Season 8 American Idol Post Tour Career Projections: Allison and Danny
So let me just move from sitting the room where my housemate is watching Saturday's Strictly Come Dancing (which I am not following this year on no, and I refused to be sucked back in). Although I will marvel over the wonder that is Brian Fortuna’s salsa routine.
Okay, so now I’m resettled away from the Brucie’s bad puns and an excess of skin and sequins I am going to have a go at expressing my opinions about the possible futures of Allison and Danny.
So without further ado:
Number 4 - Allison Iraheta:
Allison is almost too young to be able to predict what kind of career she’s going to have because who is to say what kind of career she is going to aim for. Sure, at this moment in time she appears to be going for the pop/rock market but maybe by 21 she’ll have decided that she’s really into jazz, or perhaps she’ll have a go at a soft, lilting, Sarah McLachlan-esque album. The truth is people change a lot over their late teens early twenties. She could easily decide to take time off of music to complete her education, who knows. So for now, this is based solely on the trajectory she has started this year.
While I don’t think her first album is going to be anything particularly special or break any new ground Allison stands the chance of having a phenomenally successful album in a few years off of the back of a brilliant single. As many people have said over the past few months Allison has the voice and she has the energy; she just needs somewhere decent to put it. If she gets the right song writers behind her (please, someone give her a Linda Perry, Max Martin or Dr Luke track because I think they will have the greatest success and writing her something both age and voice suitable) she could quite feasibly have a young female anthem on her hands in the style of Kelly Clarkson’s ‘Since You’ve Been Gone’, Pink’s ‘Get The Party Started’ and ‘Just Like A Pill’ or even Christina Aguilera’s ‘Dirrty’. Allison could also benefit from some completely unknown talents as it could help her establish an original sound as opposed to possibly coming off as a younger Pink or Clarkson.
The release of ‘Friday I’ll Be Over U’ shows that not only is she following in the Avril Lavigne trend of ignoring spelling but that the producers have watered down her vocals a little. It just sounds as if some of her husk has been smoothed over. I personally was not amazingly struck by the song, I think it’s a little repetitive and a little too…..I don’t know….bland. But for the first time since we first saw her, she is singing age appropriate lyrics. Throughout the show I had concerns about Allison’s ability to connect with the music she was singing. After Grand Ole Opry I compared her to Joss Stone in that
you come up against the same problems… it doesn’t matter how good the voice is if the emotion behind it is absent. Life needs to be led before you can feel what you’re singing.
By Year of Birth Week I felt she’d gotten a bit of a better hang on in and that
she did a very good impression of emotionally connecting with the music. She didn’t fully manage it, I didn’t feel she was living the song, but it was a very very good presentation of it.
But for some reason throughout the competition she kept picking songs that were far too mature for her. I’m sorry but singing Hot Stuff in skin tight leather and a corset just wasn’t what I wanted to see a 16 year old doing. No I don’t expect her to be David Archuleta puppy dog innocent but at the same time fetish wear and singing about one night stands is not really where I think she should have been aiming either.
However, her voice is now, and was from the first time we really saw her sing, phenomenal:
Yes she sang it well, she knocked the ass off of the vocals
for pure raw natural talent Allison has them all beat
and given a few years, and falling in and out of love, and she could be great. She just needs the right material. I don’t think Allison will ever be full on rock, she’s not going to front a Fall Out Boy, Foo Fighters, Funeral For A Friend, Muse, or My Chemical Romance (and yes, I deliberately grabbed varied types of rock there) type band. She is going to be singing pop/rock and there’s nothing wrong with that but she needs to make sure that she can make her own way and not just tread the path already laid down. There are too many female artists out there already attempting that. To stand out from the ever growing crowd of successful solo female artists she really needs to make it her own. Maybe fronting a band is actually a better way for Allison to go.
She got mostly good reviews throughout the tour although there were a few who thought that she needed to grow a little before she’d be able to hold the stage in the way that is needed. But Allison was always the critics darling on the show. Anyone who wanted to come across as a little hipper than suggesting Adam (once he really took off) or Kris (before he became the thorn in the judges side) would point to Allison as the true talent.
