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Tyra Sings on 'Model'

By Daniel Fienberg

Monday, February 16, 2004

11:16 AM PT

Fans of UPN's "America's Next Top Model" know that the word "modest" can rarely be used to describe host, executive producer and general role model Tyra Banks. However, while Banks is all-too-willing to relate anecdotes from her years of experience as a supermodel, she apparently has one skill that she's been keeping private for a number of years. Tyra's got the music in her and on Tuesday, Feb. 24, it's gonna burst out.

Banks will make her singing debut in a music video that airs at the end of that night's "Next Top Model." The video will feature the comely stars of her smash series.

For Banks, the decision to share her voice -- like so many hair and makeup tips -- with the world wasn't an easy one.

"I've been studying music and voice for six years," she told reporters in January. "I've been recording for six years very secretly because I feel like if you're a model... they really don't want you to act and I know they don't want you to sing."

After building into a sleeper summer hit for UPN, "Next Top Model" has seen its performance improve nearly every week. Through Sunday, Feb. 8, the dramality series was averaging nearly 6.04 million viewers, and the numbers have been dancing around 7 million for a number of weeks. At least temporarily, "Top Model" has surpassed the venerable "WWE Smackdown!" as UPN's most watched series.

That makes for a very prominent forum for Banks' debut as a chanteuse, but she's prepared.

"I felt like I had to have something ready to show the public and for them to hear, for them to see me in action in a music video," she says.

Banks has at least one fan in her camp in former supermodel and current loopy "Top Model" judge Janice Dickinson.

"She can sing," Dickson gushes.

"America's Next Top Model" airs on Tuesday nights at 9 p.m. ET.