Three years passed between Mya's Fear of Flying and the new Moodring (due July 22nd), but the twenty-three-year-old singer was never far from the spotlight. She showed a different side of herself in the risque video for the Moulin Rouge smash "Lady Marmalade" and had a small role in the Oscar-winning Chicago. Still, neither project accounts for the span between releases. "I took my time because I wanted my music to be representative of Mya," she says. "I would pay for my own studio time because I wanted to find myself musically and experiment."

Mya recorded almost sixty songs for Moodring, seventeen of which made the cut, including "Things Come and Go" (with a guest vocal by Sean Paul) and "Take a Picture," co-written by Pink. For the first single, "My Love Is Like . . . Wo," Mya enlisted Missy Elliott to produce. "It's a very conceited song, and I love it," Mya says laughing. "It's about self-love and feeling confident, and it's a little cocky and aggressive."

Mya describes Moodring as her most personal album, explaining that when she made her debut in 1998, she was just a teenager and just a singer. "I was singing about all these love situations and I didn't even have a damn boyfriend," she recalls. "This time if I didn't write the song, then I produced it. With every song I was hands-on -- the structure of the track, bringing in musicians, and wanting it to sound the way I wanted it to sound."

The dancer-turned-singer will also return to the big screen next year, as she has a small role in Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights (due in February), a forbidden-love story set during the Cuban Revolution. Mya, who contributes a song in Spanish to the soundtrack, plays a singer named Lola Martinez who provides the entertainment during a ballroom competition on New Year's Eve. "I referred to Lena Horne, Dionne Warwick, and [laughs] Ricky Ricardo," she says. "Not vocal, but visual performances. Lena and Dionne were just classy women."

KAREN BLISS
(July 14, 2003)