“I’m standin’ all alone, and I just want you to touch me…”
Heidi Montag, Outsider Pop Provocateur, is back with something new. Well, old.
14 years after the release of her self-funded, budget-breaking $2 million pop opus Superficial, the 37-year-old The Hills alum is astonishingly enjoying a steady stream of well over a million listeners monthly on Spotify alone, largely thanks to the runaway success of sped-up album track “I’ll Do It” on TikTok. (Thank you, Ayesha Erotica!)
And now, with the help of husband Spencer Pratt, she’s dusting off discards from the vault and uploading them onto streaming platforms, beginning with last year’s “Bad Boy.”
Now we’ve got “Touch Me,” out Friday (January 26), a song that first leaked all the way back at the end of 2007 – and a No. 1 iTunes Library hit on my personal laptop in college.
“Touch Me” was among the very first songs recorded for Heidi’s debut album, produced by David Foster – otherwise known as Yolanda Hadid‘s ex-husband and Katharine McPhee‘s current husband – and co-written with the prolific Kara DioGuardi of Breakaway, Blackout and Dignity fame, among many other culturally crucial contributions.
“After getting over the nervousness, I was just so excited to record. That was really a moment in time for me,” she told Life & Style of the first sessions.
The lusty track shows early signs of what would become the sound of Superficial, and sounds like a demo for Britney Spears, whom she bluntly said she was trying to emulate at the time, much to the public’s disgruntlement. (Most of the comments on various early YouTube rips of the track from over a decade ago are just disparaging comparisons.)
That said, the song wasn’t even supposed to come out at all.
“It’s a leak,” a source (who was probably Spencer) told a blogger-that-shall-not-be-named at the time. “It is one of a few songs [Heidi Montag] did while working with David Foster at Warner Bros. However, it is not on her album that is being produced completely by Theron “NEFF-U” Feemster, who produced the Mary J. Blige single for the new iPod commercial.”
Superficial went on to infamously flop, reportedly selling only 1,000 copies in its first week. But in later years, the album has been rightfully reappraised as a genuinely great pop record from a reality TV star-turned-pop hopeful (she bought Cathy Dennis and Stacy Barthe co-writes, hello!) not unlike Paris Hilton‘s own foray into music, and has since inspired artists like Ayesha Erotica and Slayyyter pulling sonically and aesthetically from that era.
Heidi’s since teased the idea of returning to music for some time now, thanks to the runaway social media success of Superficial in these past few years, including clocking in for studio time with Slayyyter herself, which sadly resulted in some sort of stalled song clearance issue.
But now, it appears that the vault project and subsequent media attention has inspired proper album sessions – and Superficial 2 is now officially a thing.
“13 year later the journey begins again with the making of Superficial 2 !” Spencer captioned a photo of Heidi in the studio as of this week.
“I definitely never thought @heidimontag would make another album. Now that Heidi is viral superstar in China and has the most incredible passionate supporters with over 1 million listeners on @spotify in the US ! It’s time to make some new fresh pop bangers !! So thankful for all the incredible writers, producers, artists, mixers, engineers, and photographers helping make dreams come true again !”
Heidi herself shared photos and videos from the sessions as well alongside former Girlpool singer Harmony Tividad, Grammy-nominated Doja Cat mixer/engineer Kayla Reagan, and songwriter-producer Wyatt Bernard.
“I am so excited to be back in the studio✨ thank you to all my amazing fans for making Superficial such an international viral hit! So excited for the next chapter of music. Epic day with @harmonytividad @kaylareagan_ @morgan.maher @wyattbernard and of course the love of my life @spencerpratt ✨ making magic happen!” she wrote.
What’s to come of all this? Will an album actually materialize? Will it be massive? Who knows, but it’s safe to say you can’t guarantee anything these days.
If you time-traveled to my dorm room in 2010 and told me that “I’ll Do It” would be a smash hit on TikTok amongst the youth a decade later, I’d say: “Tik Tok? You mean the Ke$ha song?” and also “Who are you?” Life is just so incredibly strange and unpredictable.
And if you’ve never heard it before, go ahead and listen to my conversation with Heidi and Spencer about Superficial when Legends Only co-host T. Kyle and I were invited onto their podcast to discuss the album in 2020. A wild ride, for sure.
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Photo credit: @morgan.maher / Instagram
