I haven’t watched much “American Idol” in the last few years. We used to watch it occasionally when our kids were younger and more interested, but with the proliferation of such shows – all similar and all relatively uninspiring – we’ve wandered over to Netflix and books. The other night, though, AI played as background static while I folded laundry, and I noted it still carries the profound keening qualities of its earliest rounds. Everybody still wants to be an Idol. I guess.
The night I heard was apparently “Hollywood Week”, where contestants had a single opportunity to sing solo for three judges. A young woman stood in front of a mic and, before she sang, lectured the judges and her fellow contestants about how hard the music business will be. She named late nights in the studio, hard work, long hours, travel… “Wait a minute,” said Harry Connick. “I gotta write that down.” As if.
I have to wonder how the grand sweep of American entertainment culture squeezes into an auditorium where a couple hundred nonstellar singers assemble to prove they should win a recording contract and the glitzy life they imagine accompanies such things. It’s certain many of them will improve their lot by being on such a show. But most of them won’t even come close to sustainable professional music careers.
A number of subcelebrities from AI and its kin can be found singing: The national anthem at minor league hockey games. County fair appearances. Benefit concerts for assorted good causes. A Broadway musical here and there. But despite talent – in some cases, not-to-be-sneezed at chops – most don’t become famous recording artists. It turns out there’s really only so much room in the public ear. We can’t absorb two or three new singing products each from AI, The Voice, The Sing-Off, The X-Factor…every single season.
What keeps these shows going? The further out-of-reach potential success becomes, the more attractive it is to jump the Grand Canyon. If you can just land that one shot…you become someone else. You grab a lifetime’s worth of notoriety: get an agent, a publicist, a stylist, and you’re off. This is the American dream: Quick and massive success measured in fame and money.
What never gets addressed by the judges’ earnest “Who are you as an artist?” queries is the reality that most contestants have no idea who they are as “artists”, and it will be up to the market and some producers – not them – to decide. Do we seriously think JLo had any idea of “who she is as an artist” before she figured out that her face and figure could outshine her thin voice sufficiently enough to make a career?
The whole m.o. of this aspirational system is to find out what’s in demand and then pick out a vehicle to deliver it. Most often it has been an unthreatening white guy with a guitar, but whatever it is, it’s most rarely the best voice. What we’re really looking for is a screen on which to project our own disappearing hopes, a bright and sincere young face who will represent us in the Entertainment Games, who will make us feel like it’s practically us on that stage. We’re looking for a container to hold our own aspirations and make it easier to believe them.
It’s strange to watch yet another round of this melodrama set up. Especially opposite the Olympics’ disciplined years of practice and incremental qualifications all the way through the medal rounds, the appeal of instant fame almost makes sense. Except that it is so rarely what it seems. Like all idols, it waits to be stuffed with whatever flavour fits the day and discarded when that gooey filling is gone.
Though Olympians really are the best at what they do and certainly “know themselves as athletes”, there’s only so much room on Wheaties boxes: Most exit the stage, once-winning lugers and curlers, jumpers and spinners, to fame within only their own sports’ circles. Which is not at all unlike what happens to AI alumni: Idols only get worshipped so long as they deliver on what they promise. As soon as a singer or athlete becomes more than the blank screen or hollow pastry we can fill with our own lame hopes, as soon as they take on their own shape instead of ours, they’re liable to get knocked off the glory shelf onto the floor.
