The Itch Girl

More from Vitamin C

by Matt Ashare

The world of contemporary Top 40 pop -- a place ruled by the likes of Britney and 'N Sync -- would appear to exist in an entirely different galaxy from the alternative rock that briefly stole the spotlight in the early-to-mid '90s. Everything from its sonic and visual æsthetic to its rules of engagement to its value system seems to run counter to the loud and gritty guitars, the angst and alienation, and the ideas about artistic integrity that accompanied the rapid rise of Nirvana almost a decade ago. Yet much of what constituted alternative rock -- Bush, for one -- could be considered just as calculated as the shallowest Top 40 pop act. It simply required a different marketing strategy. And there may be no better reflection of that argument than the emergence in the past year and a half of a new Top 40 pop contender who goes by the name of Vitamin C.

On her homonymous 1999 debut, the woman behind the Vitamin C moniker -- an aspiring dancer/actress named Colleen Fitzpatrick who'd had a small part in the John Waters' film Hairspray -- zeroed in on mainstream-pop tastes with a collection of songs that unabashedly echoed some of the bigger hits of the day. There was the Caribbean-inflected techno-rock nugget "Smile," a Sugar Rayish single that eventually went gold. There was the organ-laced retro-grooving "Me, Myself, and I," which took a page right out of Smashmouth's already derivative songbook. There was an upbeat cover of the Split Enz hit "I Got You." Most important, there was the Britney-esque feel-good power ballad "Graduation (Friends Forever)," which pushed Vitamin C platinum (and become something of a prom favorite). Still, there was a knowing sense of sophistication to Vitamin C that distinguished it from the usual Top 40 fare and put it more in the league of a meatier artist like Madonna. And maybe that's not surprising. Fitzpatrick was no novice -- she'd already been through the industry wringer once, as the Deborah Harry-ish frontwoman of the alterna-rock footnote Eve's Plum (a sly reference to Eve Plumb, the teen actress who played Jan on The Brady Bunch), an outfit that released two marginally successful albums on Epic in '93 and '95.

Any notion that Vitamin C might have been a fluke has already been dispelled by "The Itch," the teasingly funked-up first single from the just released More (Elektra), which started charting back in November. And any sense that Fitzpatrick isn't wholeheartedly committed to her new role as a dance-pop diva is put to rest on More, a Teflon-slick follow-up that, enlisting the help of an A-list of song doctors (Billy Steinberg, Jim Harry, Billy Mann and Andy Marvel, and David Frank and Pam Shane), zeroes right back in on the lucrative teen-pop market with another prom-ready gem ("That Was Then, This Is Now"), another cutesy cover ("I Know What Boys Like"), and plenty of litely hip-hopped-up party muzak, including one playful track titled "Where's the Party." Fitzpatrick's role in Wes Craven's Dracula 2000 and the Tommy Hilfiger Vitamin CD shade of lipstick that's on the market now are just the icing on the teeny-popper cake. All the same, there's something more to Vitamin C than meets the eye and ear. So we tracked down the Itch Girl in Tennessee to see what we could find out.

Q: Well, I was going to ask what I should call you, but why don't you just tell me how you came by the name Vitamin C?
A: C is my first initial, and I was looking for a concept name. I didn't want to use my real name -- I wanted it to be sort of tongue in cheek. I was looking for something that was familiar and fun. And it seemed like a good idea at the time, you know -- it's good for you and it's funny. Whatever, it just made sense. What is interesting is how seriously some people take it. I mean, it's not meant to be serious at all -- I don't think I'm really named Vitamin C, and I'm not a health nut, and I'm surprised that so many people don't have a sense of humor about the name. Because I really did mean it with a wink and a smile.

Q: Given the name of your previous band -- Eve's Plum -- you'd think people would appreciate that you do have a sense of humor.
A: Yeah, but it's weird how many people think I'm nuts. It's like they think that I think I'm really Vitamin C. I also get a lot of people who think it's the worst name of all time. They just don't get the humor in picking a name that's something familiar and fun.

Q: Do you still perform live with a full band?
A: Well, it depends on the type of show. I actually do two kinds of shows. One is with a band that has a live guitar, live bass, and drums and a DJ, and the other is track dates, which is interesting for me because I dance. I put on a typical Top 40 pop show, I guess you'd call it, you know, a performance-based show. What I'd like to end up doing is to combine the two. That's kind of what the whole project is based on sonically, it's just that it's really cost-prohibitive to do that kind of thing live. You need to be able to bring a full band and dancers and all that kind of stuff with you on the road, and it's just not cost-effective unless you're doing a big tour.

