dtobias's Full Review: New Inside by Tiffany (Pop)
With Tiffany getting set to make a new comeback this year (a release is upcoming within a few months from Modern Records), I thought I'd review the fairly obscure album from one of her earlier comeback attempts after her original teen-pop-star popularity faded in the late '80s.
Soon after her 18th birthday in October, 1989, she broke with her manager/producer George Tobin and signed with Dick Scott as manager and Maurice Starr as record producer. Starr was best-known at the time for producing New Kids On The Block (NKOTB), then a very hot teen pop act (but much criticized by just about all demographic segments other than teenage girls). NKOTB had actually previously been Tiffany's opening act when they weren't as famous; then in the following summer tour their status flip-flopped and Tiffany became NKOTB's opener.
In the summer of 1990, as Tiffany was working on a new album in a new style with Starr, the last few songs she did for Tobin in her older style came out, on the Jetsons: The Movie soundtrack -- she did three songs on that, and that soundtrack CD is yet another obscure Tiffany item fans try to track down when they want a complete collection.
The new album, New Inside, was released on Tiffany's 19th birthday, October 2, 1990. Unfortunately for her, it got little notice even though Billboard magazine reviewed it favorably. Most record stores, if they carried it at all, buried it deeply in their racks from the day it came out instead of giving it "New Release" prominence. It never even made the Billboard 200 album chart, and no singles from it made the Hot 100 (though a few radio stations did play them). It's long out of print, so you'll have to hunt used-record dealers or Ebay to find it.
The new album had more of an "R&B / dance" style, and Tiffany actually co-wrote a couple of the songs (unlike her other albums where she didn't do any songwriting). Here are the tracks:
1) New Inside: Title track and first single. Well, it sure was different from her earlier (and later) songs. Even her biggest fans can't quite decide whether "different" in this case is good or bad. It has a heavy dance beat, and features a "rap" by "Dennis Cheese," actually Donnie Wahlberg of NKOTB. Definitely not the '80s light pop style of her earlier releases.
2) It's You: Co-written by Tiffany. Continues the "edgier" style, though without quite as heavy a beat as the first track.
3) Tenderly: (actually listed as track 4 on the CD booklet, with "A Moment to Rest" as #3, but the latter isn't really a separate track but just a brief interlude that's actually at the start of the third track.) A softer ballad-style song, but still done with an edgier style than earlier Tiffany.
4) Never Run My Motor Down: Features lots of special-effects trickery, like when she says the words "Moving Target" and the mixers made her voice seem to move back and forth at that point. It's either silly and cheesy, or innovative, depending on your point of view.
5) Here In My Heart: A pleasant ballad written by successful songwriter Diane Warren that's uncharacteristic for this album; there's no dance beat or vocal edginess here. For those who don't like the general stylistic direction of this album but like her earlier and later works, this is usually their favorite song on this CD. On the CD booklet this is dedicated to Ryan White, a child who had recently died of AIDS. However, the promoters of the album later re-dedicated it to Gulf War troops when the single was released. I think the media saw this as opportunism rather than sincere well-wishing, and it never caught on among the various songs that were used for "troop morale."
6) Tiff's Back: A rather silly song supposedly heralding her comeback (though she'd really only been gone less than two years since her most recent pop success).
7) Our Love: Rather similar to "It's You" in style.
8) Life Affair: Yet another similar track; a few of these tend to all sound alike.
9) Back In The Groove: Another song co-written by Tiffany; this one has kind of a '60s Motown "doo-wop" flavor. Along with "Here In My Heart," this is one of the songs often liked by people who hate the rest of the album.
10) There Could Never: A rather lengthy but not particularly memorable track to conclude the album.
OK... she was trying to be different, and achieved that, but didn't really get anywhere with it. In the long run, the most listenable songs here were the ones ("Here In My Heart", "Back In The Groove") which least followed the "new style," which turned out to be a very dated attempt to imitate the sorts of dance-R&B-pop that were current in 1990. Of the "new-style" (now pretty old) tracks, probably the best is the title track "New Inside", which takes some getting used to but does have good, strong vocals.
After the failure of this album, Tiffany vanished from sight for a few years, during which she married and had a son (Elijah). Her next comeback attempt in 1993 began with Las Vegas lounge performances and continued with a new album Dreams Never Die produced by George Tobin, to whom she returned, and in a style closer to her earlier albums than to New Inside. This was only released in Asia; the planned U.S. release and tour never happened. After this, she had an even longer absence before moving to Nashville and trying to make a comeback as a country singer (a style she actually had a past with, as she had performed country songs as a child before becoming famous as a pop star). This never yielded a record contract, so she went back to southern California where she is working on her new pop album now, with a Modern Records contract.
A piece of record-industry trivia: New Inside was one of the last CD releases to come in a "longbox", the wastefully large packaging that used to be used for various reasons that the industry claimed were essential, including marketing exposure, theft prevention, and fitting in old racks made for LPs; for years, in response to criticism that this packaging was a waste, people were proposing, inventing, and even patenting all sorts of cumbersome "alternative" packaging to replace it, ignoring anyone who pointed out that in all countries other than the U.S. they just simply sold CDs shrink-wrapped in their jewel box and had no problem with that. I don't know what happened to change the industry's minds, but practically overnight near the end of 1990 the U.S. switched to plain shrinkwrapped jewel boxes, and it worked just as well here as elsewhere.
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