Neurosurgeon or Pop Idol?

Deciding to go to Harvard is usually a no-brainer, but for Katie E. Fitzgerald ’09, the choice was a little less obvious.

Fitzgerald, who spent the last two years in Los Angeles living off a contract with Jive Records, was on her way to becoming a star when she decided to enroll at Harvard instead.

But she insists that her decision wasn’t a hard one.

“I wasn’t one of those kids who knew they wanted to be on MTV,” she says. “As far back as I can remember I wanted to come to Harvard and be a neurosurgeon.”

Singing was something she fell into along the way.

“When I was 10 I thought Jewel was the coolest thing in the world, and I wanted to buy a guitar,” says Fitzgerald. She began singing at smaller events, which turned into birthday parties and graduations.

After going through a garage band phase (with a number titled “Your Mom”), she began to write her own songs. Now she describes her music as on a “gradient between rock and folk.”

Fitzgerald spent the next few years recording demos, and eventually signed with Jive Records, the label home to such icons as Britney Spears, *NSYNC and R. Kelly.

“When I met with the president of Jive, I sat across from him and I wanted to tell him that he had ruined music for my generation and I wanted to fix it,” Fitzgerald says, laughing. “Frankly, I thought his label had homogenized music for us. But they signed me anyways.”

Almost immediately, though, Fitzgerald’s cynicism clashed with her new producers. “They had this thing where they thought my lyrics were too intellectual and too heady, and I would not get promised a release date for my [first] CD,” she says.

Fitzgerald insists that her decision to break her contract and enroll at Harvard is a pathway—not a deterrent—to her music career.

“Getting to learn and grow is going to do so much more for my music than being on Jive,” she says.

At least at Harvard, a few people will probably appreciate those “intellectual” lyrics.