Ciara had ambitious dreams about her music career back in high school.
In an interview with Billboard, the R&B singer remembered when she declared that she would top the Billboard singles chart within a year of graduating from Riverdale High School in Riverdale, Georgia, in 2003.
“I was on camera, documented right at the graduation, and the guy said, ‘So, Ciara, where do you see yourself a year from now?'” she recalled. “And in my super-Atlanta thick accent, I said, ‘I see myself having the No. 1 song on the Billboard charts!’ And then literally, Goodies was No. 1 on the Billboard charts. I dreamed big!”
Ciara released “Goodies,” featuring Petey Pablo as the lead single from her debut album of the same name, in June 2004 It stayed on the top of the Billboard Hot 100 for seven weeks, making it the longest-running number-one debut single by a female artist on the chart since 1977.
Reflecting on the upcoming 20th-anniversary of “Goodies,” the 37-year-old admitted she feels like she’s only just getting started.
“I feel blessed. I feel like I’m just getting started at the same time,” Ciara gushed. “To know that it was 20 years ago that I was just really, really ambitious… dreaming big, I envisioned that I’d be sitting somewhere like this 20 years later.”
The Goodies album also spawned the hit singles “1, 2 Step,” featuring Missy Elliott, and “Oh,” featuring Ludacris.