Allison’s big problem is going to be PR. Seriously, the girl is not great in interviews. Yes her Slezak interview was, again, her best but he worships her and would have gone out of his way to make her feel comfortable. Everyone who points to that one interview as a depiction that she is interesting and eloquent needs to watch/read everything else she’s said. Her other interviews leave a lot to be desired, she’s just not that eloquent and in today’s everything-you-say-is-recorded-forever-and-shoved-on-youtube society PR is everything. Yes she’s young. Yes she’s quirky, but that will only let her get away with so much. Someone needs to get her into some sort of media training. I’m not saying Disney-fy her, a little naturalism is great, but she needs to learn how to at least be coherent. She does have some really interesting takes on things but she just doesn’t know how to express them. There are a lot of people out there who find her kind of annoying, and I mean from the social group that her music is going to be aimed at. She may have the support of a lot of the Idol reviewers, and did throughout the competition, but she never really had the support of the viewers and was constantly in the bottom three. This had to be more to do with how people perceived her personality than how she sounded because for many weeks she was far better than most the people on that stage. For her to succeed people either need to like her or be interested by her and at the moment people are neither. But if she’s given time to evolve, to grow, that could all change.
I think that the most likely course for Allison’s career is success for 2, maybe 3, albums but then a steep decline.
Album 1 will be okay and do okay.
Album 2 will have a massive hit of a single and be a success on the back of that.
Album 3 will sell to the people expecting another hit like her second but will disappear and it’ll go downhill from there.
I’m sorry but that’s just the way I see it playing out. Not only is the market relatively oversaturated with hugely successful young female solo artists of every genre but the slightly more sociology based music critics have started to project the decline of such artists over the next few years. Yes we are in a boom time for female singers. But, not including the ones who have been around for several years, the new generation of artists such as Lady Gaga, Little Boots, Duffy, Florence and the Nightingales, and Rhianna have most of the possible audience for the market covered.
But as I said before, Allison is so young that it’s hard to see where her career might go because it’s hard to predict where she’s going to want it to go. At 17 I was wearing purple lipstick and eye shadow, black eyeliner, choker necklaces, writs to elbows full of bangles, lace tops (with bra fully on show), combat trousers, and threading ribbons through multiple braids in my hair. It’s safe to say that even 2 years later I wasn’t. Teenagers experiment with different styles and social groups. It’s how we find out who we actually are. And maybe you’re attempting, as I was, to combine hippy with goth with grunge, but one thing is certain - you are only a template of who you will become.
So who knows where Allison’s going to go. I just hope she doesn’t become another burnt out former teen star who got lost somewhere along the way.
Number 3 - Danny Gokey:
Okay, here I get genuinely stuck because, being British, I simply don’t know that much about the country scene. I know that it tends to nurture rather than knock down but apart from that…..no idea.
I’m not going to include any of what I wrote during his run on the show because it went: liking his voice if not his songs - a little worried about his frame of mind - okay, you’re a bit annoying - good god get the fuck off of my television you smug, sanctimonious, annoying, douche.
I don’t still hold the same dislike of Danny that I cultivated throughout the first 5 month of the year but I still don’t have a great warmth for the man either. And as anyone who was reading my blog at the time will know, for all that I tried to stay at least slightly objective, like many people, after Rock Week I was simply done with Danny.
What I can say is that Danny, like Allison, needs some serious media training. Hell, he needs some serious conversation training. That man rambles like no one’s business and not in an interesting way. He stumbles over his words, repeats himself, and does not come across at all well.
I’m not sure if he shot himself in the foot by stating that he didn’t want to make country music as it wasn’t really his thing before signing to a country label when they were, obviously, the only ones who would have him. I don’t know about country fans but most other people would be a little pissed off that they were considered as a final but unwanted option. Also, if Danny doesn’t want to be singing country then he’s not going to manage to do it successfully. It is FAR too much hard work to make an album, release it, and promote it if you don’t even like the songs you’re singing. Maybe he’ll grow an affinity for country music but until then…..
Danny should have gone for a gospel sound or, and this is completely out of the music industry, become one of those inspirational speakers. From everything I’ve heard he sermonised every show during the tour and maybe that would have been a better way forward for him. Third place finishers do not have the best track record of success post Idol so Danny could fall foul of that.
But as I said, absolutely no knowledge of the country music scene. And I really couldn’t give a toss if he has a career or not, so I’ll leave it there.
