the UK Top 40 – at number 40.

This was followed a widely publicised appearance on UK’s seminal chart show Top Of The Pops, which at the time was being viewed by millions of Brits each week. Lisa Loeb and the Nine Stories performed Reality Bites soundtrack smash ‘Stay (I Missed You)’ on the same episode as Naomi’s debut, just in case the footage didn’t seem enough of a ‘90s timewarp.

Naomi’s performance was preempted by a piece to camera where she announced, “Do not adjust your sets. Yes, this is me, Naomi Campbell and I’m going to be live on Top Of The Pops later.”

And she was. A fact bubble declared that Campbell’s song was, indeed, number 40, and that she “earns £14 a minute as a supermodel”, as if to explain away what we were about to watch, and then there she was, flanked by two Turkish dancers, on a set that looked like it was designed by someone who was asked to create something ‘Middle Eastern’ and only had Aladdin as a reference point.

But the song itself is pretty good. It’s as ‘pretty good’ as any other song that peaked at #40, and probably deserved to chart higher. Sonically, it’s a hypnotic, sitar-infused ballad that sounds like mid-career Madonna built on the bones of George Michael’s ‘Father Figure.’ It’s an unexpected sound for a supermodel’s debut single.

A hypnotic, sitar-infused ballad that sounds like mid-career Madonna built on the bones of George Michael’s ‘Father Figure.’

Campbell is not lip-syncing in the performance, which is impressive, and her high register (in the Madonna-esque bridge) is much stronger than her lower laconic verse voice. Even her frequent flat notes seem somehow cool, as if she knows she doesn’t need to try too hard to captivate.

The album followed less than two weeks later, and it was roundly panned. Oh well, as long as it sells, right? The Mirror instructed Campbell “don’t give up the day job” and the record sold few than 200 copies during release week, landing on the charts at a gasping #75. Gulp! Then it disappeared. No further singles were released, the record was soon deleted, and Naomi never recorded another album.

And yet…

It’s Actually Pretty Good

The album is extremely likeable, and has aged a lot better than most of the R&B recorded around that same time, especially the stuff coming out of Britain.

Let’s start with the worst of it. The title track, ‘Babywoman’, has the limpest production and most unwittingly funny lyrics on the entire album. Also, it’s about being a ‘baby woman’ but doesn’t attempt to define the attributes that make up a babywoman, which is in itself funny.

“Try steal a kiss from my million dollar lips/Try tease a groove from my boogaloo hips”, she sings in the first verse, over a beat that sounds like it was pre-programmed into a Casio keyboard.

“I’m a funky bouquet of the flowers I grow,” she sings in response to a vomit-inducing breathy male vocal, a breath you can actually feel down your collar as you shudder, involuntary. “You’re really something,” he slimes, as Lynx Africa drips from his armpits down the side of his torso.

There is a supermodel sex-whispering in French during the bridge, yet this is still the least sexy song I have heard for some time. “Je m’appelle Naomi,” she coos, before breaking abruptly from the language of love. “Peace and love, it’s a beautiful thing.”

Well, it’s hard to argue with that sentiment.

‘Picnic In The Rain’ is more like it, a PM Dawn produced song that would be at home on any En Vogue album from the 1990s. She also covers PM Dawn’s ‘When I Think About Love‘, and does a decent job of it, even incorporating those breezy Latin nylon guitar parts that would be so ubiquitous in pop music a few years later. (See: Savage Garden, No Mercy). Naomi was ahead of her time.

Her version of ‘Sunshine On A Rainy Day’, a perennially joyous song made famous by Christine Anu in Australia, is genuinely…fairly good. When Anu’s version is all light and power, Naomi’s is more an arms-in-the-air cruisy jam, wooden percussion and lashings of reverb. I like it. You may hate it.

Similarly, her cover of T-Rex’s classic ‘Ride A White Swan’ is effortlessly cool: blues rock and trip hop and baggy drumbeats; a supermodel showing off superpowers.

“Her cover of T-Rex’s classic ‘Ride A White Swan’ is effortlessly cool: blues rock and trip hop and baggy drumbeats; a supermodel showing off superpowers.”

‘I Want To Live’ is pure Euro-disco, and sounds so of its time that it’s hard to understand why this song failed when other similar sounding songs succeeded. It’s also the song that has aged the worst: “I drink all day, I’m never sober,” she sings, and you believe her.

The album’s highlight is a cover of Luscious Jackson’s ‘Life Of Leisure’ which manages to sound like the following things all at once: All Saints when they sound dark and edgy; Michael Jackson’s new jack swing stuff from Dangerous; Madonna’s ‘Erotica’ period; Prince when he was a symbol; and Luscious Jackson. There are smoky sax parts, radio static, flutes, and it’s her most confident vocal performance.

So…What Happened?

So, why did this album fade away? Even as a curio, it is barely spoken of, which is surprising, given Naomi Campbell’s thirty-year reign in pop culture.

Perhaps it is because it didn’t touch the charts in America or Australia, and therefore most people don’t know about it. It only spawned one single, and it is neither a big enough sonic failure to be a Rebecca Black ‘Friday’ level fail, nor a nostalgic memory like Paris Hilton’s (very good) ‘Stars Are Blind’.

It slipped into the UK charts at #75, then slipped away. Radio didn’t care, and Naomi Campbell didn’t have the type of teen fanbase that would have bought this on face value alone, either.

It sounds a bit like the girls from All Saints getting drunk at Brian from East 17’s house party and singing karaoke to Madonna songs.

But, in a fate almost too perfect to not be scripted, Babywoman was a massive hit in Japan. It sold over a million copies in the country, and is one of those rare cases when a musician actually is ‘big in Japan’.

It’s not over for Babywoman. It’s the perfect internet album: dripping of ‘90s production, beat-driven, earnestly released by a supermodel at the height of her fame, commercially unsuccessful, largely forgotten, and sounding a bit like the girls from All Saints getting drunk at Brian from East 17’s house party and singing karaoke to Madonna songs.

It might just be the perfect album for 2020. Self-isolate, and listen.

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Nathan Jolly was formerly the Editor of The Music Network, and tweets from @NathanJolly.