From Pageant to Pop

It struck Shelly Peiken ’79 one night on her way home from a songwriting session: Her loving and supportive partner had borne the brunt of her stress while her career took off.

The next morning, singer Meredith Brooks agreed she often felt the same way. In a tiny room, with no recording equipment—just two songsmiths and an acoustic guitar— they transferred their feelings into the single “Bitch,” which went on to spend four weeks at No. 2 on Billboard’s Hot 100.

Peiken’s resume also includes hits by Christina Aguilera (including the No. 1 “What a Girl Wants” and “Come on Over”), Demi Levato and Keith Urban, but more recently, she writes about the modern music industry as a blogger for The Huffington Post and in her memoir, “Confessions of a Serial Songwriter,” set for release on March 22.

The book also spans the Long Island native’s years at the University of Maryland, when she was named Miss Maryland, then competed in the Miss America pageant.

It was never her goal to be a contestant in either, though she happily watched and competed in local pageants in high school. She was recruited for the Miss Maryland preliminary competition during her senior year at UMD after performing in a Greek life production of “The Princess and the Pea.” Flattered, she agreed—and won.

But Peiken didn’t think she’d ever win Miss America, the next stop for all state winners. She started getting stress-related migraines and realized she didn’t even want to take the crown. But if she won, it would’ve been a first for the state of Maryland, and she felt an enormous responsibility to stick it out for her sponsors, her team and all the women who had been cut from the competition.

So, Peiken smiled through the panic and pounding headaches and spent the summer after graduation practicing a poised walk in just a swimsuit and high heels, fielding questions about world peace and rehearsing her talent, an admittedly not-so-subtle ballad she wrote about her trepidation titled “Carry Me Home.”

To her simultaneous embarrassment and relief, Peiken didn’t win at September’s competition in Atlantic City. The migraines immediately subsided, and she felt liberated from the suffocating stress that she says came with “going with someone else’s flow.”

She spent the remainder of the year representing the state by doing “the wave” at grand openings, parades and special events. After her reign, Peiken headed home to New York to discover who she was outside of the boundaries of the pageant world.

“There’s a stereotypical idea of who a pageant contestant is—she acts in a certain way with a particular decorum and poise—and as I drove out of Maryland, I think I just threw all those clothes out my car window and started a fresh life,” she says.

While interviewing for fashion jobs in New York City’s Garment District, Peiken joined a songwriting workshop. Until then, she’s thought that whoever sang the songs on the radio also wrote them.

“I called my parents a week into the workshop to thank them for my fashion education and tell them I decided to pursue songwriting instead,” she recalls.

She waited tables to support herself for two years before landing a job performing at a hotel piano bar, where she worked for another four years, and recorded her first song, “Carry Your Heart,” with singer Taylor Dayne in 1986.

Shortly after, she signed her first publishing deal and went on to write for Celine Dion, Britney Spears, Brandy and the Pretenders.

She was driving the first time she heard one of her songs play on the radio. Using her 1997 Motorola cell phone, she called everyone she knew. But by the time she did so, the song was over.

“What I should’ve done was pull over and just savor it. It was a precious moment, and I promised myself right then to never again get on the phone when I hear it,” she says.

Now, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband, composer Adam Gorgoni, and their daughter. Her memoir tells her story of navigating the ever-changing music business as a seasoned lyricist.

“Getting together to write something with another person is more than just the song, it’s an organic experience and an intimate conversation,” says Peiken, who plans to resume songwriting later this year after her book-related activities wane. “It really is the best way I can express myself in three minutes. It’s my oxygen.”