Author Topic: AIKEN NEWS NETWORK FEBRUARY 26 (Read 1466 times)
Pamela
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AIKEN NEWS NETWORK FEBRUARY 26
« on: February 26, 2004, 12:30:24 AM »
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GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY!
The Way/Solitaire - The Single
It's Official - Release date March 16!
AMAZON.COM
Let's track it.
1:30 am 2/26 #313
12:30 pm 2/26 #12
6:30 pm 2/26 #5
12:30 am 2/27 #4
I'm such a geek.
Hey, it's snowing in Raleigh!
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Pamela
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AIKEN NEWS NETWORK FEBRUARY 26
« Reply #1 on: February 26, 2004, 12:38:32 AM »
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Measure of a Man is #57 on the Billboard Hot Album Chart this week. This is the first week MoaM has been out of the Top 50.
Invisible is #10 on the AC singles chart!
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Pamela
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AIKEN NEWS NETWORK FEBRUARY 26
« Reply #2 on: February 26, 2004, 06:34:18 AM »
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Star power
Quote
Design firm gets a boost with Aiken account.
BY SHARON PORTA
Times Correspondent
HAMMOND -- A little celebrity attention never hurt anyone. Just ask the owners of Design Studio 303 in Hammond.
The graphic design, advertising and print management agency helped American Idol sensation Clay Aiken's Bubel/Aiken Foundation design a logo within 24 hours.
"A celebrity name sparks interest," said Velda Turan, whose sister, Seda Turan-Yahne, opened the business with Gina Altieri back in 1998. "It's something good to spring us to the national level, it brings us to the forefront. It shows that you don't have to be in New York, L.A. or even downtown Chicago to have celebrity clients."
Design Studio 303 created the foundation's logo, stationery and Web site with designs to help the foundation raise awareness and money.
"Targeting both adults and youth, Design Studio 303's design scheme for the foundation's logo, printed pieces and Web site features powerful, edgy and dynamic graphics for a fun, contemporary look and feel that is not too serious," Turan said. "In addition, images and silhouettes using Clay Aiken and his inspiration, Mike Bubel, create an emotionally moving logo and design treatment that clearly communicates the pop star's active role in his charity and his dedication to helping youth with disabilities."
The logo was inspired by a photo of Aiken and Mike Bubel together. Aiken intended to pursue a career in special education and was in the process of completing his degree at the University of North Carolina when he met Diane Bubel and her then 13-year-old son, Mike.
Aiken cared for Mike, who had been diagnosed with autism, for over a year. During this time, Aiken grew close to the Bubel family, and they, noticing his voice, encouraged Aiken to try out for American Idol. Aiken dedicated the foundation to the Bubels because of their support.
Design Studio 303 got the Aiken job because of contacts they had from their prior experience at a downtown Chicago advertising agency. The company now does work for small and large corporations, casinos, real estate firms, hospital, and educational institutions. That work includes brochures, newsletters, and annual reports.
"With everything electronic, it is still a better sell with hard copy," Turan said. "Print will never become obsolete. People want something in their hands."
The firm also designs Web sites, as it did for the foundation.
"Small companies have come to us with $500 to spend," Turan said. "We work with any budget, from thousands to a couple of hundred. This business started in the basement, and now we have six employees. It's gotten so that we're not just pounding the pavement, people are approaching us."
NW INDIANA NEWS
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Pamela
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AIKEN NEWS NETWORK FEBRUARY 26
« Reply #3 on: February 26, 2004, 06:55:12 AM »
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The Way has finally moved up on Medibase! It was stuck at #55 forever.
It's now #54 with 544 spins up from 501 spins.
Please keep requesting The Way at your local pop radio station!
ThanX!
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Pamela
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AIKEN NEWS NETWORK FEBRUARY 26
« Reply #4 on: February 26, 2004, 10:26:02 AM »
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America loves a runner-up
Clay Aiken didn't get enough viewer votes to win the second American Idol, but in many other respects he now emerges as its No. 1 attraction.
By ERIC DEGGANS, Times TV/Media Critic
Published February 26, 2004
Quote
Say what you will about Clay Aiken.
Spoof the hair, usually arranged in a sprouting haystack of reddish-brown plumage that could make a rooster jealous. Scoff at the aw-shucks manner that roars into high gear as he describes the one word on his new album he'll never sing in concert (the "D-word," he calls it, unashamedly).
Lob it all his way - the Howdy Doody lookalike jokes, the is-he-or-isn't-he quips, the new-school Manilow jibes - because, as he prepares for his first major concert tour on his own, fresh off appearances on NBC's Ed and Saturday Night Live, one thing is clear.
He's the guy who really won the last American Idol.
"To some extent, it would be nice to not be known as the runner-up for the rest of my life," said Aiken, speaking to reporters on a telephone conference call a few weeks ago. "To some extent, we all kind of want to step away from (American Idol) a little bit, but not too much, because I have to remember that if it hadn't been for the show, I sure wouldn't be on this call today."
Aiken was the runnerup in technical terms, but consider the evidence: A Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly cover boy since his loss to Ruben Studdard in the last Idol finale, Aiken has sold nearly 1-million units of his first single, This Is the Night/Bridge Over Troubled Water (making it the top-selling single in 2003), and more than 2-million units of his album, Measure of a Man.
Now, less than a year after his Idol loss, he's the one co-headlining a 30-city tour with the show's first winner, Kelly Clarkson.
Studdard? Well, he has a guest shot coming up on a UPN comedy.
(Okay, he does have a Grammy nomination, which Aiken didn't get, a tour of his own and an infectious new single, Sorry 2004. So don't bother writing that protest letter.)
