When the Pussycat Dolls made a splash with “Don’t Cha” in 2005, the group seemed destined for success.
The band has everything a pop wonder needs – a sexy and talented vocalist, equally talented female colleagues and a memorable sound. Critics predict a bright future for the girl group, but it’s a prediction that doesn’t pan out.
The main reason is that The Pussycat Dolls are an artificially created group whose members have changed several times over the years.
The band started exactly 10 years before the release of “Don’t Cha”. The founder is choreographer Robin Antin, who wants to create a troupe of elite burlesque dancers. Antin has no intention of the girls singing, only performing her choreographies on stage around Los Angeles and New York.
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Choreographer Robin Antin
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Among the first members of the group for a short time was the actress Christina Applegate, who we remember as Kelly Bundy from “Married with Children”. Antin’s idea turns out to be genius and immediately works because the girls are invited to parties like those at the legendary Viper Room. It is little known that it was the Pussycat Dolls that inspired the movie “Burlexa” with Cher and Christina Aguilera.
From 1995 to 2001, the dancers performed on the stages of some of America’s most popular cabarets and clubs on both the East and West coasts. Stars such as Charise Theron, Pink, Gwen Stefani, Britney Spears and many others appear as guest dancers.
For a time, the group was led by Carmen Electra as lead dancer. Attention to the Pussycat Dolls is also growing, especially after they appeared briefly in Charlie’s Angels: Gas to the Hole.
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The “Original” Pussycat Dolls
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It was then that big production names like Ron Fair and Jimmy Iovine started looking to Antin for collaboration. Along with that, they also wonder how to make the girl band even more interesting.
The producers start with a serious purge, from which only four girls remain. Elektra herself leaves bitterly and declares that she cannot sacrifice herself and her ideas about the Pussycat Dolls for the sake of even greater fame.
Melanie Thornton, Kaia Jones and, of course, Nicole Scherzinger are coming to replace the evicted dancers.
The three women are chosen to be talented in dancing, but also to sing well. The not-so-surprising success of “Don’t Cha” and the album “PCD” followed, but not everything turned out to be roses for the band.As Cosmopolitan points out, the group underwent several more line-up changes.
Although no one has given an official reason, many suspect that the reason lies in Scherzinger’s character and her ever-increasing pretensions. Kaya Jones – one of the well-singing “kittens” turns out to be among the evicted.
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Kaya Jones
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Upset by what was happening, in 2015 Kaya gave a lengthy interview to The Telegraph, in which it says that Pussycat Dolls were used for prostitution.
She says that each of the girls was sexually harassed and each of them was forced to sleep with the men the producers told her they were with. “People ask me how bad it was. It was bad enough to give up my dreams and a $13 million contract,” Jones added.
Kaya tells the publication that one of the former members of the group committed suicide due to stress. “I want this motherfucker from Hell to tell the truth. I want him to tell how he broke us mentally,” she says, referring to choreographer Robin Antin.
Jones also admitted to trying to drug the girls and stated that her diary detailed everything with specific dates and events.
Antin’s response is not long in coming and she emphasizes that Kaya is disappointed, jealous of the band’s success and looking for her 15 minutes of fame that she didn’t get with the Pussycat Dolls. The chorographer calls it “disgusting” to remember something as terrible as suicide.
The grandiose scandal has been quelled, but the problem with Scherzinger and her huge ego remains.
Photo: Getty Images
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Antin is adamant that Melanie Thornton sings better and has a nicer voice, but over time and with a lot of insistence, Nicole usurps the role of lead vocalist. In VH1’s Behind the Music documentary, Scherzinger admits that she sometimes wouldn’t let her co-stars hear the songs until they were fully recorded.
The argument she makes is that she didn’t want to make the others feel guilty that she does the largest percentage of work in the gang.
Robin Antin also described Scherzinger as a performer who always wants the spotlight for herself and has a hard time with competition. In an interview with The Independent, she explained that Nicole often described the Pussycat Dolls as her own project and hinted that without her the group would not have become famous.
“The roles of me and the others were minimized, we were told to follow a certain script. We were often not allowed in the studio, in the clips we had to stand at the back and not see each other much,” adds Melanie Thornton.
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All these upheavals lead to the logical disintegration of Pussycat Dolls in 2010 when Nicole Scherzinger is happy to announce that she is embarking on a solo career.
Her enthusiasm doesn’t last long, because without the gang chicks behind her, Scherzinger doesn’t look nearly as impressive. Both of the singer’s solo albums were deliberately not released in the US because her producers understood that they would remain at the bottom of the charts.
Music critic Adam White of The Telegraph described Nicole’s career as “proof of how perfect ingredients can yield a wildly imperfect result”.
The Independent writes that “Scherzinger will never be Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, or Rihanna.”
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