Happy sweet 16 to the song and video that single-handedly tanked my major label debut!

Somebody at EMI Records / Caroline Music (or maybe it was John McCain’s daughter, who was on my team at the time lol) decided that Bottom Your Way To The Top was what the mainstream was ready for in 2009, so we led with that.

Reader: Bottom Your Way To The Top was not what the mainstream was ready for.

Anyway, I’m proud that I took this level of f-slur swing way back then, and that this video aired on MTV, VH1, Logo TV and a bunch of other spots. It was controversial at the time, had one hell of a journey getting past the TV censors, and def was a career killer — but we been dancing on her grave ever since! All’s well that ends well. ❤️

Happy 44th birthday to MTV!

I am so lucky to have been in artist development at the network right as Logo TV was launching. It meant that I got to host TV shows (plural) on cable! My music videos played around the clock on Viacom properties — Logo, obviously — but also on VH1, MTV proper, and Spike TV (RIP The Man Channel lol).

It was a completely bonkers time in my life and I will always be grateful to MTV executives like Perry Turcotte back then who championed me into a reality where my vision and my songs found their way into over 26 million homes each week. This lasted for years and it was hard to comprehend the scale or impact at the time but I get it now. It has been 20 years and I’m very clear that I am still here, largely because of that.

I’m an industry plant, baby!

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