Sam Fox managed it – but Naomi Campbell didn’t. As Paris Hilton assails ears with a new album, we look at the chequered history of models in pop, from Grace Jones to Kim Kardashian
The punks said that anyone can be a musician – but for proof that this may not be true, play Kim Kardashian’s 2011 single Jam (Turn It Up), a pop-EDM track that is somehow lethargic, alienating and overstimulating at the same time.
You can’t blame Kardashian for trying her hand at pop, of course. Music history is littered with models, socialites and tabloid figures who thought that making a record was their ticket to lasting celebrity – or, indeed, who genuinely thought that they possessed musical talent worth sharing with the world. For every Karen Elson – who parlayed modelling into a successful career as an alt-country darling – there is a Tyra Banks, whose reported six-year attempt to break into pop produced only one song, the woeful Shake Ya Body.
