Her tune just isn’t the same

HOUSTON -- Carly Patterson wants to be a rock star. She has aimed her post-Olympic career more toward Madonna than Mary Lou Retton.

Patterson, 20, has three tattoos and wears tight T-shirts and high, high heels. She speaks seriously of holing up to write songs and of traveling to Los Angeles and Dallas and New York for recording sessions and dance lessons.

Four years ago, Patterson seemed well-placed to become America’s New Sweetheart.

Twenty years after Retton had bounced into American fame and onto Wheaties boxes with a tough but bubbly Olympic performance at Pauley Pavilion that included the first U.S. all-around Olympic gold medal, Patterson won her own all-around gold at the 2004 Games in Athens. No American had done that since Retton.

As soon as Patterson was in position to win that gold, journalists swarmed Retton to ask if this blond-haired Texan would finally push her into the history books. “I hope so,” Retton replied. “It’s time for someone to take my place.”

It didn’t happen.

Instead, Patterson is a fledgling musician with a tentative voice but big plans.

In August she hopes to release her first music video and in September her first album called “Back to the Beginning,” an anthem of songs she wrote and says are dedicated to chronicling her journey from Olympic gold medalist to aspiring musician. The single off that album, called “Temporary Life (Ordinary Girl)” is available on iTunes.

“Like a black cat walking next to me that I can’t seem to shake

Seems like only yesterday life was going my way.

I’m just an ordinary girl.

It can’t be like this forever; someday it’s going to change.

It’s a temporary place that I’ve been in way too long.”

Patterson’s voice is plaintive and the words make it seem as if life hasn’t been happy.

“That’s not it exactly,” she said. “It’s just that you give up a lot to be a great athlete or an entertainer. I guess the things I’ve chosen to do with my life are just a little more difficult.”

So far Patterson’s public singing has been confined mostly to gymnastics events. She performed at the U.S. Olympic trials in Philadelphia last month where she found her natural audience -- worshipful and screaming pre-teen girls.

Evan Morgenstein, an agent for many Olympic athletes, including 2008 Olympic team member and nine-time world champion Nastia Liukin, says it is always a mistake to presume that an Olympic gold medal, even in a glamour sport such as gymnastics, is a guaranteed marketing payday.

“In the Olympics, being America’s next little sweetheart is not just about winning gold,” Morgenstein said. “It’s about having a story and a willingness to want to be involved in doing the things you need to do, about having an impact on young kids’ lives and about wanting to give back to your sport. When the cameras turn off you have to be willing to do things that aren’t all about making money.”

Morgenstein notes that Michelle Kwan -- who has zero figure-skating gold medals -- is a beloved role model, a popular speaker and a young woman who has a job in President Bush’s administration while gold medal-winners such as Sarah Hughes and Tara Lipinski, who tried to pursue an acting career, have had less staying power.

“You have to have a personality that is real, not manufactured,” Morgenstein said. “You have to be likable.”

Patterson agrees she was a shy Olympic champion.

“My nature is not like Mary Lou,” Patterson said. “When I look at myself competing I was always so serious.

“I know in Athens that’s all anyone kept saying that I was going to be the next Mary Lou. But we weren’t the same people. Mary Lou is bubbly. I was never bubbly.”

When Retton won her historic gold medal, she threw herself into the arms of her coach Bela Karolyi but also into the arms of an America that embraced her large smile, her up-from-nowhere roots in West Virginia and her nonstop willingness to just be Mary Lou.

Patterson said when she won her gold, her tight smile wasn’t meant to be unwelcoming, only that “it was just I had so much relief,” she said.

After taking a post-Olympic tour with her silver-medal teammates, Patterson went off to junior college for a semester. It probably wasn’t the best way to keep her name in the public eye and Patterson wasn’t aching for the academic life either.

“Deep down I wanted to do music,” she said. “But I didn’t know how to do it right away.”

Patterson’s mother, Nathalie, said her daughter “always had a clear, happy voice.”

“She sang around the house,” Nathalie said. “It came naturally to her, almost more than gymnastics.”

After toying with college and finding that her Olympic fame was fading fast, Patterson hired a music manager last year, a company called MusicMind Records based in Chicago.

Inked on her wrist is a black treble clef. There is an outline of a green heart on the other wrist (good luck, she calls that one) and on her ankle she has the outline of the Olympic rings and the word “champion” written in Greek.

“The tattoos are symbols of both my lives,” Patterson said.

She has also found that owning an Olympic gold medal does not give her instant entree into the music world.

“Nothing is being handed to me,” Patterson said. “I have to knock on doors, call people, e-mail people. I literally beg people to listen to my songs.”

Patterson is hoping to be invited to sing at a gymnastics event in Beijing and afterward to perform with any post-Olympic gymnastics tour -- as a singer and not a tumbler.

And as for not becoming the next Mary Lou, she shrugs.

“It’s hard to compare people 20 years apart,” she said. “We were doing such harder skills, harder tricks. Maybe it was easier to smile when the tricks weren’t as hard. It’s definitely a compliment for anyone to be the next Mary Lou. But I can say now that I just want to be the first Carly. That’s what I want.”

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diane.pucin@latimes.com