I finally had to stop wearing my good luck underwear. I didn’t want to, but there came a day when I could not deny the obvious: their good luck had run out. I put them in my “Memmy” — the affectionate name my best friend and I call the memory boxes we keep stacked on shelves in our bedrooms. Mine is full of tour laminates, letters from exes and would have been exes, polaroids, and clippings from the first magazines that printed my name. I added the panties to this box of nostalgia, hidden from view where they belonged.

​

I loved those underwear though. They were a Christmas gift from my mother. Every year, my mom bunches up a few pairs of new panties, and wraps them under a piece of recycled paper. Taped to the top there is always a sticky note with “heart MAMA” written on it in big, rushed handwriting. There have been many pairs over the years, but only this one was magical. Lacy and feminine, with a rusty purple and pink smattering of abstract flowers, I liked how they felt on my body. It didn’t start as anything superstitious — at first I would wear them for special occasions because I liked them best. They made me feel a little more powerful somehow — like a metaphor for my strength within, they were my strength below. To a fancy party, or with my favorite outfit, if I was wearing something special on top, it seemed only appropriate to wear something special underneath. But over time, they began to reveal their true powers to me. They took on a new role — like a spell or a hoax — a required love potion for the object of my desire. It must have been after I wore them as the opening act at Madison Square Garden that I truly understood their gift. I was twenty-one and used to playing shows in the atrium of frat houses, but plucked out of school by a celebrity who wanted to start a record label, I was suddenly singing for thousands of people a night. I was thrilled, terrified, I needed some good luck. An hour before I was meant to sing, I took two shots of tequila and put on the panties. I don’t remember being on stage, but when I watch grainy YouTube videos of the performance, I’m reminded of the outfit I wore: black velvet overalls with black boots, my hair pulled half back. No one but me knows what I’m wearing underneath — the underwear — the only thing on my body that night that was actually mine. When I walked off stage, I felt electric. Like I was high, like I was found, like I’d been plugged in. I knew it then: the panties were special. So I wore them again and again. I wore them when I made my first music video, and when I sang on the Today Show. I wore them the day my first single was played on the radio, and a few years later with my second. I wore them when I sang on Jimmy Kimmel, and when I performed at swanky Hollywood parties. I wore them on the first night of every tour, and when I had sessions with legendary songwriters. I never wore them on a regular day. I never wore them with a boy. Only for my greatest dreams, I gave them go after go. Even after getting dropped without as much as a text message, I kept my faith, wearing them the day I signed my second deal with Columbia Records. I remember pulling them from the back of my drawer that morning. Slipping them on, I felt a mixture of thrill and dread, the panties begging me to believe, a tug from my hippocampus begging me not to. It was just a year later that I found myself the casualty of a leadership change at Columbia, and dropped from the label. It wasn’t instantaneous, there wasn’t a bolt of lightning or a dramatic score playing in the background, but that was the day the magic underwear finally lost their luster. Soon after, I woke up with the strong sense that the panties had served their time. 

​

Continue reading on Medium 

​

​

​