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Abdul may have had an affair with Jackie Jackson, the oldest of the Jacksons, who was married at the time. Some of the Jackson brothers had Lakers season tickets, and they were impressed enough with the Laker Girls to ask who did their choreography. Less than a year later, Abdul was the Laker Girls’ head choreographer. A friend convinced her to try out for the Laker Girls, the famed cheerleading squad, and she won a spot on the team during her freshman year of college. Abdul got involved in sports a lot earlier than she planned, though. Abdul was a cheerleader in high school, and she studied broadcasting at Cal State Northridge, hoping to become a sportscaster. (When Abdul was born, the #1 song in America was Ray Charles’ “ I Just Can’t Stop Loving You.”) Both of Abdul’s parents were Jewish her mother was a white lady from Canada, while her father was born in Syria and grew up in Brazil.

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Paula Abdul grew up around show business she went to Van Nuys High School in the San Fernando Valley, the alma mater of a whole lot of movie stars, and her mother once worked as the assistant for the great director Billy Wilder. Abdul belonged to her moment, and her moment belonged to her. But when “Straight Up” landed at #1 and took Abdul into the stratosphere, she seemed inevitable.

For a behind-the-scenes figure like Paula Abdul to become a chart phenomenon, a whole lot of things had to play out in very specific ways.

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( American Idol will eventually figure into this column.) That stint on Idol, which lasted a lot longer than Paula Abdul’s actual pop stardom, was one more unpredictable turn in a career full of them. After she left Idol in 2009, the show was never anywhere near as fun again. For a few years, Abdul was an absolutely dominant pop star, and on a show like American Idol, where the stated goal is to find the next big pop star, that kind of experience matters.Īs it turned out, Paula Abdul was a delightful Idol judge, a loopy and loving presence who genuinely seemed to enjoy all the young singers who she was helping to guide and who always came off like she was at least a little bit drunk.

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She had rhythm and composure and sharp instincts, and she knew how to communicate personality through song. Maybe Abdul couldn’t howl the paint off the ceiling, but she had presence. She knew that what matters is what you do with that voice.

She knew, for instance, that it’s not your voice that matters. To this strawman who I just invented, I say: Paula Abdul knew a lot about singing. She wasn’t even a trained singer she was a dancer and choreographer who ascended to pop stardom at a time when dancing ability was almost as important as singing ability. Why, those jokes went, would someone hire Paula Abdul to judge a singing competition? Even when she was at the peak of her fame, nobody accused Abdul of being a vocal powerhouse.

When Paula Abdul became a judge on American Idol in 2002, a lot of people made a lot of jokes. In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.

Paula abdul straight up cover funk