Hollywood is a small town. Though it sometimes seems like the place is bursting at the seams with millions of fresh-faced, corn-fed rubes just off the bus (we’re looking at you, Axl Rose in the “Sweet Child O’ Mine” video), when it comes down to it, it can be more like your high school cafeteria than a sprawling state university.
Case in point: Emily Wynne-Hughes. The tattoos and big-gauge earplug singer from Go Betty Go revealed on Tuesday night’s “American Idol” season-eight premiere episode that all she’s ever wanted to do is rock. Of course, every aspiring rocker has to spend some time flipping burgers, delivering packages or doing some other demeaning job while the stars align for their big break.
As it turns out, Wynne-Hughes has a great sense of timing (well, except for that whole DUI thing from last year). In 2006, she joined Betty, replacing the band’s original lead singer, Nicolette Vilar (which is ironic in itself, since one of the band’s bio’s touts a four-word motto plastered on the wall of their rehearsal space: “No One is Replaceable.” Oops!
A year later, Hughes was toiling away at her day job in Sherman Oaks, California’s Body & Soul Tattoo, when who should walk in but a mid-crisis Britney Spears? As the world now knows, earlier that night, Spears shaved her head at nearby Esther’s Haircutting Studio, and luckily for a then-unknown Wynne-Hughes, UsMagazine.com, the tabloids and local TV stations were more than happy to talk to her about the bizarre incident.
She told Us Magazine at the time that Brit came in, agitated after the self-scalping, and when asked why she cut her hair, said, “I don’t want anyone touching me I’m tired of everybody touching me … She wasn’t making any sense at all and you could tell she’s not in a good place at all, and that she is totally freaking out.”
Even before her official big TV break, Wynne-Hughes clearly knew when to grab the spotlight and go with it, adding that when Britney sat down to get a pair of quickie tattoos — a black-white-and pink cross on her lower hip and red-and-pink lips on her wrist — “She was a nightmare to deal with … She was screaming and flipping out from the pain and wiggling her body all around.”
While Britney was getting her $80 worth of ink, Wynne-Hughes asked her about a pink stain on the pop singer’s fluffy white handbag, which Brit said was caused when she “spilled Nyquil all over it.”
I really loved the final 5 American idol group song last night. It was a pity to see Aaron Kelly eliminated however I believe the other contestants were better singers so he had to go!