Made on TV Pop Acts
Created | Updated Jun 18, 2003
The scurge of the Earth
The craze of "Made on TV Pop acts"* has spread across the world like a plague in recent years, and it is not something we should be proud of.
Made on TV Pop Acts? How does that work then?
Made on TV Pop acts first sprang up early in the 21st Century with the show Popstars, in which a group of judges made up of members of the music industry created a mixed gender pop group. Many members of the public tried out for this competition, most of whom could not sing to save their lives.* After many weeks of auditions, amazingly cruel put downs by the judges, and hilarious failures of those that believed they could sing, a Pop group was finally born.* The group Hear'Say emerged consisting of four females and two males, and immediately went on to release their first single. Predictably this went straight to Number 1 in the UK charts, where it stayed for the next few weeks.
The "rejects" from Popstars also went on to form their own Pop act, Liberty X, and were arguably better than the winners.
After two or three hit singles Hear'Say fizzled out. The hype that surrounded them died, and the group became less popular. Hear'Say split up in late 2002, much to the relief of the rest of the music industry. Liberty X, however, continued to be successful, and last time I checked, they were still releasing material.
So where did it go from there?
Following the huge success of Popstars, came Pop Idol. It was basically the same type of thing, but instead of creating a Pop group, a single Pop idol, at least that was the theory. Instead of one idol being created, there was three. The auditions went ahead, people humiliated themselves, while the general public watched, actually believing that they were watching high quality television, and finally there was a winner. However it wasnt the winner everyone expected it to be. Everyone thought that the winner would be the young teenage lad that all the girls fancied, and everyone else felt sorry for because of his stutter,* but it wasn't. The winner was someone who actually could sing. He got a record contract for winning the competition, but so did the people who came second and third. This seemed kind of strange, as the winner was supposed to be the only one guaranteed a record contract, not the runners up. Ah well, hopefully they too will fizzle out in due course like Hear'Say.
Please tell me that's it!
Nope, sorry. The "Made on TV Pop act" phenomenon has continued. Pop Idol has spread to the US in the form of American Idol, and American Idol 2, Popstars spawned Popstars: The Rivals, in which two seperate Pop groups, a boy band, and a girl band that would compete for the Number 1 spot.* There was also an attempt by another television channel to emulate the success of "Made on TV Pop acts" with Fame Academy. However with this they contestants had to have at least some talent, as they had to be able to play a musical instrument. This was a flop though, and failed to capitalise on the success of Popstars and Pop Idol. Also we have the joy of looking forward to Pop Idol 2003, which will no doubt elevate another nobody to fame and stardom for all of five minutes.
This had better not be the future of music!
I dearly hope that this is not the case, but with other manufactured Pop groups filling the charts I think it's only a matter of time before we decide the members of every group that fills the charts. I say bring back the days when musicians actually had to play instruments, and not just have to look pretty in order to sell a few records.