Oh, and this is Will Young’s new video for his next single. I am placing it here because not only did I find myself enjoying the song more than anything he’s done recently, love the person but he does not sing my style of music, but also because I watched it and thought “Really William!!! Really!!!” Get half way through, past the mayonnaise, turkey and jelly (jello) sandwich, and you’ll see what I mean. Got to love him :-D
Okay, so now I’m resettled away from the Brucie’s bad puns and an excess of skin and sequins I am going to have a go at expressing my opinions about the possible futures of Allison and Danny.
So without further ado:
Number 4 - Allison Iraheta:
Allison is almost too young to be able to predict what kind of career she’s going to have because who is to say what kind of career she is going to aim for. Sure, at this moment in time she appears to be going for the pop/rock market but maybe by 21 she’ll have decided that she’s really into jazz, or perhaps she’ll have a go at a soft, lilting, Sarah McLachlan-esque album. The truth is people change a lot over their late teens early twenties. She could easily decide to take time off of music to complete her education, who knows. So for now, this is based solely on the trajectory she has started this year.
While I don’t think her first album is going to be anything particularly special or break any new ground Allison stands the chance of having a phenomenally successful album in a few years off of the back of a brilliant single. As many people have said over the past few months Allison has the voice and she has the energy; she just needs somewhere decent to put it. If she gets the right song writers behind her (please, someone give her a Linda Perry, Max Martin or Dr Luke track because I think they will have the greatest success and writing her something both age and voice suitable) she could quite feasibly have a young female anthem on her hands in the style of Kelly Clarkson’s ‘Since You’ve Been Gone’, Pink’s ‘Get The Party Started’ and ‘Just Like A Pill’ or even Christina Aguilera’s ‘Dirrty’. Allison could also benefit from some completely unknown talents as it could help her establish an original sound as opposed to possibly coming off as a younger Pink or Clarkson.
The release of ‘Friday I’ll Be Over U’ shows that not only is she following in the Avril Lavigne trend of ignoring spelling but that the producers have watered down her vocals a little. It just sounds as if some of her husk has been smoothed over. I personally was not amazingly struck by the song, I think it’s a little repetitive and a little too…..I don’t know….bland. But for the first time since we first saw her, she is singing age appropriate lyrics. Throughout the show I had concerns about Allison’s ability to connect with the music she was singing. After Grand Ole Opry I compared her to Joss Stone in that
you come up against the same problems… it doesn’t matter how good the voice is if the emotion behind it is absent. Life needs to be led before you can feel what you’re singing.
By Year of Birth Week I felt she’d gotten a bit of a better hang on in and that
she did a very good impression of emotionally connecting with the music. She didn’t fully manage it, I didn’t feel she was living the song, but it was a very very good presentation of it.
But for some reason throughout the competition she kept picking songs that were far too mature for her. I’m sorry but singing Hot Stuff in skin tight leather and a corset just wasn’t what I wanted to see a 16 year old doing. No I don’t expect her to be David Archuleta puppy dog innocent but at the same time fetish wear and singing about one night stands is not really where I think she should have been aiming either.
However, her voice is now, and was from the first time we really saw her sing, phenomenal:
Yes she sang it well, she knocked the ass off of the vocals
for pure raw natural talent Allison has them all beat
and given a few years, and falling in and out of love, and she could be great. She just needs the right material. I don’t think Allison will ever be full on rock, she’s not going to front a Fall Out Boy, Foo Fighters, Funeral For A Friend, Muse, or My Chemical Romance (and yes, I deliberately grabbed varied types of rock there) type band. She is going to be singing pop/rock and there’s nothing wrong with that but she needs to make sure that she can make her own way and not just tread the path already laid down. There are too many female artists out there already attempting that. To stand out from the ever growing crowd of successful solo female artists she really needs to make it her own. Maybe fronting a band is actually a better way for Allison to go.
She got mostly good reviews throughout the tour although there were a few who thought that she needed to grow a little before she’d be able to hold the stage in the way that is needed. But Allison was always the critics darling on the show. Anyone who wanted to come across as a little hipper than suggesting Adam (once he really took off) or Kris (before he became the thorn in the judges side) would point to Allison as the true talent.
