Penn: Morning Album Reviews — Paula Abdul (Finale Part two, day six) (Patreon)

1/15 Paula Abdul’s 1988 Forever Your Girl

I do not remember a time before this record. To be fair, I was three when it came out, so it was well positioned to have the impact it did on me. It was one of the tapes I eventually stole from my mother’s collection—in fact it may be responsible for my negotiating the practice of stealing tapes in the first place; when your kid wants to hyper-focus on a record you’ve grown tired of it’s probably best if they do it in their room. But everything about this record is twisted straight into my DNA.

People love to ask when a queer person knew. (You know where this is going, but walk with me anyway.) That’s complicated by transness, where everyone’s asking the wrong questions in the first place. It’s complicated further if you’re a fae weirdo who isn’t entirely clear which set of rules you’re supposed to be learning. My house wasn’t as sex negative as you might guess given any of my other childhood anecdotes—it’s one of the few things I think my parents actually handled well. I have plenty of Baptist sexual repression trauma, but it wasn’t because my parents hid the idea of being attracted to your partner from me like many of my friends’ parents did; the trauma just kinda comes free with your first dunk.

But I’d be kissing someone someday, for sure. That was a clear expectation in life, and equally clearly it was a good thing. Only… I was a fae weirdo trans kid, and both of my apparent options felt like the Wrong Answer. And even if my home growing up wasn’t sex negative, it was dangerously homophobic. So, when I say that Paula Abdul was my first crush I need you to understand the whole scope of how weird that was for me.

But this was just such a perfect record, and Paula Abdul was… maybe the safe gender to want to kiss? I wasn’t quite sure; it was clearly forbidden (Jesus was not gonna like this one, you know?) but didn’t feel particularly gay either. If one wanted, it’d be trivial to make the argument that Paula Abdul and a book on pregnancy in my late 20s turned me trans. I have exactly zero objectivity or chill about Paula Abdul’s Forever Your Girl. Nothing even close. 

So here’s why this record is perfect.

We can start literally with the iconic, stark cover design. Abdul looks so confident, wearing her button down shirt off one shoulder—a look I would emulate all through my teen years. There’s something just a little punk about the design of that emblem with the album’s title wrapped around it. It really sets the character for the record well.

Abdul was always going to look great, though—she’s as much a visual artist as a musician. Before she was making records she was a choreographer—mostly music videos, but she also did that stupid oversized keyboard scene in “Big.” I especially want to highlight the videos she did for Janet Jackson’s 1986 Control, where you can see Paula Abdul’s specific fingerprints so clearly. Look at “Nasty,” with it’s tap dance intro, and punk West Side Story vibes. Or “When I Think of You,” if you want those West Side Story vibes in neon.

You can see those same things in her own video for “Opposites Attract,” where she dances with cartoon bad boy, MC Scat Kat. It’s a genuine treasure, and takes itself the exact right amount seriously. The cat’s dance moves were rotoscoped, which gives the animation a slightly uncanny smoothness, but it also lets it showcase her style cleanly. Or if you want another tap routine, “Straight Up”  opens with one, and is a moody 80’s fever dream in black and white. Abdul has a certain ethos of going hard, especially at this point in her career.

In the music, too. From the very first track, “The Way That You Love Me,” Abdul is bringing excess.  The synth and bass arrangement already has all the energy her smirk on the cover promised, before the guitar comes in at the midpoint for a quick solo. Guitars will continue to haunt the record, popping in when something needs a boost, but it’s a funky synths record at its core, and Paula Abdul is in her element.

Perfect for: pure distilled 1988