[Shy Boy]

I love your avi Chunk

[Chunk]

Originally posted by Shy Boy

I love your avi Chunk

ain't no other made it for me. He always makes the best avatars.

[Chunk]

It was summer 2007 and alone in a dingy boxroom in a rundown hotel in Queens, New York, the Liverpudlian, who had been desperate to become a singer since she was at primary school, had just had her dreams shattered.

She and her family had clubbed together to raise £2,000 to get her to an audition for P. Diddy's Starmaker TV talent show in the Big Apple.

She thought she had been invited personally, picked by a producer to perform in front of the rap superstar. But she'd got it so wrong. She didn't even get to meet Diddy.

Instead it was just another failed audition, another broken dream and, at that moment, she felt she had lost everything.

She says: "That was a bad time. Oh my, that was such a hard time for me.

"I'd been conned. Diddy wasn't even there and I'd wasted all my family's money and all my hard-earned savings just to follow a dream that was getting me nowhere.

"So I cried and just broke down in total disbelief and thought about what I was doing. I asked myself, 'Is this dream to be famous making you happy?'

Revered

"It made me rethink wanting to be a singer.

"Up to that point I'd thought being a pop star would make me happy. And every day of my life I'd been driven to do it. It was all my focus was on.

"But that day in New York brought me back down to Earth and I said to myself, 'You can't live your life looking for happiness. You've got to enjoy now.'

"It really made me think about life, my two beautiful kids and my wonderful family and realise just what was important. It just wasn't making me happy."

Showing off her dazzling smile, the stunning 25-year-old says keeping that memory fresh in her mind is what drives her today.

And it is the reason she's about to release her debut album Heaven and become the most revered artist to ever graduate from The X Factor.

Home from her crushing trip to New York, Rebecca took her two children Lillie, now seven, and Karl, five, to the beach.

"It was the best day of my life, ever," she says.

"We spent £10 on butties and a load of little bits from Sainsbury's. It made me re-evaluate life. I thought, 'Pull it together, Becky.' If it happens then great, but it's not important if it doesn't.

"I enrolled in college to study counselling and started to study law as well. I couldn't handle the constant rejection (she also auditioned for The X Factor in 2005 and 2006 and Britain's Got Talent in 2009) so, with music on the back burner, I was dabbling with the odd studio session when X Factor came along.

"I wasn't obsessed by it and decided to enter again for a bit of a laugh. And I truly believe that this change of attitude is what got me through."

Sat in her PR's office, looking glamorous in a cream dress, Rebecca is surrounded by photos and artwork of Yoko Ono, Coldplay and Noel Gallagher, credible artists who Rebecca wants to be as highly regarded as one day.

She says: "I'm not going to knock X Factor. It was fantastic but I definitely believe in fate and believe the decisions I've made have lead me to be here today.

"It was when I'd actually made a conscious decision to study that I applied for X Factor. And when I got invited to the audition I was due to go to Aintree races. I called my mate and said, 'You only live once. I might not get through but either way we'll go out afterwards.'

"Before that X Factor audition I used to over-rehearse. I'd be looking in the mirror, giving it my all.

"But this time I was completely chilled. And with that attitude, I got through. Even when I lost out to Matt Cardle, I knew things were going to be OK and that it meant I'd be home for Christmas."

Starting work on her record in January, Rebecca had a set idea of how to do things.

She says: "I've been feeling really emotional about this record. Happy that I made it how I wanted to."

Heaven is an album of such calibre that any X Factor cynic is in for a big surprise. Her emotive, powerful vocals really stand out.

This is an original and heartfelt album inspired by her own life.

Heartache

Her voice captures the sentiment of the heartache she's felt during her difficult childhood, in and out of foster homes because her mum was ill, and broken relationships first with Karl Dures, who she had her children with when she was just 17 and 19, and more recently with One Direction's Zayn Malik, six years her junior.

She explains: "I was offered songs that were already written, but I said, 'No. It's not feeling right for me. I'm going to start from scratch.'

"Don't get me wrong, the songs were good but if I'm going to bring an album out it's got to come from me."

