“I’m a singer who acts,” Jennifer Love Hewitt told Billboard in 2002. “It’s my spirit. I feel alive when I do it. I love acting, but it came unexpected in my life. Singing has always been a part of me.”
Before she came to fame largely via a starring role in Fox’s Party of Five beginning in 1995, Hewitt had already hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 — as a backing vocalist on Martika’s “Toy Soldiers.” The song topped the chart for two weeks in July 1989. Fergie also sang on the ballad, with all three having been in the cast of the Disney Channel’s Kids Incorporated.
Meanwhile, Hewitt released her first two albums, Love Songs, in 1992, and her self-titled set in 1996. (The former includes a Debbie Gibson co-write and a cover of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.”)
It was the I Know What You Did Last Summer franchise — newly rebooted, with Hewitt — however, that not only provided her breakout film role, but also her first Billboard chart success under her own name.
The first of the three theatrical slasher movies, the 1997 original I Know What You Did Last Summer, has grossed a reported $73 million. While it introduced Hewitt’s Julie James, starring alongside Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr., and Ryan Phillippe, its soundtrack served up meaty ‘90s rock, from acts including Korn, Soul Asylum and Toad the Wet Sprocket.
In 1998, sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer was released, along with its soundtrack — headlined by Hewitt’s single, “How Do I Deal.” The song marked her Billboard chart debut, entering the Pop Airplay chart dated Jan. 23, 1999. It went on to peak at No. 36 two weeks later, when it also became her first Hot 100 hit (“Toy Soldiers” excepted).
The film co-starred Brandy — whose “Have You Ever” spent its second week atop the Hot 100 the week that Hewitt made her chart arrival. The song became Brandy’s second leader, after “The Boy Is Mine,” with Monica, reigned for 13 weeks in 1998, on its way to another summer-related achievement, winning top song of the summer honors that year.
(In other musical endeavors in that era, Hewitt starred in the video for LFO’s “Girl on TV,” which rose to No. 10 on the Hot 100 in 1999. In 2001, she also starred in the clip for Enrique Iglesias’ “Hero,” an enduring No. 3 hit.)
In 2002, Hewitt charted her first album, as Barenaked hit No. 37 on the Billboard 200 that October. Its title track, with Hewitt and Meredith Brooks (who hit No. 2 on the Hot 100 in 1997 with her pop-rock classic, “Bitch”) among its co-writers, reached No. 31 on Adult Pop Airplay and No. 35 on Pop Airplay. The LP has sold 101,000 in the United States to date, according to Luminate.
In a July 6, 2002, Billboard review of “Barenaked,” Chuck Taylor called the song “a natural fit for the radio class of 2002, with its acoustic, guitar-etched backdrop, catchy melody and savvy production.” He also praised its lyrics as “smart, colorful commentary on staying above water when life trips you up.”
Plus, Taylor shouted out “How Do I Deal” as “a hidden treasure.”
Hewitt co-wrote all but four songs on Barenaked. She told Billboard for an interview that ran in the Aug. 17, 2002, issue, “Most people don’t know I’ve been in music for a long time. I feel as though I have been searching for 14 years to find this record. It’s very organic. It would have gone a lot easier and faster had I made a strict pop album with someone else writing all the music and lyrics. But I wanted to challenge myself.”
(Hewitt also called Brooks “someone I could pour my heart out to. I found a kindred spirit with her, somebody that I could completely relate to, someone that shared every good and bad day I had.”)
The album was released on Jive Records, and Hewitt made promotional rounds, including at radio, like any other eager artist. “Initially, I would have said our biggest marketing asset was Jennifer’s positioning as an actress and movie star,” the label’s then-vp of pop promotion, Joe Riccitelli, said. “Now, it’s just Jennifer being Jennifer. Every place we went, every person we met saw her in a new light, and they liked what they saw.”
Meanwhile, long after I Know What You Did Last Summer first hooked moviegoers, the title again contributed to Billboard’s charts, even if not directly related to any of the franchise’s films — in 2016, Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello’s duet by that name hit No. 10 on Pop Airplay and No. 20 on the Hot 100.
Hewitt, who has been starring in Fox’s 9-1-1 since 2018, is celebrating the legacy of I Know What You Did Last Summer, telling Variety in an interview published this week that the new film, which premiered Friday (July 18), “is showing young girls out there that we get older and you can’t count us out. If you’ve got a ‘fighter spirit’ … plus the ability to fight and run in heels or high-heeled boots … there’s room for everyone.
“Where other parts of society try to go, ‘Oh, well, she’s gotten a little older, so we’ll just go get this person now,’ ‘final girls’ are ageless,” Hewitt mused. “It’s a good message to send: We do get better.”
