Alaina Marie Beaton was born on 1 October 1985 in Detroit, Michigan, and is known professionally as Porcelain Black. She had a troubled childhood, being expelled from two different schools, and feeling like an outcast as she didn't fit in with her classmates. At the age of sixteen, as soon as she was legally able to, she dropped out of school, and while on a road trip in New York she was approached by her first manager, who told her to move to Los Angeles. Three months later she did so, found her manager, and was signed to Virgin Records two weeks later. Recording under the pseudonym Porcelain And The Tramps, she worked with Tommy Henriksen and John Lowery in London, but she and the label could not agree on the music she made. Virgin wanted her to record pop music in the vein of Avril Lavigne, but she wanted to mix industrial rock sounds with dance pop, so she began posting the songs she recorded on Myspace, gaining upwards of 10 million views in a matter of months. This led to her being approached by Courtney Love on MySpace to provide backing vocals for a solo album she was working on, while a song she co-wrote with Billy Steinberg and Josh Alexander around the time Black left Virgin, 'How Do You Love Someone?', was recorded by Ashley Tisdale for her second album, 'Guilty Pleasure'.
Through a mutual A&R friend, producer RedOne heard about Black and was interested in meeting her, and after that meeting in his studio in November 2009, they wrote her debut single 'This Is What Rock n' Roll Looks Like' the next day. RedOne helped her break away from her contract with Virgin Records and signed her to his Universal Republic imprint, 2101 Records. A name change to Porcelain Black followed, as it was causing confusion to people who thought Porcelain And The Tramps was a band. After appearing in a few music videos, she gained a cameo role in the 2012 film 'Rock Of Ages', playing the lead singer of a 1980's glam metal band. In 2011 she announced that the working title of her debut album was to be 'Mannequin Factory', and RedOne was said to have produced and co-written all but one of the tracks with her. A second single was released from the album, and 'Naughty Naughty' peaked at number 6 on the chart, but when 2102 Records became an imprint of Capitol Records when Universal Republic went under, this delayed the release of any new material by the industrial singer. During the summer of 2013, Black performed a private gig in West Hollywood, featuring all-new material, and several months later 2101 Records released five songs in five weeks, with her long-anticipated debut album expecting to be released after this five-week promotional period, with two brand new singles preceding it.
After 'Mama Forgive Me' was released, she then confirmed that the album had no confirmed title, revealing she had considered the names 'Black Rainbow' and 'Mannequin Factory', but that those titles might not work as she had recorded more songs. After many internal conflicts between Black and her long-time collaborator, RedOne, she announced in 2015 that plans to release her long-anticipated album were cancelled, and that she wanted to record a new record in the vein of her previous project, Porcelain And The Tramps. This could be expected to appear in late 2017, and music from this new project would feature the same attitude as her previous work, with slower, mid-tempo songs and rapping. In February 2020 she posted on Twitter that she was almost done with her first album, which just needed mixing and mastering, and she tweeted every song title, ending with the claim that the untitled project was expected to be released in 2020. However, despite releasing three self-produced demos of new songs directly on her YouTube channel in December 2020, there is still no sign of Black's debut long-player, and so in its place here is a reconstruction of the abandoned 'Mannequin Factory', which could have appear way back in 2015.
Track listing
01 One Woman Army
02 This Is What Rock 'n' Roll Looks Like (feat. Lil' Wayne)
03 La Dee Da Dee (Naughty Naughty)
04 Mannequin Factory
05 Swallow My Bullet
06 Mama Forgive Me
07 Pretty Little Psycho
08 Rich Boi
09 How Do You Love Someone?
10 Too Much Of Not Enough
11 Stealing Candy From A Baby
12 Kisses Lose Their Charm
13 King Of The World
14 Fuck Like A Star
15 I'm Your Favourite Drug
16 Gasoline
17 Curiosity
18 Teeny Bopper Crack Whore