Instead Rebecca — who has relocated from Liverpool to Surrey to be closer to London for work — teamed up with some of the best songwriters in the business. Eg White (Adele, Duffy, James Morrison), Xenomania's Brian Higgins (Girls Aloud, Kylie Minogue) Jonny Latimer (Ellie Goulding) and Fraser T Smith (Florence And The Machine, Britney Spears) all got on board for Heaven.

With a gospel-style soul voice, it's no surprise her vocals are being compared to her heroines Nina Simone, Whitney Houston and Aretha Franklin.

But Tracy Chapman is her No1 influence. She says: "She is my ultimate inspiration. My mum always had Tracy on. I'd love to work with her one day."

On her debut single Nothing's Real But Love, which is out now,she sings about the fickle side of fame and how love is the only thing that matters.

Rebecca says: "When I was obsessed with making it, I thought about what made me happy.

"It wasn't a big house, a car or money. It was my family and my kids. If you haven't got love, you've got nothing."

Glitter & Gold carries the same sentiment. A stomping Sixties soul number which, according to Rebecca, "is about people who are really ambitious and get what they want but then forget what's real."

She adds: "It's something I'm very aware of but won't happen to me. My family are too grounded and I will go home to visit. I always need my dose of Liverpool to keep me grounded.

"The other day I came off a video shoot, got on the train and my mum phoned to say, 'Bring me a loaf and milk'.

"All day I'd been pampered and had people running around after me and within five minutes I was back to being just Becky."

The beautiful ballad Shoulder To Shoulder is the album's real diamond on which Rebecca sings like a superstar. It should be as big as Adele's Someone Like You.

Spotlight

Rebecca says: "It's just about a destructive relationship where you just love each other but you're just absolutely no good for each other."

Even when she split from Karl, they remained friends.

She says: "It's horrible when couples split up and use their kids as weapons. We're very civil. My kids adore their dad. They absolutely love him.

"At first he didn't take to me being in the spotlight, but now he's relaxed about it."

Rebecca says she has been blown away by the reaction to the album and is so proud of how things have worked out.

And the upbeat track Mr Bright Eyes shows it's not just on ballads that Rebecca shines. She says: "That song is about meeting someone you really like or having a crush on someone.

"All those lovely feelings that you get when you meet someone.

"It's not about any of my relationships as it was the last track of the album. I was single and wrote that a week before the album got mastered."

Now Rebecca says the future is all about making sure she makes the most of her music while putting her love life on hold.

She says: "I'm wary of meeting someone new now as I fall too hard or I meet the wrong person. I've met people who aren't genuine.

"I had one person telling everyone we were going out together and we'd only been on one date.

"Now I just want to give all my time to my kids as there's been lots of changes in my life and I don't want anything to affect them.

"I'm looking ahead and would love things to work in America too. When I go on the road the kids will come with me when they can.

"I've come too far to spoil this now. It has been a huge lesson for me.

"I was looking for something to make me happy and once I realised what I actually had then I found success."

Rebecca's album Heaven is out on December 5.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...-the-road.html

[Chunk]

Hmmm... Rebecca Ferguson's comments on the ins and outs of her kids' music listening habits have got us a little confused.

Yesterday it was reported that the yummy mummy "wouldn't let" her daughter watch Rihanna perform, because she wants to teach five-year-old Lily that "[men] should love you for you as a person, not for how you dress — and you don't have to be a sexual thing to a man."

But in an exclusive chat with Entertainmentwise, the X Factor runner up admitted that Lily and her 7-year-old brother Carl are big fans of Katy Perry and Kanye West.

As in Katy Perry the inuendo queen and Kanye West the F-word fanatic?

She said: "Lily [loves] Katy Perry. REALLY loves Katy Perry. Carl is Kanye West."

She has less luck getting her son to listen to her own music. She added: "He's not a bit interested in my music though. It's like 'Carl, come and listen!', he's like 'Mmmmmmyeaaaah, rather not Mum.'"

We can only assume she was referring to the raunchy dance routines and 'S&M'-loving lyrics when she was discussing Rihanna. If not, she might want to listen to Katy and Kanye more closely before little Lily starts shouting the words to 'Peacock'...

http://www.entertainmentwise.com/new...rry-Kanye-West

Rebecca Ferguson has revealed that songs on her new album are about staying grounded.

