Reality TV supercouple Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt suffered a deep loss in the past week, as the home they shared was destroyed in the Pacific Palisades wildfire. And their response was something that only they might have dreamed up.
Both parties, who rose to prominence on MTV’s “The Hills” in the 2000s — have used TikTok, Instagram and every other social media outlet to encourage their fans to stream Montag’s album “Superficial.” The album, coincidentally enough, celebrated its 15th anniversary over the weekend; it is a turn-of-the-2010s curio that owes a debt to the musical endeavors of Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Lady Gaga, but on which Montag put her unique camera-eager stamp.
On “The Hills,” a reality soap opera, Montag had been cast as the sidekick to golden-girl Lauren Conrad, the “Laguna Beach” star whom the cameras followed in her move to Los Angeles. Not content with second billing, Montag and then-boyfriend Spencer Pratt hijacked the show and remade it in their own image. Conrad’s prosaic stories about striving to make it in the magazine industry paled in comparison to the loopy invented dramas of her two frenemies. Conrad, paradoxically a bit too shy for reality TV at its nastiness, wanted to be seen as good; Pratt and Montag didn’t mind being the villains, as long as you kept watching.
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As a recording artist, Montag was an enthusiastic music aspirant whose gift for holding the camera’s gaze outstripped other pop-star job requirements. “Superficial,” her one and only album, sold some 1,000 copies in its first week; in the extended run-up to its release, the negative response to a 2008 Montag music video led her to weep in public view, a moment that the paparazzi conveniently captured. The roll-out continued with a performance of the song “Body Language” at the 2009 Miss Universe pageant; the full track features Pratt, plainly uncomfortable behind the mic, in a featured rap. “Lay my eyes on a sassy pearl,” Pratt raps. “Heidi Montag, yeah, that’s my girl.”
“Body Language” was not to make the final tracklist; “Superficial” seems the beneficiary of a fair amount of fiddling, and certainly was the product of various talented people trying their best. (Credited writers include “Toxic” co-writer Cathy Dennis, Danity Kane girl-group alum Dawn Richard, and the Pretty Reckless frontwoman and “Gossip Girl” star Taylor Momsen.) In this, it recalls the 2007 masterwork “Blackout,” in which a peak-tabloid-era Britney Spears was pushed deep into experimentation by collaborators picking out beats on her behalf. Where it diverges is an unapologetic embrace of pure-pop instincts: If “Blackout” was forward-looking, “Superficial” seemed reverse-engineered to chase trends.
And Montag’s contribution seemed to be less her vocals than her persona: On the song “I’ll Do It,” for instance, she leans into the bad-girl image she’d begun to hone on reality TV, singing “I’ll be your blonde tonight, if that’s what you like / Stilettos and fishnets, if that’s what you like.” The album’s title track made matters more literal. After rhyming “Maserati” with “paparazzi,” Montag intones “They say I’m superficial, some call me a bitch / They just mad ’cause I’m sexy, famous, and I’m rich.”
Maybe the reason that the album underperformed in its moment was that it filled no particular niche. Those who wanted to hear music like this could put on superior offerings from Lady Gaga or Kesha. And those who were curious for a view into Montag’s life had endless ways to slake that appetite, only one of them a weekly cable-TV reality show. The album was released the same month as a People magazine cover debuted Montag’s refreshed appearance with the headline “Addicted to Plastic Surgery.” (Montag cooperated with the story, which documented 10 cosmetic procedures she underwent in a single day.) “Superficial” got what juice it had from the real life of Montag, but it also was the product of an artist whose big idea was to test the limits of overexposure. In 2010, she found them.
But time has a way of softening and reframing these things, and the likes of Kim Kardashian — the all-things-to-all-people reality colossus whose own vanity single was released, and forgotten, a year after “Superficial” — make Pratt and Montag’s efforts look quaint and lovable. Someone like Kardashian is a corporation; Pratt and Montag, as the scrappy “Body Language” verse makes clear, are a mom-and-pop shop of fame. (That’s meant literally, in a sense: the pair are now parents of two, which only emphasizes the fact that their appeals to stream Montag’s music as a money-spinning endeavor are sincerely meant.)
Pratt and Montag’s use of this horribly sad moment in their lives as a promotional opportunity could, uncharitably, be seen as cynical. I’d argue, though, that it is simply their doing what they have always done best. Whether “Superficial” is good or not matters less in this tense moment than whether it can aid in the very real project of sustaining their family. It also represents a moment in which Montag sat a good deal closer to the center of the culture. Perhaps there’s something pleasingly nostalgic about that, too, for the chanteuse and for the featured rapper she calls a husband.
Once again, this past week, “Superficial” gave rise to tears — this time, as Pratt wept on TikTok commemorating the album topping the iTunes charts after its initial flop. No photographers needed to be called; in the years since Montag wept out on the street, social media has risen to allow the Pratt-Montags to be their own paparazzi. Many of those fans buying the album are likely doing so just because it’s a good story, and a way to feel one is helping. But it’s also no surprise that, at a moment when the whole world seems aflame, there’s comfort in something dated, something out-of-time, something that chased trends so hard that it ensured it would always sound like its moment. In other words: a time capsule.