EXCLUSIVE: The 80s pop icon, who shot to fame with her 1987 hit I Think We’re Alone Now, says she has no time for online haters who target her weight, as she opens up about her secret struggle with Long Covid since the pandemic.
Two decades ago, 1980s pop sensation Tiffany caused a storm after shedding her squeaky-clean image to pose nude for Playboy. Now, more than two decades on, the I Think We’re Alone Now singer has revealed how cruel body shamers have tried to drag her down for putting on weight.
But the 54-year-old reveals that since the pandemic she has secretly been battling with chronic fatigue and on bad days it is too much of a struggle to exercise.
The singer says she has no time for the haters who fat shame her and call out her age, “I have a limit and it gives me great pleasure to delete them. Goodbye. Why bother to be toxic?”
She admits, “I have fluctuated with my weight quite a bit in the last couple of years because I have Long Covid and I’m learning to deal with that.
“Some days I just battle feeling well enough to go and work out which is not the norm for me. I’ve always enjoyed working out however tired I’ve been. I’ve always been very strong and believed in ‘mind over matter’ but there have been days where I have to listen to my body and I’m like, I don’t have it in me today. If I push myself I will actually be doing further damage.”
Nearly 40 years after her hit song took the world by storm, the US singer is still working and touring and now divides her time between a home in Hampshire and a house in Nashville.
“I’m learning to work with it, and I’m getting better, but my lifestyle aggravates it; being in different beds, travelling all the time, different foods, so it’s a learning curve.
“But there have been times when I have flare ups and then I really do retain water. And you can’t hide that from the camera. The camera makes it worse. You’re like, I don’t look like that in person do I? And people say, No, but the camera adds a million pounds. I’m horrified by pictures of me taken from live shows sometimes.”
She adds, “But now I’m on all these Long Covid sites, I see people have it a lot worse than I am dealing with. For me it’s an annoyance, but I’ve met a lot of people and they don’t have the energy to do most things, so I’m blessed to feel like I got a very slight bit of it, and I’m making it work. I do get flare ups that throws me in a curve ball, but we’ve just got to find what this is so we can over come it. On my chat rooms, I do a lot of meditation and prayer for everyone to get through this.”
Tiffany says she loves to look back at photos of herself in her prime although when she agreed to do her Playboy shoot in 2002 she was unsure if she was doing the right thing.
“Then I got to sit with Hugh Hefner and plan the shoot and I felt it was tasteful,” she recalls. “I worked really hard on my body and got into the best shape of my life and went all in.”
Recalling the headline-hitting shoot, she has no regrets. “It wasn’t a family favourite (her own family) but I’m happy I did it! I love it still,” she says of the nude photos.
“I was struggling with my music because people were like, ‘She’s a one-hit wonder. She’s that little girl-next-door mall girl. And that completely blew their perception of who I was and changed my image and my life. People saw me as sexy.”
Her male fan base grew overnight and they still come up to her to this day to get their copies of Playboy magazine personally signed. And her proud fiancé musician Mark Alberici (correct) is a fan of the photos too, “One of them is framed and has pride of place in his studio!” she laughs.
The singer, who once earned $35,000 a night touring at the height of her fame, and bought a $1.6 million mansion in California from action star Chuck Norris,
Twice married, she has a son Elijah, 34, from her first marriage, but she says, “We all go into a relationship hoping that is the right one, that’s what I did with my marriages, but then things happen,” she shrugs.
“I’ve saved the best until last with Mark. He’s British and although we met in Nashville, he has a lot of family in the UK so we’re back and forth.
“I met my soulmate. We finish each other’s sentences. He’s a singer-songwriter and produced my last couple of albums. It’s going strong and I’m very lucky.”
She hopes the couple will wed in the near future, “I love Italy so we think we’ll get married there. Next year we will have been together for 10 years so maybe then.”
She delights in calling the UK home, “I adore the countryside, nature and green landscapes. And I love a cup of tea! I feel like an honorary Brit.”
The singer has enjoyed a recent resurgence of fame after her 1987 classic I Think We’re Alone Now, was featured in the fifth and final season of Stranger Things in a key moment in the last episode.
The feature led to a massive resurgence in the track’s streams, skyrocketing it onto charts worldwide including the UK.
“No one tipped me off. I had no idea they were using it in the show until it happened. I’m a huge fan of the show and I had all my girlfriends messaging me when it aired. My son was staying with me and he thought it was pretty cool too – we share a love for sci-fi!”
Tiffany, who appeared on the UK series of The Masked Singer in 2024, has also had a highly successful parallel career in cookery and as a business entrepreneur. She runs Let’s Food with Tiffany, a subscription culinary platform and has expanded her brand into the official cookbook titled Pop Life of the Ultimate 80s Kitchen Encore which came out last month (May).
She will be supporting Kim Wilde on her 13-date Singles Tour next year, “The Eighties were fun and that resonates with people now. We were very fortunate as Eighties kids to live that.
“Kim and I shared the same record label and for me, growing up as a woman in the industry, I’ve always been inspired by her. She has always kept the great songs coming and has had a full creative life,” she says.
TIFFANY SUPPORTS KIM WILDE ON THE SINGLES TOUR MARCH 2027 – TICKETS ON SALE NOW VIA: https://tiffanytunes.com/tour
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