CRUSH GROVE SONGWRITER SCORES WITH ODE OT `X-FILES' STAR

By Mark Caro
Tribune Staff Writer
August 4, 1999

Don't ask Bree Sharp, the 23-year-old singer-songwriter of "David Duchovny," about her favorite novelty song.

"Are you implying that my song is a novelty song?" she huffed good-naturedly on the phone from New York, where she lives. "I actually don't think that it's a novelty song. I know why on the surface people might say that . . . but the truth is when I wrote it, I thought that I had written something actually a little more unique than that."

However you define it, Sharp's catchy ditty about her infatuation with the "X-Files" star -- and a fan's inability to separate fact and fantasy -- has landed her on pop-rock radio stations nationwide, which can only help boost her just-released debut CD, "A Cheap and Evil Girl" (Trauma). Many people develop crushes on celebrities, but few parlay them into career breakthroughs.

"I'm not the kind of person who likes to get autographs," she insisted. "I don't join fan clubs or anything like that. But I just got really attached to the show and was more and more drawn to his character and found myself really crushed out on him, surprisingly enough to myself, and I guess the song just kind of came out.

"I really didn't want him to think I was some kind of kooky songwriter-fan-girl because I did have this strange feeling like I would meet him, as much as that totally fits into my psycho profile," she said. "I really had a feeling like I was going to meet him, and I didn't want to meet him as the fan."

She wrote the song anyway -- with the hook "David Duchovny, why won't you love me?" -- and late last year, Duchovny was sent a demo of the song. When an assistant to "X-Files" creator Chris Carter heard it, he enlisted a cast of celebrities to lip-sync to it on a Christmas video for the actor.

"Oh, my God, I peed my pants," Sharp said of her reaction to the video. "I absolutely urinated. It was very bizarre and parallel universe, and it was really funny and random. It's pop culture in action. Between Brad Pitt, Charles Nelson Reilly and Kiss, I just thought that I had entered `The Twilight Zone.' "

Although Duchovny has commented favorably on the song, the singer still hasn't met him.

"I wanted to meet him desperately, especially when I heard that he heard the song, and it seemed like we were moving toward that, and that would be the obvious end," she said. "I think it still is. I just thought that it was going to happen a lot sooner. But now I'm sort of being interviewed, and he's being interviewed, so we're starting to have some kind of contact through the media.

"Actually, I'd like to meet him on television. I think that that's appropriate. I think enough people have been following the story that it would be interesting to share that moment with people. I think everyone wants to imagine that they as unknown people can meet their untouchable crush."

In case you were wondering, Bree Sharp is her real name.

"It really is," she said. "Actually, I don't think my parents realized, to be honest with you, that there was any cheese connection at all. They really didn't until I came home saying people were making fun of me. I was actually named after Jane Fonda in the movie `Klute.' Her name is Bree Daniel, and my parents saw it when my mom was pregnant. It's with Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland, and she plays a hooker. I always say my parents had high aspirations for me."