Even she admits it. "singers are a dime a dozen," says Toni Braxton. "And record companies have a dollar." So what makes vocalist Braxton, just 28 years old, so special? Why is her new album, Secrets, only her second, fighting it out for the top slot on the Billboard charts with such heavyweights as thrash-metal veterans Metallica?
Her looks are often what people focus on. It's hard not to. Her eyes are sloped, inviting, penetrating. At 5 ft. 2 in., she's small but also lithe, with a tiny waist and a size-2 build. And in person she also turns out to be one of those energetic sorts who seem much taller. "I'm a happy person by nature. I'm spunky," she says. "And don't let me eat presweetened cereal, or it's over." But she also confides: "I'm kind of private, but not aloof. I just like being by myself; I don't open up a lot of times to people."
Except in her music. Her first album, Toni Braxton, produced by R.-and-B. hitmakers Antonio ("L.A.") Reid and Kenny ("Babyface") Edmonds, swam against the tide. While other R.-and-B. singers were getting louder, brasher, naughtier, Braxton's songs were slower, heavier, laden with emotion. And they had an attitude. Her first hit, Love Shoulda Brought You Home, admonished a man who had been staying out too late; the song Best Friend (which Braxton co-wrote) is a barbed note to a boyfriend who had an affair with his lover's best friend.
Listeners were drawn to these songs because they were about things they had gone through; Braxton sang them because they were about things she had gone through. Says Braxton: "Most of the things that I write or sing about are based on true stories in my life." For example, when she was in college (she attended several schools, including Bowie State College in Bowie, Maryland, but never finished), her then best friend took up with her then boyfriend. Says Braxton, laughing: "After I released the song Best Friend, I heard through acquaintances that this ex-boyfriend wanted publishing rights."
Her new CD, on which she works once again with producer-writers L.A. and Babyface, is somewhat more kinetic than her first. On such songs as Come on Over Here, the rhythms are forceful, dynamic, danceable; these are the kinds of songs you can expect to hear booming out of car windows for the rest of the summer. The best tracks, however, are the midtempo songs, such as Let It Flow (which was also on the Waiting to Exhale sound track) and Why Should I Care. These numbers are poignant, melodic and lovely at points, but Braxton's lush contralto gives them substance and meaning. "The things I sing about, women can identify with," she says. "Although they're sad love songs, I always sound determined. I always try to portray it like everything's going to be O.K.; I'm still strong."
Braxton herself is an intriguing mix of strength and vulnerability, of pop-star outgoingness and old-school reserve. The oldest of six kids, Braxton grew up in the small town of Severn, Maryland, where, she says, her father was a minister in search of a religion: "We went through everything, from being Jehovah's Witnesses to being United Methodists," she recalls.