Catie Disabato - The Ghost Network

In the months before her disappearance, Molly Metropolis spent most of her time with her creative team, her General Council. The General Council included her choreographer, her personal trainer, her stylists, her dancers, and her manger/creative director Momo Waxler, among others. She was inspired by Andy Warhol’s infamous Factory and tried to include that kind of collective art-making in her own life. Molly published a list of the original members of the General Council, with their nicknames, in the liner notes of Cause Célèbrety when it was released on September 16, 2008. It reads as follows, with my notes in parentheses and italics:

Metro. ( Molly Metropolis )

T.T. ( Tasha Taylor — Molly’s personal assistant before Nix )

Momo. ( Momo Waxler — Creative Director )

Peaches. ( Anna “Peaches” Fontaine — Dancer )

Ali. ( Ruann Alison West — Dancer )

R. “Prince.” ( Ronnie Princeton — engineer of Molly’s various contraptions )

J.F.P. ( Joe Frank Parker — Choreographer )

Nance. ( Nancy DeWitt — Costume Designer )

(When the UK edition of Cause Célèbrety was released in November, the list had expanded to include Belle Brandice, Ronnie “Tech” F. [ The Tech Guy, Tour Manager 2008–2009 ], R. “Gina” N. [ Regina Nix ], and David Walker: The Librarian.)

The members of the General Council helped create the subway-map body paint design that decorated her in the “New Vogue Riche” music video, her now-iconic metallic bodysuit from her 2009 MTV Video Music Awards performance, and the LED “mini city” from the “Apocalypse Dance” video.

In an interview with NeonLimelight.com, Molly described the formation of her General Council: “I brought together a costume designer and a choreographer and a makeup artist and instead of making just a team or just a family, we made a team and a family that lives in a city together ” [ italics mine ].

For Molly Metropolis, songwriting wasn’t a simple process of writing lyrics and selecting beats, it was creating a large-scale work of art. While she tweaked her hooks, she sketched costume ideas for the song’s music video, discussed choreography ideas with Parker, and designed cover art for the single. She treated writing a song like making a movie and as such, she needed a full crew.

Molly Metro traveled almost constantly during 2008, even when she wasn’t touring; she lived in Chicago, but spent half of her time in Los Angeles for music industry — related business. Her friends and the members of the General Council thought Molly visited Chicago to see her dancer friends Ali and Peaches, who had once been members of a very early version the General Council, but whose contracts Molly had terminated in early 2008. Instead, Molly spent her time assembling The Ghost Network with Nicolas Berliner.

Once she and Berliner had completed The Ghost Network, Molly stayed in Chicago to work with her General Council and write, produce, and record songs for Cause Apocalyptic . Although none of the songs on the album had been officially released before, at least three of the tracks that ultimately made it onto Cause Apocalyptic stemmed from previously leaked early Molly Metropolis demos. Those three tracks reworked for her new album include “Lost,” “Beneath the Pavement,” and “Bang Bang.”

In Chicago, Molly fell into a creative routine. She woke up midmorning and after a long workout with her personal trainer, she went to her studio space to meet with the members of the General Council. Everyone assembled around lunchtime. Sometimes Molly was social, eating, talking, and drinking wine with her friends and collaborators. Sometimes she shut herself up in one of her private recording rooms, blocked off the windows, and wrote her lyrics in isolation. She shared the themes she was developing, as well as some snippets of lyrics and melody, which the other members of the General Council used to begin designing stage sets and developing marketing strategies. Parker started choreographing the “Apocalypse Dance” music video before Molly had even finished the song. The choreography involved a lot of leaps and sudden drops to the floor.

In the early evenings, the General Council had “family dinner.” Molly required that every member of the G.C. attend at least two family dinners a week, and she preferred when everyone attended all of them. The dinners were catered; the food was paid for by SDFC. Most nights, all the Council members met around the large wooden dinner table. While they ate fish, salad, and quinoa (Molly had gained a few pounds and was on a strict diet and a directive from the label to slim), they discussed the aesthetic focus of the new album and the tour that would support it. Everyone was invited to offer suggestions, but Molly’s final word was law.

While Molly was developing Cause Apocalyptic , she also communicated extensively with noted fashion designer Johan Van Duncan and his assistant, Angela Sebastian-Hay to discuss costuming for her music videos and live shows. Van Duncan reportedly sent Molly early sketches of the sculpted platform stilettos and the “distressed” metallic-green-rhinestone and mirror-glass encrusted body suit she wore in the “Apocalypse Dance” video. Molly visited Van Duncan’s studio, tried on outfits, and often socialized with the designer. After returning from visits with Van Duncan — who committed suicide on February 10, 2010, just over a month after Molly disappeared — Molly reported to her dancers that Van Duncan’s mood was “stunningly creative, but equally stunningly dark.”

In September 2008, SDFC flew Molly and the whole General Council to Los Angeles to record the album under the watchful eye of her Executive Producer, Darren J. Horner. At six feet four inches and three hundred pounds, Horner was an intimidating presence with an unflinching work ethic. Crack his shell, though, and he has a big smile and easy laugh. He made his name nurturing Mariah Carey and Christina Aguilera’s careers. Along the way, he developed a reputation for working well with difficult personalities. SDFC tapped him to produce Molly Metropolis’s second record because they thought he had the wherewithal to take her over-the-top aesthetic and highbrow aspirations and shape them into a consumable pop product, without betraying the essential “Molly-ness” her Pop Eaters knew and loved.

To prepare himself for Molly, Horner ingested a steady stream of ’80s synth-pop like Duran Duran and the Pet Shop Boys, as well as contemporary examples of synthwave or “Outrun Techno” like Twin Shadow’s album Confess . He also prepared himself for a battle. Horner had heard rumors that Molly Metropolis was headstrong and argumentative, so he expected to have to reel her in. Molly defied Horner’s expectations; she was a collaborative worker and as docile as a pussycat.

Impressed with Molly’s professionalism and satisfied by her obedience, Horner never guessed he was being played. Molly’s friends at SDFC had warned her that Horner was a “big personality” and Molly decided the best way to work with him was to make him think he was making every decision. She manipulated him subtly throughout the entire recording process, fighting quietly for her aesthetic voice to shine through the studio production. At the same time, Horner was an experienced and adept enough producer to understand when the studios had caught lightning in a bottle. He knew Molly’s success primarily had to do with her distinctive point of view. Of course, under the costumes and rhetoric, Molly wrote straightforward pop songs. In 2008, Molly was a hard sell because her songs were considered “dance,” not Top 40, and SDFC’s marketing team stumbled a bit while pushing a non-white artist, who wasn’t already a star, outside of the “urban” demographic. But by the time she and Horner were recording her second album, she’d remade the Top 40 in her image. g