The singer will release her first LP Heaven in the UK on December 5 and has admitted that the recurring theme throughout is love.

Ferguson told The Sun of new track 'Glitter & Gold': "It's about people who are really ambitious and get what they want but then forget what's real.

"It's something I'm very aware of but won't happen to me. My family are too grounded and I will go home to visit. I always need my dose of Liverpool to keep me grounded."

She continued: "The other day I came off a video shoot, got on the train and my mum phoned to say, 'Bring me a loaf and milk'.

"All day I'd been pampered and had people running around after me and within five minutes I was back to being just Becky."

Of new cut 'Shoulder To Shoulder', Ferguson explained: "It's just about a destructive relationship where you just love each other but you're just absolutely no good for each other."

The 25-year-old has co-written the entire collection with a host of successful songwriters including Eg White, Brian Higgins and Fraser T Smith.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/music/ne...-grounded.html

[Chunk]

Meet The X Factor runner-up who's second to none

There is nothing remotely second best about Rebecca Ferguson. In fact, the 25-year-old singer from Liverpool who was runner-up in last year’s X Factor has already proved, ahead of the release of her debut album Heaven next month, that she’s the real winner. Music industry insiders are saying that she has the voice and the potential to be the ‘most successful X Factor contestant ever’ and the fight to secure her music publishing rights is said to have sparked a £1 million bidding war (Matt Cardle, voted into first place ahead of her, is rumoured to have signed a publishing deal for just £300,000).

Rebecca – known to her friends as Becca or just Beccs – would never say it (she says Matt is a ‘lovely, lovely fellow’), but in truth she was always the one to watch and the only contestant who had a voice that the judges defined as ‘world class’. Gentle, softly spoken and modest, she doesn’t for a second regret that she wasn’t the outright winner of the show…she is just grateful that she is realising her lifelong ambition to be a professional singer after a surprisingly difficult struggle to get her beautiful voice heard.

‘I believe things are meant to be. It’s the only way I can explain it because I had auditioned before to get on The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent and I didn’t get through – it was literally,
“No!” I was also invited to audition for P Diddy’s Starmaker show in New York in 2007 – spending money I didn’t really have – and I was rejected there, too, and that made me finally rethink my life,’ she reminisces. ‘I remember sitting on a bench in New York and sobbing and realising that my ambition to be a singer was making me selfish – I was a mother with two children and I needed a backup plan.’

So, although Rebecca didn’t entirely give up on her first ambition, she went to college to study to become a legal secretary and discovered that she had an aptitude and a passion for human rights law, eventually gaining distinctions in all her exams.

‘Discovering that there was another option in life gave me a whole different attitude and when I auditioned for last year’s X Factor I thought if it’s meant to be, fine, and if not I will go off and become a solicitor. And with that attitude I got a yes!’ she says, smiling at the memory.

Although things have never been exactly easy for Rebecca, she has no complaints and is loath to turn her life history into a sob story (despite – she is now embarrassed to recall – having cried in her pre-audition X Factor interview). Raised by her mother Anne Jameson, now 53, after her father Dan left, Rebecca has two brothers, Daniel, 26, and Sam, 22, as well as a half-brother, Adam, 31, and two 12-year-old half-sisters, Imani, from her mother, and Natalie, from her father. There was, she says, never enough money but always more than enough love, and she is full of admiration for the way in which her gentle mother, who suffers from depression and is classed as disabled, brought the family up.


‘What I hated then – and hate now – is the way that people say to girls like me who get pregnant young that it ruins your life. Having a child doesn’t ruin your life…having a child is a blessing’

‘My mum is a lovely woman, so strong but so kind and compassionate. She brought us up to be proud, loving and forgiving,’ she says.

Confident and outgoing, Rebecca determined from an early age that she would become a singer, and at 15 she became a full-time student at Liverpool’s Starlite School of Performing Arts. But two years later she suffered the first setback to her ambition when she became pregnant.

‘What I hated then – and hate now – is the way that people say to girls like me who get pregnant young that it ruins your life. Having a child doesn’t ruin your life – having a child is a blessing. It was hard, and I recognise that I was lucky to live in a country where we have good tools in place to help girls who have babies at the age I did. But there is a stigma and the trouble is that when people say to you, “Oh, your life is over now,” you do start to believe them.’
There is no doubt that The X Factor has transformed Rebecca's life

She and her boyfriend Karl moved in together to raise Lillie May, now seven, and although Karl was (and remains) supportive, Rebecca suffered from postnatal depression.

