Non-Fan Mail

Dear Ms. Nova,

Congratulations on 30 years in the music biz! I’m very happy you’ve lasted this long in the industry because your music really is awesome and you deserve the longevity.

You’ve probably heard this a lot, but my mom Donna and I are huge fans of yours. We’ve bought all of your albums: from your debut album “Dreams” to the latest one, “Higher”. Any time we’re together, we just have to play one of your albums. Your music is literally a form of bonding for us.

I’ve included a photo of you during your last concert here in our city, and I hope you can sign it and dedicate it to us. We’re planning to frame it and have it displayed in her living room.

Again, congratulations. May you have more success in the music industry.

Sincerely,

Tiffany James from Dallas

**************

Dear Ms. Nova Richards,

We’re sending this letter to congratulate you on your 30^th anniversary as a recording artist. All of us in the Nova Richards Fan Club Brazil are very proud to support such a talented singer and songwriter like you.

We want to thank you for making us happy through your music. Your songs always make us dance but also, inspire us to be the best women we can be. We love how most of your music is about “being the strong, independent queen that inside each woman”, to quote one of the lines you often say in interviews. Each of the club’s members may have a favourite album, but for sure, all of us find your music our favourite.

We wish you even more years of success.

With love,

Nova Richards Fan Club Brazil

P.S.: Please consider coming to Brazil on your next world tour! Pleeeeeeeeeeeeaaassee!

*****

Dear Ms. Richards,

Well, to be perfectly honest, I don’t even know how to begin this letter. I’m not the type to write to any celebrity, let alone someone who has won fifteen Grammies in her thirty year career. So yeah, this might sound a bit weird; this probably isn’t your typical fan mail letter. Sorry about that.

Well, then again, I don’t know if you could consider this fan mail; I must admit that I’ve never listened to any of your albums. Sorry. Being in the music industry, I think you should know that everybody has their own taste in what to listen to, and your bubble gum pop dance music has just never been my cup of tea. Most of the music I listen to is from the 70s and 80s, decades of songs that my late father Steven had lovingly shared his enthusiasm for with me. No, I’m afraid you’re not going to get any lines about your music inspiring me or something.

Surprisingly enough, though, my dad loved your music…very much so. I still remember how every single afternoon that I would come home from school, I could hear the thumping bass featured in your “Dreams” album from a block away and knew Dad was in the living room. When you released an album, he would queue up at the crack of dawn just to get a copy. Before he left Earth, he’d asked me to write to you, the lone pop star in his pantheon comprised of the likes of Marvin Gaye, Fleetwood Mac, Bread, and Tears for Fears. It sounds weird but yes, a burly man with no hair had once considered himself your greatest fan. How great? Well, I’ll tell you somewhere in this letter.

This letter isn’t just about me telling you how much my late Dad loved your music nor is it going to end with me asking you for an autograph (No, thanks.). What I’d like to ask you goes beyond that.

When I was six years old, my mother Louise walked out on Dad and me, leaving just a letter to explain why she had packed her bags and booked a one-way ticket to America. And so, growing up, it was just my father and I. As soon as Mum left, Dad had written a letter to his boss requesting that he cut back hours in the office ---for less pay, of course --- so he could spend more time with me.

With that extra time, he taught me music. I woke up to the sounds of Tammi Terrell and Marvin Gaye’s “You’re All I Need to Get By” and fell asleep to Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway’s “The Closer I Get to You.” In between those hours, Dad would play Radio DJ with me, selecting a song from his massive 70s and 80s music library and coming up with an intro spiel for each song that came out of the record player, all to make me giggle. By the time I was nine, when the easiest way to play CDs was Windows Media Player, I could make my own song requests and could even “present the show” myself, gaining me approving looks from my dad. To this very day, I consider the 70s and 80s music I grew up with secondary roots, that which connected me to the primary root that kept my entire being grounded: Dad.

However, there was one artist we disagreed on. I still remember the day in 1994 when I heard the thumping electronica beats from your debut album laying waste to the entire living room. Dad excitedly told me about how he was enjoying these new sounds, but all I could hear was betrayal (in more ways than one, as you know). I did not get how afternoons with the beautiful horn section from the 60s and 70s experimental era of Chicago could be replaced by the monotonous computer-generated beeps of your songs, how Joni Mitchell’s poetic lyrics could be considered by Dad as moving your repetitive and vapid verses, how your thin, grating voice could be just as loved Aretha Franklin’s soaring vocals. With every album cover of yours I saw in my Dad’s record collection --- with every fake smile behind a crystal case, with every smug sparkle in your eyes in photos, my disdain for you grew, to be honest. I always saw you as the intruder that uprooted me, the one that clipped off the secondary roots just because you didn’t like what bloomed above.

When you won that first Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal, I was livid. My mind was spiraling as I passed by Dad's bedroom and saw your smug, overly made-up face on the telly.

"How could they reward her," I asked myself. "How could they rob the Whitney Houstons, the Bonnie Raitts, and the Tina Turners of the world for her?"

When you announced your first world tour, I wished fervently that London wouldn't be on your list of stops. Dad would have surely be first in the queue for tickets, and I would have to watch his dopey, happy face as he clutched his pass to be just in the same arena as you. Well, thankfully for me, that wish came true. In fact, that deep desire was fulfilled every single time you announced concert dates around the globe: I know that you've sang in packed venues from Los Angeles to Lima, from Lagos to Lapu-Lapu; never have you gone back to ol' Londontown, though. But of course. You were there for all of your fans in other parts of the globe, but you were never there for....well....

Even as Dad was hooked to a chemotherapy machine, his once-clear voice turning into a whisper as he made that last request, I still didn’t comprehend it. How could a man being dragged to the doors of death still think about some vapid pop singer whose albums he wasted money on? How could he ask his daughter to write to some celebrity whose music he knew I found lacking in soul? How could he still hang on to the one person who betrayed me, who betrayed us?

Well, I guess you being Dad’s first and only love is reason enough for him…and my love for him is reason enough for me to talk to you.

Look, Mum, if it were up to me, I’d have nothing to do with you ever again. However, when I accidentally turned on Dad’s beat-up desktop computer and stumbled upon pages upon pages of love letters to you on Microsoft Word 97 files --- letters I remember that he printed out, letters that each swiftly came back with a Return to Sender stamp on the envelope --- I thought I’d grant him one last request. This time, it’s no longer a Roberta Flack song or a special spiel in our pretend radio show; I’d like to request for you to see the man who loves you most, the man who had you stuck on repeat in his head all his life.

Dad will be buried in Tower Hamlets Cemetery. I know you’re used to people asking you to come to wherever they’re living in, but I do hope you grant this plea for you to go home to London. Your greatest fan will be waiting for you.

Sincerely,

Anita Ian from London (a.k.a. your daughter)

***

“Hotel Fasano Ipanema Concierge, how may I help you?”

“Hi, this is Nova Richards in Room 1605.”

“How may we help you, Ms. Richards?”

“I know this is going to sound weird, but do you happen to have a shredder?”