Bella Thorne

By the time Bella Thorne began laying down tracks for Call It Whatever in 2013 at age sixteen, the Pembroke Pines, Florida native had already amassed years of experience that predated her 2010 entry into the Disney Channel fold with a lead part in Shake It Up. Modeling gigs came first, including multiple nationwide campaigns that ended with her becoming the youngest spokesperson ever for Texas Instruments. Acting roles followed in 2006 and 2007 on Entourage and The O.C., respectively, after which she secured the part of Margaux Darling for the 2007-2008 run of Dirty Sexy Money. Subsequent work encompassed a short-lived 2008 series, My Own Worst Enemy, in which she played Christian Slater’s daughter, plus a 2010 appearance on the fourth season of Big Love. The same year proved decisive when she joined the Disney roster, first with a Wizards of Waverly Place guest spot and then the starring turn on Shake It Up.

While co-starring opposite Zendaya as a teenage dancer across the program’s three seasons from 2010 to 2013, Thorne also appeared in the 2012 Disney Channel film Frenemies and contributed to the Shake It Up soundtrack, which reached number twenty-two on the Billboard 200 and topped the Top Kid Audio chart upon its 2011 release. Her first standalone single, “TTYLXOX,” grazed the Hot 100 in 2012. Hollywood Records disclosed a full-album deal in 2013; recording stretched beyond twelve months and yielded the early-summer-2014 single “Call It Whatever.” The finished LP was slated for that year, yet additional commitments intervened, among them a lead role in Adam Sandler’s summer 2014 feature Blended and the writing of her debut novel Autumn Falls, centered on a teenager whose existence is transformed by magic.

When the first installment of the projected trilogy appeared in 2015, the album itself had already been shelved. Jersey EP arrived in its stead in November 2014. Subsequent screen work included a mean-girl turn in the 2015 teen comedy The DUFF and the 2017 series Famous in Love, yet Thorne stayed away from recording until featured spots on Prince Fox’s “Just Call” and Borgore’s “Salad Dressing” in 2017. Early 2018 brought the solo track “Burn So Bright,” drawn from the soundtrack to her romantic drama Midnight Sun.