Tiffany Darwish
Tiffany Renee Darwish[1] (born October 2, 1971),[2] known mononymously as Tiffany, is an American pop singer. Her 1987 cover of the Tommy James and the Shondells song "I Think We're Alone Now" spent two weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and was released as the second single from her debut studio album Tiffany.
Tiffany Darwish
Tiffany
- Singer
- songwriter
- actress
- 1981–1995
- 1999–present
-
Bulmaro Garcia(m. 1992; div. 2003)
-
Ben George(m. 2004; div. 2018)
1
- MCA
- Azil
- Eureka
- Backroom
- Water Music
- 10 Spot
- Only the Girl
Her singles "Could've Been" and "I Saw Him Standing There", a cover version of the Beatles' "I Saw Her Standing There", followed soon after, with the former also claiming the No. 1 position on the Billboard Hot 100. Thanks to an original mall tour, "The Beautiful You: Celebrating The Good Life Shopping Mall Tour '87", Tiffany found commercial success;[3] and both her singles and the album peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard 200 charts, respectively.
Tiffany's second studio album, Hold an Old Friend's Hand, featured a Top 10 single, charted on the Billboard 200 in 1988, and ultimately achieved platinum status, although it did not replicate the success of her debut album. The 1990s saw two additional releases from Tiffany, 1990's New Inside and the Asia-exclusive Dreams Never Die in 1993, both of which failed to rekindle significant interest. Tiffany returned in 2000 with her first studio album in six years, The Color of Silence. Although the album received some minor critical success, it also failed to achieve any significant standing. Since then, Tiffany has recorded five additional studio albums, as well as two albums of 1980s cover songs, and she continues to tour.
Outside of music, Tiffany posed nude in Playboy and has guest-starred on several reality television shows, including Celebrity Fit Club, Australia's version of I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! and Hulk Hogan's Celebrity Championship Wrestling, and has acted in a handful of horror and science fiction films, including Necrosis (2009), Mega Piranha (2010), and Mega Python vs. Gatoroid (2011).
Early life[edit]
Tiffany Renee Darwish was born on October 2, 1971, in the Los Angeles suburb of Norwalk, California,[a] to Janie Wilson and James Robert Darwish, who divorced when she was 14 months old.[5] Tiffany's father is of Lebanese origin and her mother is of Irish and Native American descent.[6]
Tiffany began singing at age four when she learned the words to the Tanya Tucker song "Delta Dawn".[7] After her parents' divorce, she lived with her father and attended Norwalk High School during her freshman and sophomore years and then attended Norwalk's Leffingwell Christian High School.[8]
Music career[edit]
1980s[edit]
In 1981, Tiffany debuted with country music singer Jack Reeves at a country and western venue, Narods, in Chino, California. She passed a hat among the crowd afterwards, and collected $235 in what were her first career earnings.
When Tiffany was singing at the Palomino Club, she was discovered by Hoyt Axton and his mother Mae Axton. Mae took her to sing in Nashville, Tennessee, where she performed on WSMV's The Ralph Emery Show, singing Juice Newton's "Queen of Hearts" and Tammy Wynette's "Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad".
In 1984, Tiffany signed a recording contract with George Tobin after he heard her sing on a demo tape. In 1985, she appeared on Star Search with Ed McMahon, where she finished in second place overall. In 1986, she signed a contract that gave Tobin total control over her career, recorded her debut studio album and was signed to an MCA contract. The album, Tiffany, was released in 1987, but the first single she released from it, "Danny", failed to chart. Following the failure of "Danny", Tobin sent Tiffany on a nationwide tour of shopping malls, The Beautiful You: Celebrating the Good Life Shopping Mall Tour '87. The tour began at the Bergen Mall in Paramus, New Jersey.[9] Her second single, a cover of Tommy James and the Shondells' hit, "I Think We're Alone Now", became a number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 list.[10] It remains her biggest hit.
Tiffany's ballad "Could've Been" also peaked at the No. 1 spot on the Billboard charts, in February 1988. Tiffany's modified version of the Beatles' "I Saw Her Standing There", retitled "I Saw Him Standing There", peaked at the No. 7 position on the Hot 100.[10] "Feelings of Forever" also had chart success.[11] Tiffany set a record for the youngest female artist to top the Billboard charts with a debut album.[12] Later that year, she toured, with boy band New Kids on the Block as her opening act.
