Dolls riding high as pussycat's meow
By Richard Harrington
Washington Post
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The subtext of the Pussycat Dolls' mega-single "Don't Cha" is clearly "don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like them."
Which makes sense for a group whose founding idea was how hot its six members were.
In the much-exposed video for "Don't Cha," the multiculti crew vamps in barely there miniskirts and bare midriffs, shaking their collective booties and strutting their assets with delicious abandon.
Which makes sense when you realize the Pussycat Dolls started as a neo-burlesque troupe.
Now, of course, they do sing, though that responsibility falls mostly to Nicole Scherzinger, a 27-year-old Hawaiian-Russian-Filipino beauty who lived in Ho-nolulu as a child. She soulfully handles lead vocals and has become the group's breakout star. She's the one who sings, "Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me/ Don't cha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me/ Don't cha wish your girlfriend was raw like me/ Don't cha wish your girlfriend was fun like me," in the hit song and its present incarnation, in heavy rotation as the soundtrack for a Heineken Light commercial on TV.
Scherzinger saw the original Pussycat Dolls four years ago on David Letterman's late-night show, where they mostly gyrated while Carmen Electra sang "Big Spender" from the musical "Sweet Charity." (The troupe was then best known for its bump-and-grind revival and celebrity guests.)
"I remember thinking, 'What is this? Who are these girls?' " Scherzinger says. "It caught my eye because I'd played Velma Kelly in 'Chicago' in college. I thought it was something different: These girls are hot, it's a little raw, it's theatrical.
"And I thought, 'I can do that.' ... But I had no idea that I'd audition and that one day I'd be fronting the group."
The Pussycat Dolls date from 1993 when choreographer Robin Antin and her housemate, actress Christina Applegate, invited girlfriends who had danced in music videos and on concert tours to their garage-converted-to-a-dance-studio. They experimented with Antin's notion of classic Las Vegas-style burlesque given a contemporary spin. The Dolls' revue debuted in 1995, and for six years, they were the Thursday-night opening act at Johnny Depp's Los Angeles club, the Viper Room. Depp reportedly said, "This is why I opened a club" as he put the strip back on Sunset Strip.
The Dolls' risque rep began to get bigger in 2000, when Gwen Stefani asked to sit in — dancing and singing — on "Big Spender." The troupe moved to the larger Roxy, and soon the list of celebrity Dolls included Electra, Christina Aguilera, Brittany Murphy, Charlize Theron, Nikka Costa, Pamela Anderson, Paris Hilton and Scarlett Johansson.
When Stefani brought her Interscope bosses Jimmy Iovine and Ron Fair to see the show, Antin realized it might be time to expand the concept and find singers.
Meet the Pussycat Dolls:
Finally, there's Scherzinger, whose mother was a hula dancer and grandmother a singer in Polynesian shows in Honolulu. (The family moved to Louisville, Ky., when she was 6.) Scher-zinger majored in theater and minored in dance at Wright State University and was a backing vocalist for the rock band Days of the New. She had a first whiff of stardom five years ago with Eden's Crush, a female quintet put together on the WB reality series "Popstars." Eden's Crush disbanded after a year, and as she was pursuing a solo career, Scherzinger heard the Pussycat Dolls were looking for a real singer to front the group.
"I knew, by the people who were involved, the machine behind it, that this was going to be something," says Scherzinger, who also did all the backing vocals on the album. "Where we are today, it's kind of unbelievable to think about, that in a year we'd have two No. 1 hits, been No. 1 in 11 countries. But that's why I signed on to the project, because I felt it was going to be big; I just didn't know how big."
Or exactly what the Pussycat Dolls — motto: sassy and classy — would sound like. Executive-produced by Fair (Aguilera, Kelly Clarkson, Avril Lavigne), with contributions from such producers as Cee-Lo Green, Timbaland and will. I. am. of The Black Eyed Peas, their debut album was two years in the making.
"To be honest, at the beginning we didn't know what we were looking for, or what our sound was going to be," Scherzinger says. "What hit it off is when we found 'Don't Cha' and realized we had a spark, an essence, something different, something raw that represented the Pussycat Dolls. And we just took off from there."
Written and produced by Cee-Lo Green of Goodie Mob and featuring a reprise of the hook from Sir Mix-a-Lot's 1988 hit "Swass" and an introductory rap from Busta Rhymes, the album climbed to the top of Billboard's Hot 100 last summer, not long after its hot-hot-hot video started airing. "Don't Cha" has both fans and haters, the latter put off by its predatory man-eater verses, even though the chorus is "Fight the feeling/ Leave it alone/ 'Cause if it ain't love/ It just ain't enough to leave a happy home."
"It gets both crowds," Scherzinger says. "People loved the beat of the song, and it's a lot of fun and flirtatious. When they got to see the video, they saw these are real girls having fun, not taking themselves too seriously. It actually turned out to be a huge summer female anthem."
She adds that "occasionally we get the skeptical people, but we go, 'Give us a chance.' We came out with (sentimental love song) 'Stickwitu' as our second single, and that was a really strong move for us, as opposed to coming out with 'Beep' for our second single." Produced by will. I. am., "Beep" makes hilarious use of the pretend censors' "beep," and, like "Stickwitu," it hit No. 1.
A year ago, Antin and company opened a Pussycat Dolls Lounge at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, inaugurated by Eva Longoria of "Desperate Housewives," and more are planned. They had a makeup line with Stila, and are in talks with cosmetic companies MAC and Estee Lauder. Also ready to launch are a line of Pussycat Dolls dolls (aimed at 6- to 9-year-olds), perfume and a fashion line. There's talk of a reality television show.
There are rumors Scherzinger may not be long for the group. But, she insists, "we're a pretty tight family, the Pussycat Dolls, and we don't usually talk about solo careers. All of us have our dreams and aspirations that eventually we want to go off and do, but we'll always be able to come back to our home base of the Pussycat Dolls. It's kind of taken off so much right now we're staying focused on that."
