Pretty Poison's Jade Starling still brings music to South Jersey
The vocalist known as Jade Starling is not making a comeback. "We never left," insists the dance-pop singer/songwriter, currently savoring her best chart numbers since "Catch Me I'm Falling" landed her band Pretty Poison in the Top 10 in 1987.
The vocalist known as Jade Starling is
not
making a comeback.
"We never left," insists the dance-pop singer/songwriter, currently savoring her best chart numbers since "Catch Me I'm Falling" landed her band Pretty Poison in the Top 10 in 1987.
"I'm enjoying success again, but there were songs in between," Starling says. "We've been making music. We had some other singles out. We actually were on the charts a few times."
A personable, polished professional who's a South Jersey girl and proud of it, thank you, Starling met me two weeks ago at the DaStudio Recording Complex in Cherry Hill.
The busy studio off Route 70 is where she and her longtime musical partner, an East Camden native and keyboardist who goes by the name Whey Cooler, made her latest CD, Captive.
Released last year on Subpoena/Tazmania/Universal records and available on iTunes, the disc is packed with 13 thump-a-licious EDM (electronic dance music) tunes, three of which have made it onto Billboard's dance/club chart.
"We're still releasing singles," the singer says, popping a breath mint, then offering me one (I accept). "The record is still building."
Starling grew up in what she describes as a musical Camden County family, and now lives in Burlington County. She carries herself with a diva's driven, no details-left-to-chance confidence.
This she earned the hard way, performing at Gatsby's, the long-since-defunct disco that put Cherry Hill on the gay map more than three decades ago, and at various venues in Center City's gayborhood. She's been a staunch supporter of the LGBT community ever since.
"I love glitter," Starling says, referring to her fingernails; her equally fabulous hair is an incandescent red, and her skinny black jeans look even skinnier than she is.
(Given that the Captive cover features the singer in what could be described as evening wear by the Marquis de Sade, her interview ensemble is downright demure.)
"I'm in platforms and heels a lot, but I'm very casual today," she says, laughing. "I wanted us to be comfortable."
Along with other musicians, Starling and Cooler first made music together as Pretty Poison in the early 1980s, cowriting the sultry club hit "Nightime" in 1983.
It was electronic chill-out music before the genre existed.
Says Starling, "we always wanted to be on the cusp of what we thought would happen next."
They released the tune on a Merchantville (!) label called Svengali Records; it hit No. 13 on the dance charts and inspired a video of Starling cavorting with a flock of similarly mega-haired habitués of Philly's then-fashionable Kennel Club.
Made "on a no-budget," in Starling's words, the video includes atmospheric scenes of dancing nightclubbers descending into the Broad Street Subway concourse.
While glimpses of the era's far-from-fabulous Center City are downright nostalgic for viewers like me, don't mistake Starling for an oldies act (and don't bother asking her age, either).
So what if she has worked regularly for 15 years with other '80s and '90s performers such as Brenda K. Starr (remember her?) at dance music shows with names like "Monsters of Freestyle"?
Starling makes sure to mix new material with what she calls "the classics."
She also sings regularly at casino lounges, including a show set for 9 p.m. Tuesday at the Sands Casino in Bethlehem, Pa.
And she hopes to promote Captive with a tour of her own next year.
"Music is my baby," Starling says. "It's exciting. It's even more exciting for me now."
She acknowledges that what "Catch Me" made possible nearly 30 years ago - a major-label contract, big budget videos, TV appearances on American Bandstand and The Late Show with Arsenio Hall - has been over for a while.
But Starling says she's never lost the passion to entertain she first felt as a child, dancing to the records her father played.
And she can't forget hearing herself on the radio for the first time. "I was driving in the city," she recalls. "I almost crashed the car."
No wonder she and Cooler and their collaborators - who have included Lee Dagger, DJ Laszlo, and Chris Cox - are weighing which Captive song to release next as a single.
Then they'll work to remake and remix the cut for maximum club play - and, she hopes, airplay on commercial radio.
"That's the goal," Starling says.
Then she says it one more time.
"That's the goal."
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