American Idol - Fixed?

This story apparently already made the rounds throughout the Blogosphere, but I have not been "in-touch" this past week and, so long as I'm being honest, I can only take so much of the Blogosphere and then, only in doses.

See, I've been doing this for 10 years now. Throughout that time, the Blogosphere has changed dramatically; hell, the Blogosphere has changed dramatically since three months ago! Anyway, given the shocking frequency with which blogs appear and disappear these days, it's just become too much work to keep up with. So I've quit trying. Of all the blogs I was following when I first moved The Rundown to Blogger from the GeoCities site, none are still around. Well, there are a handful, but they are not regularly maintained. In fact, about 2-3 months ago, I filled my Bloglines account with nearly 10 different blogs I wanted to read regularly. Of those, only three are still regularly updated.

Honestly? It wasn't even 2-3 months ago; it was closer to a month-and-a-half.

ANYhoo, you know the Irish girl who advanced to the top 24 - the one whose husband's face is completely obscured by ink (real smart, that - just saying)? Turns out she already had a major recording label deal a few years back. In fact, her debut solo album was such a flop, it was featured in The Wall Street Journal as a "worst case scenario" example of music marketing!

Actually, Carly Smithson, nee Henessy, has a lengthy career in entertainment, having worked in the cast of Les Miserables at 9, and being nationally-recognized throughout Ireland from a sausage commercial [insert joke here]. MCA still maintains a website devoted to her!

While many bloggers are saying that she is some kind of "plant," I don't think that's necessarily so. Remember, I worked in performance entertainment for several years and the "maxims" and "Golden Rules" that get filtered down to the mass public are rarely truisms. The whole idea of "overnight success that took ten years" and all that... it's mostly bullshit; sure, those things happen, but the fact of the matter is that careers in entertainment are just like careers in every other field: they have their ups and downs and take many divergences along the way.

Marshall Mathers toiled for years to become some sort of ballad-crooning sex symbol before he became "Eminem." A perfect example of the whole "overnight success story that was ten years in the making" that didn't happen quite the way it is most often presented.

So what if she has a professional past? The long-haired blond who made it into the top 24 was in a boyband that not only toured with Britney Spears, he briefly dated her!

Many writers work in every form imaginable before they get their first big success - they work as playwrights, screenwriters, short story authors, and plod on some "great American novel" for decades before they finally write a freaking commercial for an ad agency contest and suddenly skyrocket to super-stardom... or maybe trudge along on a blog until they die in obscurity. That's just how The Business works, guys - in all forms, across the spectrum.

In fact, let me give you my Fame Story...

© C Harris Lynn, 2008