Q: The latest press materials out of Elektra don't mention Eve's Plum. Do you think that's so far away from what you're doing now that it's just no longer important?
A: No, not at all. I mean, when the first Vitamin C album came out, the press materials all talked extensively about Eve's Plum, about Hairspray, and about all the other stuff I've done. I just think that so much has happened since even the last record came out that we needed to keep it brief. So it was more a matter of space than actually trying to forget about the past.

Q: Do you look back fondly on Eve's Plum?
A: Yeah, I'm really proud of what I did with Eve's Plum. And I don't think that, in fact, there's any downside to letting people know I was in that band. Because at worst people think that . . . well, I get a lot of that "Oh, you've sold out" kind of thing, which is fascinating to me because I write some of the songs with the same guy I've been writing with for 11 years, his name's Michael Koch. And what's so funny is that some of the songs off the first Vitamin C album could have been Eve's Plum songs. One of them I think may have been an Eve's Plum song. Or, for example, we could have covered the Split Enz song I covered on the first Vitamin C album -- "I Got You" -- very easily. "Not That Kind of Girl," which ended up being more of a dance track, was written with Michael. "Turn Me On" easily could have been an Eve's Plum song.

What I'm amazed about is that people confuse the marketing or the marketplace with the music. There are so many people -- like former Eve's Plum fans -- who have come up to me and asked, "Why are you doing Britney Spears music?" I mean, there are definitely two camps of Eve's Plum fans. There are the ones who absolutely love what I'm doing now, some of whom have kids and their kids are huge fans, and some of whom are fans on their own. And then there are the people who don't even want to listen to the music, because somehow in their minds they've decided that the music isn't what it used to be. Granted, it's not as heavy, there aren't heavy guitars, and I'm not playing guitar on every song. But what is interesting is that a lot of the sensibility of my old band is in there: I always say that Vitamin C is like the Eve's Plum girl grown up. And I do really mean that, because I think the songs are a lot more concise and they're a lot more about me.

Q: Well, I think people sometimes confuse loud guitars with integrity.
A: I completely agree with you because, in many ways, I think that the music I'm doing now is more challenging and sophisticated, and actually, if I was pushed into choosing, I'd say it's even far more credible than the music Eve's Plum did. In Eve's Plum we were flying by the seat of our pants. We knew a lot less about how to write songs and, well . . . we just did what we could do. And now I have an ability to work with different people and do more. And I think it's better, I really do. I always considered Eve's Plum a pop band, it's just that other people didn't. So what I'm doing now, as far as I'm concerned, is really just a natural extension of that pop sensibility. We wrote in normal time signatures using normal chord progressions, and maybe my songwriting wasn't as progressed or lyrically I wasn't as focused, but it was pop.

Q: On both Vitamin C records it does seem that you've been studying the pop-music landscape and having fun with trying on different styles of songs. Is that intentional?
A: Well, my concept for Vitamin C was to not have any rules. I like all different kinds of music to listen to as a music fan or whatever. And I always felt that it's easy to be stuck in a situation where you're limiting what you allow yourself to do. I think that's one of the reasons Eve's Plum broke up. With Vitamin C, I wanted to combine the different things that are happening in music today with my own influences, the ones I grew up with. I think I did that on the first record, and I've done that in a different way on the second record. It's kind of boring to repeat yourself, and I grew up as a fan of artists who tried new things and different things on different albums. So I felt like I was willing to take the chance on this record or maybe on a song like "The Itch" or "Sex Has Come Between Us" to do something that's a little more groove-based without trying to cop a whole attitude and making it sound exactly like the Rodney Jerkins stuff.

I mean, I'm in a position where I could actually go to a lot of songwriters and cop their whole thing, you know, do a song by them with their background singers and make it sound exactly like that kind of stuff. But that's not what Vitamin C is about. Vitamin C is about borrowing from a whole bunch of different elements and combining a sound that is a little bit different, that maybe plays with the stereotypes a little bit. What's interesting to me is to take something that you like about a certain style of music and combine it with an alternative sensibility or something else that's different.