Bonnie McKee - Love Spell (2008)

Bonnie Leigh McKee was born in Vacaville, California, and raised in Seattle, Washington, studying classical piano and becoming a member of the Seattle Girls Choir Prime Voci at age 12. She recorded two albums with the choir, titled 'Jackson Berkey Meets The Seattle Girls' Choir' and 'Cantate', and with that as a background, McKee's mother gave a demo CD featuring her singing her songs, plus covers of Bette Midler and Fiona Apple, to a friend of hers Jonathan Poneman, who was the co-founder of the Sub Pop label. He was intrigued by her songwriting talents, and according to McKee, this was the moment when she realized she had to be "more than just a singer," but a songwriter, as well. By the age of 15, McKee was writing songs and performing in the Seattle area, and one of her demos reached Colin Filkow, an ex-Priority Records label executive, who recognized that she was a rare talent and signed her to his management company, Platinum Partners Artist Management. Although she was only 17 at the time, he flew her to Los Angeles and welcomed her into his family, inspiring her to sing and write songs and to trust her instincts. Filkow took her demos to dozens of labels, publishers, agents, and entertainment lawyers, and after more than a year, he managed to get her signed to Warner Bros. Records in one of the most lucrative signings ever for a new artist. Her debut album 'Trouble' was recorded across a period of two years by producers Bob Power and Rob Cavallo, and was commercially released in September 2004, but Reprise was unsure on how to sell her, so the label settled on a partnership with internet radio website LAUNCHcast, which would promote the lead single 'Somebody'. This soon became one of the most played tracks on the website, and its popularity with young females led to a strategy where McKee would be a subversive alternative to the teen pop demographic. 

The album received positive reviews in Blender, Nylon, The Los Angeles Times, and Teen People, but was commercially unsuccessful, and she was devastated when the album didn't happen, saying later "I realized there are so many steps from getting a deal to having a hit...and I didn't get there. It was a huge let-down." Despite this she started work on a second studio album, but her life started on a downward-spiral, and she began to abuse crystal meth, an addiction with which she struggled for several years. She was dropped from the label after defacing the CEO's car with lipstick during the middle of the night, and her cancelled second album became the stuff of legend. Following her release from Reprise Records, McKee managed to get a job at Pulse Recordings' publishing arm, Check Your Pulse, through her boyfriend and longtime collaborator, Oliver "Oligee" Goldstein, and while living in poverty, without hot water, a cell phone, or a car, she spent many hours in the recording studio, learning how to use Pro Tools and crafting new songs alongside Elliott Yamin and Leighton Meester. In 2009, she was introduced to music producer Dr. Luke by her manager Josh Abraham, and as Dr. Luke had collaborated with McKee's longtime friend Katy Perry on her second album 'One Of The Boys', he was able to put her name forward when Perry expressed interest in having a co-writer. Together, along with Max Martin and Benny Blanco, they began writing songs, ultimately producing the hits that would appear on Perry's third album 'Teenage Dream', including the three singles from the album, 'California Gurls', 'Teenage Dream', and 'Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)', the last of which was inspired by McKee and Perry's misadventures in their teenaged years. 

Each of the singles topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and they earned McKee several BMI Pop Awards in 2011 and 2012 for her role as a songwriter. She also co-wrote two more chart-toppers for Perry, 'Part Of Me' and 'Roar', and four other songs that hit number one on either the Hot 100 or the UK Singles Chart, being Britney Spears' 'Hold It Against Me', Taio Cruz's 'Dynamite', Rita Ora's 'How We Do (Party)' and Cheryl's 'I Don't Care'. On June 22, 2017, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced that 'Roar' had received an RIAA Diamond certification award for 10 million copies sold. With her new career as a songwriter now firmly established, she didn't feel the need to release her own music, but her fans felt differently, and the forums have been filled with chat for years about the albums that they would love to hear from her. A possible 2014 album for Epic Records is top of the list, but her abandoned second album is often mentioned, and with her backlog of hundreds of unreleased songs she could easily release half a dozen albums full of the sort of songs that were hits for other artists. I've managed to get hold of a huge number of these unreleased recordings, and so am able to piece together some of these sought-after records, and I'm starting with that shelved second album from 2008, now titled 'Love Spell'. 

Track listing

01 Love Spell
02 Thunder Of My Heartbeat
03 Deja Vu
04 Make It Through Another Day
05 Head On
06 Friends
07 Mine
08 Worst In Me
09 Stars In Your Heart
10 To Find You
11 Infatuation
12 Teenage Heart