American Idol returns tonight on FOX (8/7c) with a two hour premiere and the big job of trying to turn out a mega star as its winner. Allegedly the list of Top 50 Spoilers was leaked, so we may or may not have an idea of who will be up for the coveted top spot and record deal. While winning American Idol is no easy task it seems to be the real challenge lately is turning that winner into a bona fide pop culture superstar.
Sure, everyone involved wants another Carrie Underwood, but most would settle for a top billboard ranker that doesn’t get dropped from J Records after his or her first album. In recent weeks the news has hit that Taylor Hicks was recently dropped from J Records while Ruben Studdard quietly vanished from their line-up months ago. Then there’s Jordin Sparks who broke onto the billboard ratings in 10th place with less than half the sales (119K vs 298K, opening week) of her predecessor, Hicks. While that’s obviously still an impressive feat I’m sure the suits behind it were hoping for much more.
Last season I was slammed by Hicks’ fans for insinuating that losing American Idol could actually make for a better career. Chris Daughtry is the obvious example with his continued success including his recent Grammy nominations of best song, best album, and twice over for best performance. More recently you’ve got Blake Lewis, who despite not being crowned an American Idol last season, has gone on to achieve better sales and visibility than the actual winner, Sparks. So clearly not winning the big show isn’t a damnation to an eternity in the “almost made it” category.
Please, save your hate mail/comments. I’m not calling anyone a failure here as I’m sure plenty of people love Hicks, Studdard, Sparks, etc. I’m just pointing out Idol’s recent streak of hit or miss with its winners and wondering if American Idol 2008 will produce the next mega star or just another everyday entertainer.
Posted on: Tuesday, January 15, 2008
January 16th, 2008 at 8:02 am
If any of these kids come off of idol doing better than they were before, then they are not failures.From the “instant star”perspective, then yes, some of the non-winners have done better.AI apparently looks for the cookie cutter mainstream poptarts b/c that is what sells and sells big, that doesn’t take away from the talented ones who don’t fall into that catagory, but seeing how society views talent as only those who sell mega cds and are mainstream artists, I can see why they would think they are failures, but that is a very shortsided viewpoint.Some of the most talented artists in the music scene are “under the radar” so to speak.There isn’t a whole lot of artistry and integrity in most of the mainstream music today.