Allison’s big problem is going to be PR. Seriously, the girl is not great in interviews. Yes her Slezak interview was, again, her best but he worships her and would have gone out of his way to make her feel comfortable. Everyone who points to that one interview as a depiction that she is interesting and eloquent needs to watch/read everything else she’s said. Her other interviews leave a lot to be desired, she’s just not that eloquent and in today’s everything-you-say-is-recorded-forever-and-shoved-on-youtube society PR is everything. Yes she’s young. Yes she’s quirky, but that will only let her get away with so much. Someone needs to get her into some sort of media training. I’m not saying Disney-fy her, a little naturalism is great, but she needs to learn how to at least be coherent. She does have some really interesting takes on things but she just doesn’t know how to express them. There are a lot of people out there who find her kind of annoying, and I mean from the social group that her music is going to be aimed at. She may have the support of a lot of the Idol reviewers, and did throughout the competition, but she never really had the support of the viewers and was constantly in the bottom three. This had to be more to do with how people perceived her personality than how she sounded because for many weeks she was far better than most the people on that stage. For her to succeed people either need to like her or be interested by her and at the moment people are neither. But if she’s given time to evolve, to grow, that could all change.
I think that the most likely course for Allison’s career is success for 2, maybe 3, albums but then a steep decline.
Album 1 will be okay and do okay.
Album 2 will have a massive hit of a single and be a success on the back of that.
Album 3 will sell to the people expecting another hit like her second but will disappear and it’ll go downhill from there.
I’m sorry but that’s just the way I see it playing out. Not only is the market relatively oversaturated with hugely successful young female solo artists of every genre but the slightly more sociology based music critics have started to project the decline of such artists over the next few years. Yes we are in a boom time for female singers. But, not including the ones who have been around for several years, the new generation of artists such as Lady Gaga, Little Boots, Duffy, Florence and the Nightingales, and Rhianna have most of the possible audience for the market covered.
But as I said before, Allison is so young that it’s hard to see where her career might go because it’s hard to predict where she’s going to want it to go. At 17 I was wearing purple lipstick and eye shadow, black eyeliner, choker necklaces, writs to elbows full of bangles, lace tops (with bra fully on show), combat trousers, and threading ribbons through multiple braids in my hair. It’s safe to say that even 2 years later I wasn’t. Teenagers experiment with different styles and social groups. It’s how we find out who we actually are. And maybe you’re attempting, as I was, to combine hippy with goth with grunge, but one thing is certain - you are only a template of who you will become.
So who knows where Allison’s going to go. I just hope she doesn’t become another burnt out former teen star who got lost somewhere along the way.
Number 3 - Danny Gokey:
Okay, here I get genuinely stuck because, being British, I simply don’t know that much about the country scene. I know that it tends to nurture rather than knock down but apart from that…..no idea.
I’m not going to include any of what I wrote during his run on the show because it went: liking his voice if not his songs - a little worried about his frame of mind - okay, you’re a bit annoying - good god get the fuck off of my television you smug, sanctimonious, annoying, douche.
I don’t still hold the same dislike of Danny that I cultivated throughout the first 5 month of the year but I still don’t have a great warmth for the man either. And as anyone who was reading my blog at the time will know, for all that I tried to stay at least slightly objective, like many people, after Rock Week I was simply done with Danny.
What I can say is that Danny, like Allison, needs some serious media training. Hell, he needs some serious conversation training. That man rambles like no one’s business and not in an interesting way. He stumbles over his words, repeats himself, and does not come across at all well.
I’m not sure if he shot himself in the foot by stating that he didn’t want to make country music as it wasn’t really his thing before signing to a country label when they were, obviously, the only ones who would have him. I don’t know about country fans but most other people would be a little pissed off that they were considered as a final but unwanted option. Also, if Danny doesn’t want to be singing country then he’s not going to manage to do it successfully. It is FAR too much hard work to make an album, release it, and promote it if you don’t even like the songs you’re singing. Maybe he’ll grow an affinity for country music but until then…..
Danny should have gone for a gospel sound or, and this is completely out of the music industry, become one of those inspirational speakers. From everything I’ve heard he sermonised every show during the tour and maybe that would have been a better way forward for him. Third place finishers do not have the best track record of success post Idol so Danny could fall foul of that.
But as I said, absolutely no knowledge of the country music scene. And I really couldn’t give a toss if he has a career or not, so I’ll leave it there.
Oh, and this is Will Young’s new video for his next single. I am placing it here because not only did I find myself enjoying the song more than anything he’s done recently, love the person but he does not sing my style of music, but also because I watched it and thought “Really William!!! Really!!!” Get half way through, past the mayonnaise, turkey and jelly (jello) sandwich, and you’ll see what I mean. Got to love him :-D
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