Dua Lipa's New Rules, released in the summer
of 2017, spent eight non-consecutive weeks at number one on the
singles chart and is approaching 2 billion views on Youtube.
The
tropical house / EDM / electropop hit was played to death over
commercial radio, but something that may have slipped past you is the
incredible remix from Initial Talk, who offer up
an early example of Synthwave, 'a genre of electronic music
influenced by 1980s film soundtracks and video games.' -(Wiki).
This particular track was uploaded to Youtube in October '17,
accompanied with footage from the Miss Teen Canada Pageant '88. It's
since amassed 5 million views.
Here's
the original Miss Teen Canada Pageant '88 video, a great 80's
treasure featuring rapping, gymnastics, big perms, singing hosts,
lens flare and hockey jocks.
Credited
in both videos is a 16-year-old Sandy Struss, Miss Teen Kamloops, who-
having reached the final- was awarded Miss Teen Fitness.
Wikipedia
tells that Kamloops, in
south-central British Columbia, is located on the west coast of
Canada at the confluence of the two branches of the Thompson
River and east of Kamloops
Lake.
I
caught up with Sandy over Twitter to ask her about the tournament.
“The
pageant was a beautiful memory for me from a lifetime ago. I honestly
don’t remember how I heard about the pageant, but it was the first
Miss Teen Kamloops competition ever and I thought it might be a neat
opportunity. I was a top student in school, played the piano, and was
a competitive swimmer. Through the pageant, I got training in public
speaking and formal presentation (i.e. walking on a stage in high
heels and a gown) and it turned out I was pretty natural on a stage.
I learned how to deal with nerves in front of a large audience - an
invaluable life skill! I ended up winning the scholastic achievement
award, the talent award, and the public speaking award in the
Kamloops pageant, and ended up winning the whole thing at age 16.
Then it was off to Toronto to film and compete in Miss Teen Canada on
national television!
 |
| Miss Teen Kamloops with Miss Teen Calgary, 1988 |
“Honestly,
the whole thing was a big adventure and a learning experience unlike
anything I had ever been exposed to before. Being in front of TV
cameras and then to have to speak into a camera (while seeing my own
reflection in it - a very weird experience!) was new, and going
through all the behind-the-scenes preparations was a whole other
world. What a grand life experience for a teenager! And to have the
support of friends and teachers from school back home (I remember
getting a good luck telegram from my school - this was before the
Internet!) was heartwarming. I ended up being the first-runner-up to
Miss Teen Canada, and you can’t imagine the fanfare that awaited me
back home at the airport and the cards and well wishes afterwards
(even in the newspaper!) of how proud the city was to have me to
represent Kamloops. I was just a small town girl. It was amazing.
“The
fitness competition in the national pageant was a whole series of
tests done at a fitness institute to measure strength, flexibility,
and cardiovascular health (hooked up to monitors to see pulse while
running on a treadmill) - and while I was never a jock at school, I
guess my years of swimming had served me well as I ended up winning
the fitness category and Miss Teen Fitness! In those days, there was
no bathing suit category. It was fitness. Winning that is what got me
featured in that ridiculous dance number which was taped for the
pageant (the original can be described as nothing short of
embarrassing) - and now all these years later, somebody remixed the
footage to the amazing Dua Lipa music!
“The
pageant was a beautiful memory for me from a lifetime ago. In my
mind, it marks the end of an era as a year later I was diagnosed with
Type 1 diabetes (the autoimmune kind) and life was never the same
again.”
Neither
Dua Lipa nor Initial Talk were available for comment. For more
Synthwave, check out Digitally Imported.
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