Wanna be a pop princess

Becoming a successful pop singer is a one-in-a-million chance. And that's being generous.

Birdie wants to be one, even though the 19-year-old with long dark hair is an atypical candidate for American pop stardom. She's Laotian (real name: Souphak Xaphakdy), and in this country, there has yet to be an Asian pop queen on the level of a Beyoncé, Britney or Christina. Asians and Asian-Americans abound in the classical arena, but are scarce on the pop scene.

Born in the United States just months after her parents left a refugee camp in Thailand in the late 1980s, Birdie grew up in Magnolia, a tiny town in southern Minnesota (population about 225). After her recent move to the big city, she cut an all-English, independently released album called "Underground Pop Xposed" and her first big solo show is Saturday at Trocaderos.

Birdie knows she has her work cut out for her: First, "underground pop" is an oxymoron. Second, she has no one of similar background to look to for precedent. "But I try to think positively," she said.

Birdie's parents -- father Kaemphet and mother Somphiane, both factory workers -- liked living in Magnolia right away, she said. It reminded them of their village in Laos. But she grew up shy, self-conscious about her used clothes and leery of small-town racism.

"All the other Asian people there were my relatives," she said.

But she did have her cousins. "We would play in the cornfields," she said. "If you looked north, east, west or south, you could see the end of town and cornfields."

She also had music. Her father always had music on or would play music himself, Lao tunes in the folky/country style of back home. He wanted Birdie to sing it, too. But as a teen, she preferred top 40.

"So I got bored and started liking Mariah Carey," she said. She joined her high-school choir and competed in talent shows doing 'N Sync covers.

Last fall, she moved to the Twin Cities to attend North Hennepin Community College. "But in the back of my head, I knew I wanted to do music," she said.

By chance, she met Disraeli Davis, a former musician looking to get back into producing. The two clicked and Birdie decided to leave college to work on a debut album full time with Davis.

Besides pop, Birdie also grew up influenced by the electronic bombast of techno. Davis has fused techno's big synth sounds with Birdie's tales of love and loss. The result has her fitting right in with some of pop's current tastemakers, such as Timbaland and Justin Timberlake. Add in a voice always set to sultry and she sounds almost like a more serious Gwen Stefani.

Breaking out

While most pop singers shop their demos to major labels and hope for the best, Birdie is going the indie route. Hence the album title, "Underground Pop." Like the Twin Cities' army of underground rappers and rockers, she sells her music herself. For now, she's hoping to gain a foothold in the metro's large Asian community -- selling her music in the grocery stores and restaurants of St. Paul's Frogtown and Minneapolis' Eat Street.

Lucky for her, there are subscenes within the country's Asian communities that support pop-styled singers. Take the national Hmong music scene, which the boy-band Paradise ruled for almost a decade, selling out shows around the country before disbanding in 2004. Lead singer Phong Yang said that after the California-based group won the support of its community, it flirted with going mainstream. But it wasn't to be. Some group members weren't ready for the commitment and truthfully, he said, there just isn't a lot of major-label interest in Asian singers.

"It was the same thing for African-Americans before they had Motown; until somebody steps up and says they're going to produce Asians, it's going to be really hard," Yang said by phone recently.

But even before Birdie can worry about mainstream politics, she's finding that the indie route has its bumps, too. In the month leading up to her show Saturday, she's had to find a new backup band and a new choreographer. Then her show almost got double-booked.

"That's the reason we do stuff with contracts now, instead of just handshakes," she said.

She's also gotten the blessing of her parents, who were "a little disappointed" that she stopped going to college. "But now that I have an album, they're happy," she said.

Of course, her father Kaemphet said Birdie quitting college is "just for a while."I'm happy to hear her sing English," he said. "For Lao music, she has to practice more. Some words she doesn't understand."

Birdie said now that she's older, she's thinking more about singing the music her father grew up on, but on the side. Pop stardom is still her dream.

"But maybe we'll put a couple songs that are in Lao on the next album," she said. "I have to respect my culture, too."

Tom Horgen • 612-673-7909

Tom Horgen • thorgen@startribune.com