Tiffany: How Nashville helped a teen star grow up
NASHVILLE — In 1981, a 10-year-old girl named Tiffany came to Nashville for the first time, with dreams of country music stardom.
When she returned a decade later, it looked like her career had possibly already come and gone.
Fame had indeed come her way, but not in the country world. She’d been a teenage pop sensation, topping the charts in 1987 with a cover of I Think We’re Alone Now. But her reign lasted all of two years. She released two albums that failed to gain commercial traction, and turned to Nashville to find her voice as a songwriter — and chart a new course in her career.
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Today, Middle Tennessee is where Tiffany Darwish centers herself and finds peace. For the last nine years, she and her husband have lived just outside of Nashville, in a rural area with 8 acres for her eight dogs (the math is pure coincidence). She’s at peace with the fact that millions will always know her as the 15-year-old who sang in shopping malls, but she remains driven to make new music and redefine herself.
"A lot of people don't even know that I can sing,” she tells The Tennessean. “That's been what I've really noticed as a touring artist for the last five years. So many people come up and say, 'I didn't know you could sing like that. I guess on the ballads, but to be honest with you, I thought maybe they were manufactured.'”
These days, there’s certainly no big pop machine behind her. We’re sitting in the control room of Steven Lieweke’s Yackland Studio — a cozy spot in East Nashville just next to Riverside Village — where she, Lieweke and a handful of musicians made her new album, A Million Miles. She’s supporting it with an intimate acoustic tour, which will kick off in Nashville with a concert Aug. 24.
For more than 20 years, she’s been the one holding the reins to her career, and in many ways, that all stems back to her post-stardom years in Nashville in the 1990s. It was a trial-by-fire experience when she first started writing with Music City’s pros.
“People put me in great sessions with people that I probably had no business being in sessions with, because I wasn't ready yet,” she recalls. “There were a lot of days where I was driving home crying, just going, 'I know I blew it! That was terrible!' But through all of that frustration, there were some days that were amazing, and I really rose to the occasion, and I really felt like I was growing ... sometimes you have to let the pride go, and say, 'OK, well, they'll either think I'm a total idiot, or that I'm completely committed to my music.'”
Not long after returning to Los Angeles, her self-penned songs made for her best-reviewed album to date, 2000’s The Color of Silence.
The new millennium also brought another new dimension to Tiffany’s career: reality TV. Over the years, she’s been a part of cooking competitions, fitness challenges, ghost stories, even wrestling.
Her love of Wife Swap led to her signing up for the show, to the surprise of her husband, Ben.
“I pretty much said yes and sealed the deal way before I even let him know about it,” she recalls with a laugh. “But, I mean, I knew he would like it eventually.”
Still, it’s important for her to take breaks from cameras and the stage, and that’s where Middle Tennessee has come in.
“Now I'm 44 and touring a lot, so sometimes I'll come home, and if I have four days off, I turn off my phone, and I just hang out with my friends,” she says. “I think that keeps me from being burnt out. With this lifestyle, there's people all the time, all day long, and I never want to be somebody that's like, 'Ugh, somebody else wants my autograph?' I looked at it, and I thought to myself, 'Well, that's really up to me to take that time to rejuvenate a little bit.' So that when I go out and do what I do, I'm in the moment, and I'm excited about it.”
Follow Dave Paulson on Twitter: @ItsDavePaulson