July 1


Kristinia DeBarge says hello to her first hit with Goodbye, a top 10 single built around Steam's 1969 chestnut, "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye".

Her sassy, girl-power take on the sports-stadium staple has the 19-year-old brushing off an inattentive boyfriend.


The song, which has been played 14.7 million times on MySpace, is No. 14 on USA Today's top 40 airplay chart and No. 27 on iTunes, and it has sold 541,000 downloads, according to Nielsen SoundScan. It's also being used in commercials for Nivea beauty products.

She'll be an opening act (along with Ciara) when Britney Spears' Circus tour returns to North America with a show Aug. 20 in Hamilton, Ontario.

"When I heard the song, I knew that it was going to be a hit," says DeBarge, whose father, James, played keyboards for the Motown family quintet DeBarge in the 1980s. "I loved the melody and I knew that it was going to be familiar to everyone. It was a song I needed, because there weren't that many up-tempo songs on my album."

Exposed, out July 28, leans heavily toward ballads "having to do with love and discovering love." Goodbye is one of several tracks produced by mentor Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds, who is launching his new SodaPop/Island record label with DeBarge's album. It's a partnership with Island Def Jam, now run by his LaFace Records co-founder L.A. Reid.

"She's a talented young girl who has inherited a gift from her family, and that gift is raw talent, good looks and an easygoing personality," says Babyface, who with Reid opened for the group DeBarge when they were bandmates in The Deele. "She's matured. She's more in control of her powerful voice, and she knows who Kristinia is and where she wants to go."

DeBarge says she has known she wanted to be a singer since she was 3 but didn't tell her father until she was 12. She says he tested her by putting her through an all-night recording session to make sure she understood what she was getting into. After that initiation, she began doing talent shows, and he took her on the road with him.

She got national exposure in 2003 as a contestant on the American Idol spinoff American Juniors but didn't make the top 10. The rejection hurt, but it attracted attention from producers and eventually led her to Babyface, who began writing songs with her when she was 14.

"I was really devastated and sad (to be cut), but I remember saying in my interview that I won't give up," says DeBarge, who signed with her label in March, two days before her birthday. "After that, I was in the studio every day. I was home-schooled all through high school, and I focused on my music."

Other album tracks include Cry Me a River, a ballad for the brokenhearted; Disconnect, a song about missing a distant lover; and Doesn't Everybody Want to Fall in Love, about her real-life plea for parental approval of her first love affair.

"It's just me going through different emotions," she says. "It's a good compilation of what young girls my age go through."

She says she's not worried about finding her own identity. (In addition to DeBarge, her uncles Tommy and Bobby were in the R&B band Switch, and uncles El and Chico are solo artists.)

"I really don't think that it's going to be a problem because I'm in my own lane," she says. "It's a blessing to be a part of the DeBarge family, and I look at it in the best positive way."

http://www.usatoday.com/l...arge_N.htm