Believing it would help her navigate the music business, she earned a bachelor’s degree in commerce at the University of Toronto. She also wanted to avoid stereotyping: “There’s this stigma—she’s a female Latina singer, she doesn’t have an education.”
Toronto record producer Tom Stephen began working with Gomez in 2003. “She had the X factor,” he says. “I remember thinking, ‘I just hope she can sing.’ ” Her a cappella version of Piaf’s trademark La Vie en Rose wowed him. He brought in American guitarist Stevie Salas, who has worked with Jagger and Rod Stewart, to develop her songwriting chops. “She had superstar presence,” says Salas, who praises her work ethic: “Cindy is tough. She’s no queen bee diva.” Gomez searched to find her sound, dabbling in pop, techno, dance and hip hop. Early on, Stephen marketed her as “Jennifer Lopez meets Sade.” He saw her potential to be a brand. In 2005, in a move that foreshadows Gomez’s Nokia relationship, Stephen approached both Bell and Rogers to try to forge a marketing relationship. Rogers (which owns Maclean’s) expressed interest, he says, though discussions never went far. Bell was more enthusiastic, but talks ended when it became the takeover target of BCE.
Gomez soldiered on—writing songs, travelling to the U.S. to record, and playing charity events and awards shows while working temp jobs. In 2007, she took a full-time job as an account manager at an office furniture company. That fall, she opened for Boy George at Montreal’s Olympia Theatre, where one newspaper reported she took the stage around midnight in silver short shorts, blazer and bustier before a “well-liquored crowd.” She was stalled, she says: “Nothing was jelling. I was frustrated. I knew I couldn’t just stay [in Canada]—I had to move to New York or Miami or something.”
In November, she was fired from her day job, an event she calls a blessing in disguise. “They said, ‘We feel you love your music and that’s what you should do,’ ” she recalls. She drew on her faith in positive thinking and visualization. “I was into The Secret before Oprah was,” she says.
In late January 2008, Stephen received a call from Mike Bradford, a musician and producer Gomez had met in L.A. who’d worked with Stewart for years. Bradford had thought Stewart would connect musically with Gomez, but wanted to wait for the right opportunity. That arrived when Stewart’s orchestra suddenly needed a backup singer for a few shows it was doing with Ringo Starr that included a gig on Larry King Live. Gomez remembers her amazed reaction: “Oh my God, it’s a Beatle!” She didn’t know all of their music, she admits: “But I knew a Beatle was a Beatle.” Bradford asked if she was free. “And I said, ‘Wait, let me check my schedule.’ ” She laughs. “And I said, ‘Of course I am free.’ And then he said, ‘You have to memorize four or five songs.’ And I said ‘I’ll do whatever it takes. If I have to pay my way I will. Don’t pay me any money. I just want to do it.’ ”
She met Stewart backstage in the Larry King Live green room. After a few performances, he was impressed enough to invite her back to the recording studio he shares with Glen Ballard, a serene white space dubbed the White Room that contains a white piano and Grammys lining the long ledge of a window framing the “Hollywood” sign. Ballard and Stewart were working on the score for a stage adaptation of the movie Ghost and needed a singer for the Demi Moore part. “Her voice was perfect,” Stewart recalls. Gomez was hired to sing the demo, which meant a move to L.A. She was ready. “I never thought I could live in L.A. I was always afraid of earthquakes,” she says. “But this time I fell into the right family. As soon as I met Dave I knew.”
Gomez has evolved into Stewart’s protege—and current muse. The two began writing songs together. Stewart praises Gomez’s “three-dimensional thinking”: “When I play and she has no idea of where I’m going to she naturally goes with it.” He also began photographing her—stylized glam images with guns and tasteful nudes in which she’s artfully shielded—one of which will front her upcoming CD on Interscope Geffen A&M Records. “They both sparked something in each other,” says Stephen. Gomez recalls a eureka moment they had before they started composing together. Stewart asked her how she’d ideally fashion her professional imagery: “I said, ‘I like songs that touch the heart—emotional, melancholic songs.’ And I told him I wanted to be like a James Bond girl—cool and sexy and very classy, not too risqué.” Stewart had just given an interview to Variety in which he was asked what advice he’d give an aspiring musician. His answer: “They should wear a PVC catsuit and heavy makeup (male or female) and should sing very sad songs just with acoustic guitar.” A plan was hatched. Gomez called a friend in Canada to make her a PVC catsuit. Stewart filmed an arresting video of Gomez singing, and sent it to Nokia with “Empowered by Nokia” at the bottom. Nokia didn’t understand at first, he says. “They asked: ‘Did we do that?’ I told them ‘No, not yet, but you should.’ ”
Stewart’s relationship with the cellphone giant dates back to 2006 when he and Tero Ojanperä, now executive vice-president and chief technology officer, met at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Stewart was enlisted as the company’s “change agent” to provide a portal to pop culture, forge connections, and bring ideas. “He’s the catalyst,” says Ojanperä. Certainly, few people traverse the worlds of music, art, politics, film, theatre, and technology with the same two-degrees-of-separation as Stewart. A typical conversation is peppered with offhand references to Yoko Ono, Desmond Tutu, Damien Hirst. His 2001 wedding to photographer Anoushka Fisz was officiated by Deepak Chopra, with whom he has a consulting business. He’s writing an album with France’s first lady, Carla Bruni. Chatting about an idea he has for a stock market index for YouTube advertising, he casually mentions directing a prototype ad starring Kevin Spacey and Isabella Rossellini.
In terms of technology and music, Stewart has long been a trailblazer, producing landmark videos in the 1980s that paved the way for the Eurythmics’ American breakout. But the days of MTV are long over, as is studio control, he says: “The fence is down.” The future as he sees it is open-platform and open-source, a format mirrored by Nokia’s corporate culture, he notes: “They encourage sharing. They aren’t saying, ‘What’s our cut?’ They become the hub.”
