Lexi St. George
Winning a contest does not make you a star!
The reason those American Idols had success was because of Simon Cowell. Not the acerbic judge you saw on TV but the record exec who guided the careers of the winners after their victories.
And if this year’s winner succeeds, it’ll be because of Jimmy Iovine and the Interscope team. They’re invested in him…whatever his name was again…
You see the name is not important, it’s the music.
We love to watch and laugh, see the mistakes on TV, but when we listen, we only want to hear the hits. A hit is not just something played incessantly on Top Forty radio, although that qualifies, a hit is something so infectious you can’t get it out of your head, you need to hear it again. As Ahmet Ertegun so famously said, something you hear on the radio at midnight that forces you to get dressed and go to the all night record shop to buy.
Granted, record stores are on their way to extinction. But if you haven’t heard a song on your car radio and come home and immediately searched to hear it online, like a starving "Survivor" contestant searching for food, you’re not a music fan.
The special sauce is not the contest, but the music!
Remember that VH1 show, "Bands On The Run"? The winner was Flickerstick. Granted, they were much better than the rest of the contestants, but where are they today? They just didn’t have enough good songs.
And someone sent me a video of one of the finalists in that "Rolling Stone" contest. Watch it here:
Unless "Rolling Stone" becomes a manager, gives this act more than ink, it’s gonna sink like a stone.
And I didn’t like the track either.
And speaking of tracks…check out Lexi’s:
Makes me think Ark Factory got lucky.
I don’t know about you, but I still can’t get that "Friday" chorus out of my head. Sure, Rebecca Black was talentless and the verses were inane but there was a surefire hook there, that grabbed you as much as the one Vanilla Ice ripped off to make "Ice Ice Baby".
So score one against the Ark Factory tribe. They’re looking like one hit wonders.
But isn’t it fascinating that all the original songs written for TV contest finalists fall flat? The ones on the ultimate episodes of "Idol" and "The Voice"? If it was easy, don’t you think they’d sing hits?
But it’s incredibly difficult to write a hit. And those who do don’t want to waste them, they want to place them with superstars, not wannabes.
And these paper-thin two-dimensional acts are at the mercy of writers, because they can’t write themselves, they’ve got no experience, either being alive or composing, hell, Lexi St. George is FOURTEEN!
So don’t get your knickers in a twist. Don’t complain that some TV nitwit stole your chance. They’ve got some fame, but so does that guy who performs the Evolution of Dance on YouTube, what, he’s got 175,000,000 hits?
I’ve met that guy. He’s fun, he’s nice.
But he ain’t rich.
And where does he go from here? He can perform his one hit at conventions, but so can the aforementioned Vanilla Ice.
As for ABC News… This is why the networks are in trouble. Playing to the lowest common denominator, THEY ARE the lowest common denominator.
If "Good Morning America" wants to have a contest, they should have one to replace the hosts they’ve got, that’s all the producers really know. Kind of like the Food Network. With their "Food Network Star" show. Their hit to shit ratio still sucks, but they did find Guy Fieri. What are the odds that ABC will find the next Elton John…even the next Kelly Clarkson?
It’s all about the execution. It’s easy to pick a winner. It’s hard to make that winner into a three-dimensional star.
And that’s how we like our musical phenoms, three-dimensional. Which is why the classic acts can still fill arenas and the young ‘uns with hit records play clubs today and are gone tomorrow. We believe the classics lived and wrote that material. We believe the Top Forty hit artists are members of the lucky sperm club. And their fathers are…
Simon Cowell and Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Luke and Clive Davis.
Each and every one of these men, and they’re not the only ones, are extremely skilled at what they do. They’re not about to hand the controls to the barely pubescent. It’d be like Sully letting a kid fly the plane.
If you want to replace them, you’ve got to pay just as many dues. For years. Clive was a lawyer. Dr. Luke started in the SNL band. Iovine began in the studio and Simon Cowell was hustling before the contestants on "X Factor" were even born.
If you want to replace these icons you’ve got to put in the work and have a ton of experience too. They’re in no danger of being eclipsed by teenagers with desire. It takes more than that. Years and years of being stepped on.
Having a successful music career isn’t luck, it’s hard work.
There’s no way around it.
And you win through experience, both your own and that of your team, and execution.
This is a summer diversion with the nutrition of a Fudgesicle. Laugh, don’t take it seriously.
"’Pop Star’ Winner Lexi St.George Debuts Music Video: Is She the Next Internet Sensation?"Â (The answer to that question is NO!)
