Singer Frankee has done the impossible more than once: getting a number one hit with a response song, and now proving completely unfindable in the time of social media.
In 2004 – a full 20 years ago – an unknown US musician called Eamon Doyle took over the airwaves for months with the ultimate bitter breakup song: F**k It (I Don’t Want You Back).
The track saw him lash out at an ex-girlfriend for cheating on him with lyrics as explicit as they were mournful, such as the iconic: ‘I do admit I’m sad, it hurts real bad, I can’t sweat that ’cause I loved a hoe.’
The epitome of early noughties culture, it held the number one spot in the UK for a whopping four weeks, and censored versions (as much as it was possible to censor it) were doled out in Now That’s What I Call Music compilations, leading to the incredibly inappropriate song being sung in playgrounds across the UK and Ireland.
But just as the hype appeared to be petering out, Nicole Francine Aiello, aka Frankee, arrived on the scene with a very familiar-sounding song, hitting back at Eamon’s track with lyrics that made the original sound like a nursery rhyme.
In a music video that looked in parts as though it were made with Windows Movie Maker, Frankee, dressed in noughties couture and surrounded by giggling friends, begins by declaring ‘There are two sides to every story,’ and starts throwing gifts out the window to a man – who looks very much like Eamon – begging for her back.
There are just too many gems in FURB to pick a favourite lyric, but some standouts have to be: ‘F**k what I did, it was your fault somehow … I had better sex all alone, I had to do your friend … Now you want me to come back, you must be smoking crack … guess what yo, your sex was wack.’
Released in March 2004, FURB (Or F**k You Right Back) exploded instantly. It knocked Eamon’s song from the top spot and became the first-ever ‘answer song’ to reach number one.
Everyone, and I mean everyone was talking about this song.These tracks went viral before viral was a thing, and fans were desperate to know the lore. Frankee had made it seem as though she was Eamon’s ex-girlfriend, and while Eamon later clarified he had never actually met her and only gave her permission to use his beat, plenty of us preferred to live the illusion that we were watching an unbelievably bitter breakup play out on the airwaves.
It’s hard to believe this all happened 20 years ago, and unless you were there it’s hard to illustrate just how massive these two songs were. And without Frankee’s hit-back, Eamon’s F**k It would have been a bop, but not the Cultural Moment that it was.
Both artists came out of nowhere, and it’s not unusual to be a one-hit wonder and fall forever off the charts, but Frankee is different. She is gone, with a capital G.
New York native Eamon can easily be found with a quick Google. He’s still making music, shares updates on his career and family life with fans on Instagram, and is himself reflecting on the 20th anniversary of his biggest hit.
But Frankee vanished almost as quickly as she arrived on the scene. After being in every UK teen magazine, topping the chart for two weeks and spending six weeks in the top 10, she disappeared so completely it’s genuinely bewildering.
There is only the vaguest information available online about what Frankee did next: after her initial success, in 2006 released another single, which didn’t chart.
She was dropped from her record label, not a unique story whatsoever, and she then apparently began working as a model. Also not unique.
What is unique, though, is that she has absolutely zero online footprint. If she did go on to be a model, she either wasn’t at all successful or did so under a new alias.
She’s not on social media, not using the massive nostalgia wave of the last few years to claim some Z-list celebrity status, which would likely be enough to get her on reality shows or at the very least viral on TikTok.
Searching her full name on Facebook brings up women who are too young, or too old, or are very clearly not her. There are a few women with just enough similarities that made me think: ‘well… maybe?’ and get in touch with, but none were her.
I tore through pages and pages of Nicoles, Nikkis, Frankies and Francines, across social media and through some of the most random offerings of Google, but to no avail.
Although for one golden moment I thought I had found her: Frankee was now a soap star, and had been appearing in it for years! How had we all missed this? Oh no, wait, it’s a fanfiction of a fictional soap opera, where the author had cast Frankee as one of the characters… and then replaced her with a different actress years later. When I say I was in a rabbit hole, I was deep.
I got in touch with a US real estate agent on Instagram who apologised for the disappointment but told me Aiello was just her married name. I hit up a US-based lawyer (because who knows, maybe Frankee really changed career directions after the modelling didn’t work out?) but got no reply.
I contacted her original record label, Marro Records, who never responded; tracked down Big Records, which she was dropped from after her 2006 single tanked, who completely ghosted me.
I tried several different ways of getting in touch with AATW, the company behind the FURB music video: absolutely nothing.
Even Eamon himself, who kindly responded to my inquiries, just reminded me that he had never actually met her and had no idea what happened to her. I had hit a proper dead end.
A few media outlets have done the ‘where are these stars now?’ pieces about Frankee and Eamon, and every one of them appears to have hit the same wall: lots of information about Eamon’s life, followed by a ‘Frankee reportedly went into modelling’.
One exception is a 2016 piece from Tyla, where they note how incredibly out of the spotlight she has become, but included a few images taken from Facebook, with the disclaimer ‘we’re prettyyyy sure this is her nowadays’.
We tried to get in touch with the journalist who seemingly achieved the impossible with that piece but, again, to no reply.
I don’t have the type of budget that allows for a private investigator, but if I did, I reckon they’d even struggle.
Because Frankee could easily get media appearances and at the very least take her crown as a nostalgic noughties account just by having a public social media presence, we have to come to the conclusion that she just doesn’t want to be found.
But Frankee, if you ever change your mind — our DMs are open.
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