‘We were so young. We were two 18-year-olds playing house with a baby. Karl and I laugh about those days now. It was hard, but we were really nice parents,’ she says with a grin that brightens up her often serious but always lovely face.

Karl and Rebecca split up shortly after the birth of their second child, Karl Junior, now five, but he and his family are very much involved in the children’s upbringing. Rebecca’s success on The X Factor and her working schedule – she has been writing and recording the material, mainly soul and love songs, for her album for ten hours a day since March – has made it necessary for her to relocate to a rented house in Surrey, where the children live during the week, returning each weekend to Liverpool to see their father.

There is no doubt that The X Factor has transformed Rebecca’s life. She has been watching this year’s show – picking out Craig as a current favourite because she feels he ‘connects most with the songs’ – with a touch of nostalgia for her own experience. Being with the same group of people from auditions through to the end of the post-show tour in March this year has given them a long-term bond. They are all her friends, she says, but those she mentions most are Aiden, Paije, Katie and Cher (Wagner, she says, made her laugh the most and Mary was everyone’s confidante).

‘After the show was over and we went on the tour we became like brothers and sisters because the element of competition was taken away. I will never forget the day when we did the final show of the tour – it was so sad because we all knew it was the end, that we had to go back to our normal lives,’ she says a little ruefully.

During the tour, Rebecca became involved with 18-year-old One Direction member Zayn Malik, breaking up in July because, it was claimed, of their mutual need to focus on their musical careers. Today she is reluctant to comment except to say that she ‘wishes Zayn well’ and to protest at the way in which she was labelled as a cougar (‘I was only 24’).

Now totally focused on her children, ‘who always did and always will come first’, and her music, she admits that she has had a few ‘offers’ of dates from several ‘famous-ish’ names (she won’t say who).

‘I have just said no because it would be a distraction and when I fall, I fall hard and I recognise that. I think to myself, well maybe in January after the album has been launched it could be yes, and if he really likes me, he’ll still be around.’

There is a dream – some way in the future – that she will meet a man and marry and eventually have more children because ‘I would like to do it the other way round and I love children’. She is, I suggest, a great role model for young mothers.

‘I know every mum says this, but I can’t imagine life without my children, they are amazing. And if anything, having my children didn’t ruin my life – it gave me the reason to work harder. I can honestly say that I wouldn’t be where I am now if I didn’t have children – they ground you and humble you,’ she says with an embarrassed smile.
Rebecca has a classic old-school style that perfectly matches her haunting, soulful voice

A natural beauty, Rebecca has a classic old-school style that perfectly matches her haunting, soulful and slightly retro voice. She loves clothes and looks great – today she is wearing J Brand jeans matched with a top and a hat she bought in Debenhams – but is resistant to changing her body shape to fit with the worrying celebrity size-zero trend.

‘I was looking at a celebrity magazine the other day and everyone was so super-tiny and I thought, “Oh, I am going to have to lose weight”, and then I stopped and thought, “No, I don’t, I eat a balanced diet and I am a woman who has had two children – I’m normal.” Being very skinny is not normal,’ she says.

Careful with money, but not in the slightest bit materialistic, Rebecca says she has ‘lived poor’ and still been happy, and although she has enjoyed splashing out on a few things (the YSL boots she is wearing today, for example, and the novelty beds she has bought for her children) it wouldn’t bother her if she had to ‘live poor’ again.

‘I think my voice is a gift – I was born with it, I didn’t have to earn it and I think when you are given that gift and you achieve success because of it you’ve got to give back. If I do have the success that people are predicting then I would like to use any influence or power I might have to do something to help people. I really admire Angelina Jolie – she is a prime example of using her influence
to make a positive change for other people,’ she says.

For now, though, Rebecca is relishing her glamorous new life, meeting and working with people who, just a year ago, were her idols. Naturally nervous about how her album will be received, and reluctant to believe the ecstatic early industry reviews, she is determined that fame and success
will not change her.

