Thaiphoon Tata
KEEPING ABREAST of Janet Jackson's transformation from musical footnote into a one-woman tsunami of scandal after the Super Bowl required little effort. Nothing makes the wheels of publicity go round faster than a bit of sex, after all. Just ask her brother Michael, who these days must be all too aware of what happens when those same wheels fall off.
Surviving your own celebrity demands Teflon-like tendencies, if the rotten vegetables of misfortune and misconduct are to be easily brushed off. And few have had to learn their lessons as quickly as Thailand's pop princess Amita 'Tata' Young, whose every move, from her dress sense to her love life, has been pilloried in the country's media.
In the past four months alone, the young Thai-American pop star has been seen as: an affront to traditional Thai values; a harpy who has undermined national tennis hero Paradorn Srichaphan by publicising their brief romance; and a scarlet hussy who represents a clear and present danger to the decency of young Thai women. She's been the subject of scorn on numerous talk shows and radio phone-ins, and the Culture Ministry has also attempted to ban Young's latest single, the hardly ambiguous Sexy Naughty Bitchy, in its ongoing crusade to free an entire generation from corruption. First, the nightclub curfews, and now this.
The result is a media frenzy of a type never before witnessed in Thailand. Young now finds herself at the centre of a slew of editorials regarding women's rights and the hypocrisy of government, elevating her to a player in the debate about the position of Thai women in society. She sold 50,000 copies of her debut English-language album, I Believe, on its first day of release last Wednesday, and her fans seem happy to soak up the brouhaha. It took Britney Spears three months to achieve the same feat with In the Zone, and industry insiders predict that I Believe will have gone double platinum (100,000 copies and counting) by the end of March. Even Janet Jackson couldn't hope for that sort of exposure.
I met the Veruca Salt of Thai pop a day before the MTV Asia awards in Singapore last month, where she was presenting an award. Despite being only 23, Young is already a nine-year veteran of the Thai music industry, notching 12 million sales of her Thai language albums Amita Tata Young and the snazzily titled follow-up, TATA 1,000,000 Copies Celebration. Her big break came at the age of 11, when she beat 5,300 other youngsters in the nationwide Thailand Junior Singing Contest with a version of Catch Me I'm Falling. She was also selected by the Chinese government to represent Thailand at the Hong Kong handover concert in 1997, while her film debut in The Red Bike Story broke the all-time attendance record for any movie in the history of Thailand, not to mention bagging her the vote for best female at the 1997 Blockbuster Entertainment Awards.
Seven years on, and Sexy Naughty Bitchy's video introduces a soaking wet, writhing Tata Young, all come-ons and Britney-esque bump'n'grind. It's a solid slab of western pop. And with a title like that, Young's camp of writers and producers would certainly seem to be playing on Thailand's perception of her as a flirt. Not to mention mine. Young arrives for the interview wearing a belt of a skirt and a midriff-baring top - she's a whirlwind of loud banter, jokes and handshakes. Is she campaigning for female sexual liberation? Or simply trying to sell a few records?