Belle Ball

This article is about the background of Romo's alter ego, Belle Ball. For the song of the same name, see Belle Ball/Covergirl.
Belle Ball (born October 25, 1986 or 1987, died ?? 2008) is a fictional character who is the subject of Romo's concept album POPSTAR: The Life & Times Of Belle Ball. Belle is described by Romo herself as a pop superstar and tabloid target, as well as "quite possibly the world's biggest train wreck".
Belle was at one point a highly successful recording artist in the United Kingdom, but she struggled to keep herself sane and sober at the same time while attempting to curb her addictions, leading her to kill herself at the age of 21.
==Background==
Jenna Romo came up with the name Belle Ball from the saying "the belle of the ball". The first name Belle is also a nod to the main character in Beauty & The Beast, one of Romo's favorite films as a child.
Romo developed the Belle Ball character specifically for her second album, which marked her transition to electropop. Her idea was to envision "the world's worst celebrity" who does everything wrong with her life and career. She started closely reading tabloid magazines and studied celebrities such as Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Amy Winehouse for ideas on troublesome situations. She also researched celebrities from the past who died young such as Marilyn Monroe and Janis Joplin to figure out how to express the raw emotion of Belle's feelings.
Staying true to her word to create a celebrity who embodies the motives of "the ultimate train wreck", Romo didn't want Belle to recover after reaching rock bottom, something Spears, Hilton, and Lohan were all able to do in 2008.
==Early career==
Belle was attending college while trying to get into the music business, performing for friends, landing club gigs, and recording demo tapes during that time. Though she didn't seem to be anything groundbreaking, instead relying on autotune, heavy thumping dance beats, and a sexualized appearance, Belle landed a deal with Elite Records and was given the green light to record and release her first single.
==Peak popularity==
Belle's debut single is implied to have debuted straight in at the #1 spot, while a number of other releases transformed the singer into a pop superstar in her homeland. Once humble, superstardom changed Belle into a diva.
During the recording sessions for Belle's second album, Elite recruited the famous songwriter Cathy Dennis to help work on some songs with her. But Belle's excessive and outlandish demands turned Cathy off, a heated argument erupted and took the media by storm. Though the media and some of her fans became turned off by the incident, it did not affect her popularity and she continued to sell millions of singles into the next era of her career.
==Sex scandal==
Belle became a notorious tabloid target around this time, notable for attending wild parties and taking men home to fulfill her sexual fetishes. One of the men she took home was apparently psychologically traumatized and humiliated by her sexual demands, and had an undercover cop come to her house to observe what he went through. Belle was charged with sexual misconduct and taken to jail, where she served 14 days before she was released.
==Intervention and aftermath==
Family, friends, fans, and the media all believed that Belle would go from the wrong to the right track following her time in jail, echoing turnarounds in the behavior of tabloid phenomenons such as Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton. However, just days after her release, Belle returned to her hard partying lifestyle. Those close to her were outraged that jail didn't change her at all, agreeing that intervention was necessary to help change her. But Belle, rebellious as ever, declared she wanted to do what she wanted to do with her life and wouldn't let anyone stand in the way of it. Everyone she knew so well faded away immediately after, because they felt she was no longer worth their time for that changing her was hopeless.
Belle could not handle being a pariah. She became emotionally unstable and began experimenting with self-mutilation, one day getting caught by one of the few friends who stood by her in the aftermath of the intervention. This friend also gave up, viewing Belle as ungrateful.
Without drugs, Belle's mood grew worse and worse by the day, suffering from exhaustion, depression, and anger problems. Unable to control her moods, she went into a huge fit of aggression, destroying everything in her house until it smashed to pieces.
==Death==
The day after, Belle left her house for the first time in nearly two weeks. She went to church for the first time in her life, seeking repentance for all the misdeeds she unleashed upon herself. She came to the conclusion that in order to find true happiness, she needed to become one with God in death. Once she returned home, she made a noose out of her favorite dress and hanged herself.
Romo did not want to end the album with the reactions to Belle's death from the public, believing it would be beating a dead horse. She decided in the end to simply finish the album's final track with the word "dead".
==Post-death==
Romo's third album, POPSTAR 2: Belle After Death, begins with the track "Funeral", describing the reactions to Belle's death from the media and the events of her funeral. The album continues as the singer is "replaced" by the 16-year-old obsessed fan Hannah. The album's first two singles, "TITS-FM!" and "Bait & Switch/Hell Is A Discotheque", though centered on Hannah, name Belle Ball at least once somewhere in the lyrics.
Belle briefly appears in the video for "Hell Is A Discotheque".