‘But I do worry that when I am in London going to these glamorous events and meeting all these people, I might find myself living in a bubble where all you are thinking about is yourself. My manager said to me today, “Are you going back to Liverpool this weekend?” and I said, “I need to because going home keeps me grounded.”

‘There is nothing better than just going home and sitting there with my best friend, ordering a takeaway and watching The X Factor with a mug of wine – rather than a glass,’ she says. ‘You know, just being normal; not being Rebecca Ferguson, just being Beccs.’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/...cond-none.html

[Chunk]

My favorite



Looks like the album cover shoot to me. Maybe a reject?



We already know that one



She looks so playful and lovely here

[Crazytowel]

Stunning pictures!

[Shy Boy]

Originally posted by Chunk

My favorite

This would have made for a gorgeous album cover.

[Jessa.]

I can't wait for this album, I really like her.

[Chunk]

Rebecca Ferguson in talks for US album release:

Given the number of X Factor alumni hogging the charts this Christmas, we almost forgot that Rebecca Ferguson was due an album release this year.

That is, of course, until she emerged from the studio this month with a blinder of a debut single, 'Nothing's Real But Love', which garnered a well-deserved Top 10 placing last Sunday after a show-stopping performance on The X Factor.

With her debut record Heaven out next week, we met up with the lady herself to find out what she's been up to during her year in hiding.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/music/in...m-release.html

[Chunk]

I will be there.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/rebecca-ferguson-live

The Liverpudlian lass is in the market for a lead role in a dark, gritty flick after getting a taste for acting in her TV ad for Walkers' Sunbites snacks.

Following her spellbinding Biz Session, the 2010 X Factor runner-up revealed: "I always thought I'd like to act. Let's see who offers me a role.

"I'd like something quite dark and interesting, something really emotional that you can get into.

"I wouldn't like nothing too light. If I was gonna do it, I'd like to get proper stuck into a challenge."

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...role-star.html

Can't wait for that. It's gonna be amazing.

[MelyB]

Thank you for posting all of these great articles. I happened upon Rebecca's X-Factor performances on Youtube and became an instant fan. It is a real shame that she's not getting promoted here in the US but I have already pre-ordered her album and can't wait to hear it.

[Chunk]

BBC Review:

An impressive debut album with the focus firmly on Ferguson's great voice.

Nick Levine 2011-12-01

She came second to Matt Cardle on last year's X Factor, but unlike her hat-clad vanquisher, Rebecca Ferguson has yet to criticise her alma mater or claim "there's a lot of conspiracy" to the events of 9/11. The 25-year-old Liverpudlian has conducted herself in a fashion unexpected from a talent show star – with dignity.

That quality is writ large on this impressive debut album. Featuring production from the likes of Eg White (Adele), Wayne Hector (Westlife) and Fraser T Smith (James Morrison), Heaven is a collection of classy adult pop songs dressed in vintage soul clothing. Comparisons to Amy Winehouse and Duffy are inevitable, and not unwarranted, but the most obvious reference point might be the underrated output of Gabrielle – think back to her 1996 hit Give Me a Little More Time.

Yes, it's as cutting edge as buttering bread, but Ferguson wields the knife with conviction. She sells everything from the piano balladry of Teach Me How to Be Loved to Fairytale's slinky Philadelphia soul to funkier, Motown-leaning moments like Mr Bright Eyes. She even nails the string-draped melodrama of Fighting Suspicions, which almost suggests what a Dusty Springfield Bond theme might have sounded like.

Shrewdly, those experienced production hands keep the arrangements lush but unobtrusive; even when her songs are embellished with strings, horns and Dusty in Memphis-style backing vocals, the focus remains firmly on Ferguson's voice. It's a terrific instrument – as rich, strong and flavourful as posh coffee, and entirely free of melisma.

In fact, Ferguson's singing is impressive enough to disguise the odd tired line about butterflies and wild horses or wine and roses. But though she may be a romantic, she's no sap. Witness this insight into a scrappy relationship on Shoulder to Shoulder: "I get a kick when you worry / That you're just no good for me."

