Emily Blunt’s incredibly short-lived career as a pop star: “I got terrified and pulled out”
All it takes is just one decision to completely change our life trajectories. It’s no wonder so many of us feel crippled by the options that surround us – what if we pick the wrong one?
Of course, it’s usually never too late to change your mind, but it’s interesting to think about how different our lives could be if we made a certain decision instead of another. Emily Blunt has a great ‘what if?’ story, because if she weren’t an actor, she could very well have become the new face of pop music.
The early 2000s were a big time for pop, and many female solo artists rose to super stardom, especially Britney Spears, who dominated the charts. While Blunt came from a strikingly different background – she’d just finished studying at a private school in Surrey – she soon found herself being prepped to become the next big thing. You really can’t picture Blunt, who has appeared in everything from The Devil Wears Prada to Oppenheimer, as a 2000s pop idol, but perhaps she would’ve been successful.
Blunt isn’t so sure that she would’ve been. “I was 18 and I was just, well, you know, I was 18. I was at that stage of my life where I was like, ‘Who cares, yeah, maybe; that sounds cool.’ Everything sounds cool other than being in school at 18,” she told The Sydney Morning Herald.
Adding, “But then I got terrified and pulled out because I felt they were wanting me to be like Britney Spears. And I was like, ‘I can’t dance, and I don’t sing like Britney Spears’. I just felt it was snowballing too fast, and it wasn’t ultimately what I wanted to do.”
Evidently, the pressure to be like Spears was too much. Entering the industry at a young age is not for the faint of heart, and luckily, Blunt was able to realise that being moulded into something she wasn’t would only cause her anxiety and unhappiness. It wasn’t worth it.
Instead, Blunt began appearing on stage, landing her first role in The Royal Family alongside Judi Dench. The actor had obviously made the right decision. Dreams of becoming the next pop songstress with a collection of Grammys displayed on the mantlepiece soon went out of the window, and instead, Blunt surely started fantasising about Oscars and Baftas.
With her first film role in My Summer of Love, Blunt earned several nominations such as ‘Most Promising Newcomer’ at the British Independent Film Awards. It didn’t take her long to prove her genius as an actor, and now she has an Oscar nomination to her name and one Golden Globe win.
Blunt hasn’t forgotten her love of singing totally, however. The actor sometimes picks musical roles, as best evidenced by her acclaimed performance in Into The Woods alongside Meryl Streep, which allowed her to flex her vocal abilities in a much more suited setting.
Perhaps one day, Blunt will share her pop song demo with the world, something she has tried to bury. For now, it seems like we’ll have to imagine what it sounded like. “It was a pop song, and it seems so unlike me now. It’s like a different person.”
