'I made the right decision': Deborah Cox looks back on her 1999 Juno performance
The R&B star on leaving the Céline Dion tour and the impact of 'Nobody’s Supposed to be Here'
When Deborah Cox walked onto the Juno Awards' stage in 1999 to perform her hit song "Nobody's Supposed to be Here," she was feeling a lot of emotions, but first and foremost was validation.
As a young singer, she had landed a gig as a backup singer for Céline Dion's tour, but in 1994, she moved to the U.S. to pursue a solo career, a move that could have gone either way.
"I left one of the biggest tours with Céline Dion to pursue my own dream and here I was at the Junos performing," an emotional Cox says. "It was really gratifying, really validating.… I just didn't know what the future was going to hold. The complications of working through those emotions was harder than the actual performance onstage."
As it turns out, Cox had made the right move in '94, and "Nobody's Supposed to be Here," off her second album, spent a record-breaking 14 weeks at the No. 1 spot on the Billboard R&B chart, as well as peaking at No. 2 on the Hot 100 chart.
"I stepped away and took a chance on myself," she says. "Looking back, I made the right decision."
You can watch Cox's full My Junos Moment above.
Wherever you are in the world, you can tune in to the 2021 Juno Awards on Sunday, June 6. You can watch live on CBC TV and CBC Gem, listen on CBC Radio One and CBC Music and stream globally at CBCMusic.ca/junos.
