What to Know About Erika Jayne's Music Career Through the Years: Glitz, Glamour and Fun
Now that she's dazzling live audiences once again with her Vegas show Bet it All on Blonde, we take a look back at Erika Jayne's rise to stardom.
Erika Jayne is known for her bold personality on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, but this Georgia native was known before that for an incredible music career with an astonishing nine No. 1 singles on the U.S. Billboard Dance Club chart.
Now, with a residency at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, Nevada, Erika is dazzling live audiences once again, with fans cheering for her every choreographed move as she belts out songs like "Pretty Mess" and "How Many F-cks."
So, let's look back on Erika's career leading up to the new season of RHOBH.
Erika Jayne's Music Career, Recapped
Raised by a single mom in Atlanta, Georgia, Erika hasn’t always been famous, but she’s always embraced the spotlight. Since a young age, she had a penchant for performing, and her early musical influences, like Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Prince, still inform her clubby, uptempo hits.
Her mom, Renee, a classically trained pianist and piano teacher, also instilled a love of music in Jayne.
“You know, one of my special childhood memories is waking up on the weekend and listening to my mother playing downstairs,” she told AceShowbiz in 2009.
At 18 years old, the confident high school grad moved to New York City to pursue her dreams of becoming a performer and found work as a go-go dancer in the early ‘90s, before landing small roles in the first season of Law & Order and some movies.
Of that time, she told PEOPLE in 2018, “It taught me to be self-reliant. It also taught me to be incredibly resilient, to bounce back and assess situations quickly. I trust my gut a lot.”
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A cross-country move to Los Angeles in the mid-'90s surpassed expectations: She met her multi-millionaire second husband (now her ex), but as she put it, “I was living [someone else's] life… I was in a wealthy coma.”
So, at the age of 35, she started a second act.
“Erika Jayne was born out of rebellion. I like to break the rules,” she told PEOPLE.
That rebellious spirit shines through in Erika's first single, “Roller Coaster,” which topped the dance charts in 2007. Her debut album, Pretty Mess, quickly followed suit, produced and co-written by a dream team that's worked with Madonna, Britney Spears, and Cher.
Charged with provocative lyrics, her pop music is simultaneously relaxed and upbeat: “Jayne doesn’t sing so much as purrs,” The Los Angeles Times wrote of her style.
Erika has since hit her stride, collaborating with artists including Flo Rida and Sheila E., and has released several more singles, two of which became number-one hits: "Painkillr" and "How Many F*cks."
In a Ted Talk in 2018, she explained how she became empowered through a performance persona that “is founded on the principals of fantasy, love, escape, glitz, glamour, and fun. She is sparkles and a good time … but more importantly, this alter ego gave me a power I wouldn’t have had otherwise, to be fearless.”
And fearless she is. At the end of 2018, she crisscrossed the country during her first live tour, performing in cities from Los Angeles to Miami. The following year, Erika landed the iconic starring role of Roxie Hart in a Broadway production of Chicago until the show was shut down due to COVID-19.
And of course, these days, she has her Vegas residency, Bet It All on Blonde. You can get tickets here.
Both onscreen with RHOBH and behind the scenes, Erika Jayne is clearly an unstoppable force.
