Culture & Arts

Thuraya Ismail

I met him over a family dinner a couple of months before his death, when he was visiting Saudi Arabia as a speaker at The International Anti-Terrorism Conference. Free, inspiring, confident, elegant, and magnetic I was enchanted by his natural charisma, humbleness, sparkly outlook and sense of humor. Mustafa alAkkad was not an ordinary man. He was living testimony of an Arab who has made his way to Hollywood, the dream of many, at an early stage in his life.

Tiffany Darwish, the pop star of the 1980s, was born in the United States in October 1971. In 1981, she had her first public performance with a band at a country nightspot. She passed her hat around afterward and collected $235, leading her stepfather to realize that her singing could be a source of family in-come. In 1982, she toured several clubs in Alaska, earning $3,000, and debuted with her first album Tiffany, released by MCA Records, in 1987. That summer, while at-tending high school, she did a highly publicized mall tour in the US, earning coverage in People Magazine. By this time, her ground-breaking hit “I Think We’re Alone Now,” became the second-most-re-quested song on local radio. MCA Records was finally convinced to release this song as a single, after much resistance on the grounds that they were not “into” the Tiffany project. On September 26, 1987, “I Think We’re Alone Now” debuted on the Billboard singles chart and stayed there for 13 weeks. She debuted on the Bill-board album chart, and the album Tiffany reached the #1 spot. One month later, she appeared on “Tonight Show” and by November 1987, her hit single knocked Michael Jackson’s “Bad” off the charts. Her other song “Could’ve been” debuted in December 1987, staying on the pop singles chart for 14 weeks. It reached #1 on the Billboard chart in February 1988. In November 1988, her second album, “Hold An Old Friend’s Hand” was released in the US and one of its songs, “All this time” stayed on the charts for 14 weeks, peaking at #6. One year later, she toured Japan, Manila, Malaysia, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Korea. She got back to the US in June1989, just in time for her high school graduation. Also in 1989, Tiffany did the voice of Judy Jetson in the “Jetsons” movie, singing three songs for its soundtrack. The movie was released in July 1990. In December 1989, Tiffany releases her new song “Here is my Heart” with a dedication to US troops in the Persian Gulf. She released other songs in the 1990s, which failed to meet her previous success, but made a comeback in 2005 with her new album “Dust off and Dance.”