Thoughts

About Face: Everyday Holidays Album Cover

Naughty & Nice

I have never been comfortable in pictures. Nothing causes me more anxiety than to do a video chat with a friend or photoshoots in which I’m in front of the camera. It is a necessary evil about the business I am in – yet despite having had cameras follow my life around for over a year – I am not any more comfortable in front of them. In fact, beyond my iPhone and laptops, I don’t even own a camera.

My Lola (grandmother) once said that the camera steals your soul. Considering that I almost died when I was a baby, she attributed it to the fact that my family took so many pictures of me when I was a baby. So me and cameras never mixed well in my life.

When I released “Naughty & Nice” I was really surprised by the amazing feedback on the album design. My duplication company asked if they could use my album cover in their catalogues, whenever I would be in a meeting execs would remark “how important it is to have a great CD cover, some artists don’t understand it.”

I have been a producer for years, so I understand the importance of images and storytelling. The album cover image of “Naughty & Nice” is reflective of how I felt at that moment in time. I had a lot of great holiday music, that I hoped you could dance to – and I wanted to give it to everyone. If given a chance, I would not have done ANYTHING differently.

One of the biggest criticisms I received from record executives was that I was nowhere to be found on my album cover. That despite how many thousands of people bought the record, no one would know what I looked like.

But I liked it that way!!!

They say to do something that scares you, so this year – tomorrow in fact – I’m aiming to shoot an album cover that shows my face.

This is a big deal for me, because most pictures of me – I’m hiding behind glasses, or looking to the side. The reason why I am uncomfortable is a vestige of a congenital birth defect and vision problems I’ve lived with my whole life. Defects that have affected the way people saw me from when I was a little girl. God has given me other things for people to look at, which is a wonderful blessing itself. Seriously, anything to take away looking at my face. In fact, I’ve made glasses my thing! Which I love! I love glasses! I liken myself to an asian Lisa Loeb but I digress.

The past few days have been an exhausting endeavor speaking with makeup artists about my issues with makeup. How I’d prefer to wear glasses through everything. Hide my face, hide everything! In fact, can we just photoshop my face on some other picture? I’ve literally said this in the past week – mostly serious, but veiled in a joking manner. Laughter ended this conversation.

I’m not saying I’m J.D. Salinger – but I consider myself guarded in terms of images. Despite all the things I’ve done to demonstrate the contrary. If you Google me, you’ll see only the same handful of images – versus other artists who have DOZENS if not HUNDREDS of images. In fact, I don’t ever partake in #TBT because quite frankly, I have few images to throw back to.

On a related tangent – producing a photoshoot by the way – No problemo. Can do it in my sleep with my arms tied. I’m so good at producing. Being the subject of a photoshoot? That’s a whole other thing.

Tomorrow I’m going to have to get over this. It has been interesting to confront this, I’m learning different things about myself everyday. That itself is a gift. Do something everyday that frightens you. #everydayholidays