In 1988, at the peak of her popularity, Tiffany was embroiled in a conflict in which Tobin fought her mother and stepfather over control of her career and earnings. This led to a court fight in which Tiffany tried to have herself declared an emancipated minor. This was rejected by the court, but the judge did allow her to move out of her mother's home, and her grandmother (who sided with Tiffany during the trial) became her temporary guardian.[13][14][15][16]
In late 1988, Tiffany released her second studio album, Hold an Old Friend's Hand, which was less successful than her debut. Although it did not include any number-one hits, the song "All This Time" made the top 10.[17] The album received positive reviews from critics, and immediately went platinum.
Shortly after turning eighteen, Tiffany left Tobin's management and signed with Dick Scott and Kim Glover, who managed New Kids on the Block, by then a successful boy band.
Film and television career[edit]
Tiffany's first acting job was providing the voice of Judy Jetson on Jetsons: The Movie, which was released in 1990. She also contributed three songs to the soundtrack, including the single "I Always Thought I'd See You Again" and the main song "You and Me".[44] Some controversy resulted from the fact that Janet Waldo, who had voiced the character in all previous Jetsons material, had all of her recorded dialogue in the movie replaced[45][46] because studio executives thought Tiffany would attract a younger audience.[47] The film however was a box-office bomb.
In April 2008, Tiffany starred in a national commercial campaign for AT&T titled "Paradise by the GoPhone Light" for AT&T's GoPhone, which featured Meat Loaf. The ad, which parodies his "Paradise by the Dashboard Light", was released in two versions, an extended music video version and a short commercial edit.
Also in April 2008, Tiffany made a cameo appearance on the sitcom How I Met Your Mother in the episode "Sandcastles in the Sand". She played herself as a backing vocalist in the 1980s-inspired music video by a fictional teen Canadian pop star who was inspired by real-life singers like Tiffany making a career out of performing in malls.
Tiffany starred in the 2008 short film The Isolationist, which was screened at several film festivals. Her character, Barbara Newman, is a sexually-aggressive woman unwilling to let a co-worker enjoy some alone time. In 2009, she completed work on her first feature film, Necrosis, which was released internationally as Blood Snow. Necrosis is an independent psychological thriller in which she starred alongside James Kyson and George Stults. In the film, she plays Karen, a fun-loving adrenaline junkie who took matters into her own hands after a blizzard had trapped her friends and her in a cabin, and paranoia got the best of them. Necrosis premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. Tiffany's musical contemporary, Debbie Gibson, had her film Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus premiere at Cannes, as well.[48] Tiffany also starred in a film from The Asylum, the mockbuster Mega Piranha,[49] directed by Eric Forsberg, which also starred Barry Williams.[50]
Tiffany and Gibson starred together in a Syfy original movie Mega Python vs. Gatoroid, which aired January 29, 2011. The movie featured a protracted catfight between Tiffany and Gibson.[51]
The 2008 documentary I Think We're Alone Now is about two fans of Tiffany who both claim to be in love with Tiffany and have been labeled "stalkers" by the media. While Tiffany did not voluntarily participate in the production, she does appear in the film.[52][53]
In 2011, Tiffany filmed an episode of the Biography Channel TV series Celebrity Close Calls.[54] On the episode first broadcast July 7, 2013, of the reality TV series Celebrity Wife Swap, she traded places with actress/singer Nia Peeples.[55]
Tiffany was the subject in 2013 of the Season 10 premiere episode of What Not To Wear on TLC. Later that year she starred in a Miracle Whip commercial alongside other celebrities, including Wynonna Judd, Lance Bass, Susan Boyle, and the Village People.
In 2024, Tiffany appeared as Eiffel Tower on the fifth series of the UK edition of The Masked Singer. She finished fourth, narrowly missing out on a place in the finals.
Personal life[edit]
Tiffany married makeup artist Bulmaro Garcia in 1992.[56] Their only son, Elijah, was born in September 1992.[57] They divorced in 2003.[58]
She married British businessman Ben George in 2004.[59] During the writing process of 2018's Pieces of Me, the couple mutually agreed to separate and have since divorced.[60]