Most of these songs concern some kind of romantic entanglement, but it's an exception that supplies the most prescient moment. "[It] won't buy you happy when you've been bought and sold," she warns on Glitter & Gold, a parable for "people who are very ambitious". It's wise advice that, like this album as a whole, suggests Ferguson is far more Will than Gareth.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/q2wx

Independent Review:

By the law of averages, talent-show
telly has to throw up at least one genuinely serviceable talent every ten years
or so, and Rebecca Ferguson is surely that one. Although typically, she didn't
win the contest, despite the support of high-profile fans such as Adele - who
admitted she voted for Ferguson about 80 times.

It's not hard to understand why: there's a hard central core of reality, of real lived experience, running through these ten songs that's almost diametrically opposed to the usual soul-diva cliches promoted by shows like The X Factor. And Ferguson herself likewise avoids the showboating vocal frippery by which some contestants aim to brandish their technique. Instead, she trusts her heart to take her vocal where it needs to go, whether it's the tremulous gospel-soul flavour, reminiscent of Tracy Chapman, with which in "Nothing's Real But Love" she assures us that "nobody, no house, no car, can beat love"; or the ingenue charm, akin to the young Carla Thomas, with which she demands of "Mr Bright Eyes", "...where you been all my life?"

The actual subject matter of her songs sticks to the familiar R&B itinerary of love found, love lost and love unrequited, of betrayal and friendship, break-up and make-up. But Ferguson manages to bring a fresh eye to them, simply by being unflinchingly honest. In "Glitter & Gold", which has something of the rolling momentum of Adele's "Rolling In The Deep", she ponders the comparative values of success and friendship, the fragile balance between drive and downtime, and the fellowship required to work through hardship: "Those friends who were such a chore, well you're gonna need them like never before". And behind the teenage emotional turmoil of "Teach Me How To Be Loved" lies the hard-won experience of a woman who twice found herself a single parent before she was in her twenties.

As is customary in modern R&B, Ferguson's successes are built on a solid foundation of soul touchstones, from the sinuous bass strut that drives "Run Free" in the footsteps of "Billie Jean", to the symphonic funk melodrama of "Fighting Suspicions", so strongly redolent of Curtis Mayfield's great '70s social-protest soul works. But the best track is "Shoulder To Shoulder", a dissection of co-dependent disharmony in which the rippling piano, strings, and vocal come in relentless waves, as if the linkage of affection and arguments were somehow inevitable, a necessary chain-mail armour against the pressures of the outside world.

"We cling to each other, shoulder to shoulder, against the world," she sings, "So I wanna drag you down as you drag me down, and I'm gonna shout at you as you shout at me, until we realise that real love is free". It's a gut-wrenching admission which ultimately leads to a resolution to escape the downward spiral of mutual animosity - a suitably mature conclusion for a song, and an album, that restores to R&B some of the adult concerns that powered the genre through its '70s golden era.

Download this: Shoulder To Shoulder; Nothing's Real But Love; Glitter & Gold; Mr Bright Eyes; Fighting Suspicions

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...a-6270389.html

[Chunk]

Originally posted by MelyB

Thank you for posting all of these great articles. I happened upon Rebecca's X-Factor performances on Youtube and became an instant fan. It is a real shame that she's not getting promoted here in the US but I have already pre-ordered her album and can't wait to hear it.

It is my duty as her biggest and probably only stan.

Interesting interview with InDemand + Acoustic Performances of Nothing's Real But Love & Shoulder To Shouler:

http://www.clyde1.com/on-air/indemand-rebeccaferguson/

[KevinKDC]

She looks a lot like Mariah !!

[Michael]

Originally posted by Chunk

It is my duty as her biggest and probably only stan.

You bitch.

[PopBoi]

But how can you stan for someone who doesn't even have an album yet?

[Michael]

Originally posted by PopBoi

But how can you stan for someone who doesn't even have an album yet?

Tell that to the Rebecca Black "stans".

[Chunk]

Originally posted by Michael

You bitch.

Hehe, just joking. You, Crazytowel, Superbitch, Shy Boy and PopBoi I want y'all to post more often in here. I'm running this thread by myself at the moment tbh.

[Chunk]

Originally posted by PopBoi

But how can you stan for someone who doesn't even have an album yet?

We've heard tons of performances, the snippets, demos and her X Factor performances to hold us over. I'm stanning for ha since A Change Is Gonna Come to be correctly.