Grammy award-winning songstress Toni Braxton has said she regrets not totally letting her hair down during her youthful days. In an interview with The Guardian, the Un-Break My Heart singer admitted her religious upbringing deterred her from doing “a lot of things” she “should have done” while growing up.
“I regret not having more sex when I was younger,” she said. “I should have drunk more. I should have partied more. Smoked more, even. I think my religious upbringing stopped me doing a lot of things that I should have done. It’s not a good look at the age I am now. The way it works is you do that stuff in your 20s and 30s and then in your 40s you’ve earned enough to pay for the therapy.”
Though the 52-year-old said she isn’t a religious person but rather spiritual and believes in a “greater force”, she said her family was very religious during her childhood and they switched between several denominations in their quest to find the “right path.”
“When I was seven, my family became very religious. We were Jehovah’s Witnesses; we were Catholic – we tried everything before settling on United Methodist,” she said. “I asked my mum once what they were searching for and she just replied: ‘It was the 70s.’ The 70s were a very religious era. I think a lot of people were looking for the right path.”
Braxton, who is also one of the highest-selling female singers in history, also spoke about how she was discovered, saying as weird as that story may sound, that encounter catapulted her to stardom.
“Nobody believes how I was discovered,” Braxton said. “They think it’s a story for publicity, but it’s absolutely true. I was in college and one day I was at the gas station, singing to myself while I filled the car. The attendant [William E Pettaway Jr, writer of Girl You Know It’s True, by Milli Vanilli] comes up to me and tells me he likes my voice and that he’d like to do some demos with me. I thought it was just a line, but I went with it and here I am. He went on to buy the gas station!”
The mother of two released her 10th studio album, Spell My Name, last week. An autism ambassador, the singer also touched on one of her sons’ diagnosis and people’s misconceptions about the disorder.
“I wish autism wasn’t so misunderstood,” she said. “My son was diagnosed with autism when he was three and I work with the charity Autism Speaks. I’m blessed. He’s in a regular school now. I always tell people that early diagnosis changes everything, but also that our babies just learn differently – that’s all.”
