The City’s Kelly Cutrone was once a rock star, had a record deal with Atlantic

In PR girl Kelly Cutrone’s memoir/power girl guide, If You Have To Cry, Go Outside, we learn a bit about what it’s like to follow your dreams, or our own sense of what feels right against the giant sea tide of parental and societal pressures, but we also learn a great deal about Kelly Cutrone’s fascinating life. And it’s kind of a doozy. In a good way.

Kelly got her PR start early (after falling into it by rushing into NYC from Syrcuse with a nursing degree, a hunger to schooze, and no money), but her path took many an odd turn.  After marrying Ronnie Cutrone for a brief period of drugs, she kind of had a meth meltdown in California and was saved by a spiritual experience that led to mellowing out and reading tarot cards on the boardwalk. It was between this period and her second foray into public relations entrepreneurship that Kelly got an accidental record deal from Atlantic (don’t we all?).

In her book Kelly describes this bizarre experience as a life lesson about figuring out what you want to do by learning what you do not want to do. We all have these little experiences throughout life, like scraping barnacles of a boat at the marina, waiting tables, folding shirts at The GAP, filling out endless TPS reports at a boring office job. We think “This isn’t really how I want to spend my precious time on earth” and we either find some other source of income or just suck it up because unfortunately you have to eat or you won’t be spending any precious time on earth.

Most of don’t just get a $150,000 record deal in our lap after close to zero experience with music, and then go on tour and record an album. Kelly says she found the touring experience “tedious and repetitive,” which proves that this wasn’t really her thing. If you really have the music bug, you would just about kill to be able to survive on playing music every day.

It all started in1995 when her friend Sean Dinsmore recorded Kelly freestylin’ over some beats. He shopped his demo to Atlantic, but they didn’t want him, they wanted Kelly and gave her a $150,000 contract. The some that won them over was reportedly called “Conversations with a Groovy Girl,” but good luck finding it or the whole album she recorded anywhere on the internet.

Here’s a sample of the lyrics she published in her book:

“I was riding through the cosmos,

Deep in outer space,

Trying to get a grip on this thing we call the human race.”

So disappointing that we can’t hear Kelly belt out those lyrics, but thankfully Kelly posted this video of her singing “Bette Davis Eyes” on her Youtube Channel kellycutronetv.

Click here to buy If You Have to Cry, Go Outside more exciting stories from K.C.’s life.