Cindy Gomez is in motion, cruising along Los Angeles’ chi-chi Melrose Avenue in late August in the back of a big black chauffeured SUV. The Canadian singer is travelling with Dave Stewart, who came to fame as the bespectacled guy next to Annie Lennox in the innovative ’80s band the Eurythmics. Today, the 57-year-old British rock legend is a big-picture entrepreneur—performer, songwriter, producer, photographer, activist, new media savant and general connector of cosmic dots.
All of these endeavours dovetail perfectly with his current quest: to turn the multilingual Gomez, with her United Colours of Benetton beauty, into a global, multi-platform superstar. That in itself isn’t the kind of visionary thinking for which Stewart, a Davos denizen, corporate consultant on “disruptive change,” and friend of Bono, is known. What makes it pioneering is that he’s doing it in tandem with US$70-billion Finnish cellphone colossus Nokia as part of that company’s quest to become the world’s biggest entertainment media network. The stakes are big, Stewart says in his soft-spoken, unassuming, sage-like way: “If the experiment works, it will change the way art is made.”
The night before was a late one; Stewart is in recovery mode behind his signature dark shades, eating peanut butter on toast and sipping a coffee. His Rock Fabulous Orchestra, a 30-piece ensemble, played a fundraiser at L.A.’s Conga Room for a local charity that helps disadvantaged kids get to university. All the music came from Stewart’s songbook of hits that has sold more than 100 million albums, both for himself and for artists such as Céline Dion, Gwen Stefani and Tom Petty. Gomez performed, too, soloing on a few songs. This morning she’s radiant, L.A. fabulous in black leggings, high-heeled sandals and a long white T-shirt with the slogan: “God Wants Me to be Sexy.”
The past year and a half has been a heady time for Gomez, who two years ago was selling office furniture in Toronto, plotting her breakout moment. Today she’s living in L.A., working with Stewart, now her mentor and manager who has introduced her to a network of star-makers, among them songwriter-producers Glen Ballard, who launched Alanis Morissette, and Desmond Child, who refers to Gomez as a seemingly unbeatable marketing hybrid: “A combination Madonna, Christina, Gwen, who looks like Angelina in Tomb Raider meets J-Lo with the ambition of Evita!”
Gomez’s image and voice have been creeping into public consciousness. In February 2008, she appeared in Stewart’s celebrity-studded video for American Prayer, a song he co-wrote with Bono for Barack Obama. May 2009 brought Gomez’s global debutante moment as she emerged from a clamshell on stage at the Life Ball in Vienna, Europe’s largest AIDS benefit, where she and Stewart performed before a crowd of 65,000. In June, she was introduced in avatar form on Dance Fabulous, Nokia’s mobile phone game, which also offered for downloading five of her new songs co-written with Stewart. This week, Gomez will be in flight again—to Germany for acting lessons to prepare for her feature film debut in a movie inspired by the Dance Fabulous game, due to start filming in Mumbai and Singapore next year.
The movie is why Stewart and Gomez are en route now to the West Hollywood apartment of the acclaimed Indian songwriter A.R. Rahman of Slumdog Millionaire fame: they want to hear his Bollywood-style remixes of tracks they’d recorded weeks earlier off the coast of Turkey on the 414-foot yacht owned by Microsoft’s co-founder Paul Allen, another Stewart crony. The summer of 2009 has involved much helicoptering onto Allen’s boat: in May, Gomez and Stewart performed for a crowd that included Quentin Tarantino and Mick Jagger.
“Magical” is how Gomez describes the past 15 months. Professionally, her packaging is sexy Bond girl—PVC leggings, bustiers, Cleopatra eyes. In person, she’s fresh, enthusiastic, without pretence, possessed of a ready quicksilver laugh. “I pinch myself and say ‘Is this for real?’ ” she says. “I’ve been wishing and praying for this since I was a little girl. But I didn’t expect it to happen all at the same time.”
Gomez’s digital Cinderella story begins in Mississauga, Ont., around a quarter of a century ago. When asked about her age, Gomez is uncharacteristically coy: “I’d really like to keep it a bit mysterious so I am not placed in any particular category, just like my music,” she says. Her early influences were classical with a Latin infusion: her father is Colombian-Belgian, her mother is of Colombian heritage. She grew up listening to opera, Edith Piaf, mariachi, salsa and meringue. But it was a pop tune by the ’80s teen star Tiffany that she heard at age eight that motivated her to become a singer. There was no money for singing lessons, so her father suggested she practise by singing in front of the mirror every day. When it sounded good, he’d tell her. “My dad can’t sing to save his life,” Gomez says with a laugh. “But he has an ear.” Her stage debut took place at a Christmas concert at the daycare centre where her mother worked. Gomez describes performing as a “crazy high”: “I’ve never taken drugs, but it must be the equivalent of taking heroin.”
Lacking resources or contacts, Gomez did what she could to get a foot in the door—modelling, entering a Miss Latin America pageant, playing the Super Latin Fest at the CNE. The fact that she speaks three languages (English, French, Spanish) and sings in eight (English, French, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Hindi, Cantonese and Mandarin) led to gigs on multicultural radio and television stations in Toronto.