"I often wonder what's going through Ruben's head and his heart," said Idol judge Paula Abdul at a January news conference. "I think a lot of people have expressed . . . "(Ruben) doesn't get to feel like he won' because of Clay."
Aiken, who has taken pains to defuse any talk of rivalry with Studdard, said life these days is quite different from his pre-Idol time as a camp counselor and special education teacher-in-training in North Carolina.
"This morning, I came out of my house, got into the car and somebody drove past and recognized me in my driveway. . . . She chased me to NBC Studios," said Aiken, whose early "can-you-believe-it" amazement has given way to a slightly weary resignation over the antics of his fans, dubbed Claymates or the Clay-Nation.
"We've had people tattoo my name on their back," he said, his North Carolina-bred drawl flavoring his words. "I have some people who think I'm Jesus. I can't really do the grocery store on my own anymore. But I think the tattoo on the back was the craziest one . . . and the most flattering at the same time."
So what gives? How does a pale, awkward 25-year-old who comes off like a Southern-fried Rick Astley seize the hearts and minds of America's CD-buying public?
Blame the marketing juggernaut that is American Idol.
Since the days of Dick Clark and Ed Sullivan, savvy music-biz types have always known TV is good for selling records. It's simple math: More people watch the lowest-rated TV show than buy the biggest records; so get a music star on TV and he or she will reach an audience larger than they'd ever get near otherwise.
Until Idol, the equation was usually one-way. Now, the entertainment industry has a hugely popular TV show that also breeds juggernaut recording artists.
Forget about Britney, Justin, Christina and either of those crazy Jackson kids. The next big Pop Music Thing might just come off a TV soundstage in Los Angeles, with management contract and record deal already included.
"If you let the public make the choices, weird things happen," said famously caustic Idol judge Simon Cowell in January. "I honestly think Clay Aiken has changed this competition forever. Because I think it's becoming incredibly personality-led now, inevitably."
Also as inevitably, the prefab nature of the Idol experience - much of the material for Aiken's record was chosen before he knew RCA Records would offer him a deal - leads to charges that the TV show that may be saving the pop music industry is also killing it.
The reasoning: A TV show outlining how a plain-folks guy like Aiken was scrubbed, coached and publicized into a major recording star removes the mystique performers such as Prince and Michael Jackson worked years to cultivate.
Where pop stars once felt like unreachable talents - special performers creating singular works that fans absolutely had to have - today's pop stars can be picked up off a street corner and plugged into a megamarketing machine that needs little from them other than a good voice and winning smile. (These days, even the show's rejects - most notably off-key warbler William "She Bangs" Hung - are performing on TV shows and negotiating record deals.)
The middle-of-the-road pop tunes filling Aiken's record also lead some critics to wonder if the pop-star-by-committee process, sanctioned by a mainstream TV audience, isn't dangerously watering down the product.
From the country-rock bounce of When You Say You Love Me to the Elton Johnish piano-fed pop of No More Sad Songs and the big-chorus hook of his latest single,Invisible, Aiken's Measure of a Man is a meticulously crafted record featuring a great singer that also seems about the most generic blockbuster pop album in recent memory.
Idol judge Randy Jackson, a producer and session bassist whose credits include Mariah Carey and Journey, said such dynamics are to be expected.
"I think the albums are okay . . . (but) the success of (the first album by) any of the winners or runners-up is really more about the success of the show," he said. "I think it's going to be the second album that's going to determine if they really, really have it. . . . Hopefully, that artist has found themselves and really (brings that) to the public."
Even Aiken said a line slipped into the midtempo rock/pop tune I Survived You that he should have nixed: telling the song's subject, an amorphous former flame, "I'll be damned if I have thoughts of you."
"It was actually the first song I recorded. . . . I probably didn't have the gumption to stand up to a few things," he said. "I still think we did exactly what I set out to do: make good music without offending anybody. Make something everybody could listen to in the car without have to turn it down (for children)."
It's this side that seems most different in Aiken from those early days on Idol.
Even as he continues working the grateful, goofy guy shtick with reporters - helped by a choirboy image and self-deprecating manner - it's obvious Aiken is learning to take a little more control, even during brief interviews.
Don't try asking about his estranged father or why he wasn't nominated for a Grammy (when Studdard and Clarkson were); such queries are shrugged off with confidence. Ask if he feels daunted trying to work up a set list for a major concert trek when he has just an album's worth of songs under his belt and no experience touring as a solo act, and you get another bracing shot of self-belief.
"Maybe I'm just optimistic, but I don't really see any major challenges here," he said. "I've looked at the schedule for this tour, and it's nowhere near as challenging as the schedule for the American Idol 2 tour. I was talking to Kelly about how she's gone to so many concerts, she's got so many ideas. . . . So I'm kind of stealing ideas from her."
To be sure, if anybody understands the pressure Aiken faces, it is Clarkson.
As the winner of the first American Idol competition (based on the British show Pop Idol, the competition aired in other countries before the United States), Clarkson did everything first: first Idol-fed hit single (A Moment Like This), first million-selling post-Idol album (Thankful) and first post-Idol flop (the film From Justin to Kelly).
"A lot of people are saying we made it the easy way. . . . I wish, for a day, they could have sat in my shoes," Clarkson said. "One day, you're not doing anything, the next day, you're up from 9 a.m. to 2 in the morning rehearsing and working every day and performing on national TV twice a week. Everything gets thrown at you."
And don't even bother broaching the One-Hit-Wonder issue.
"I don't mind being the test case for whether there's life after Idol. . . . I know that I'm here for the long term," she said. "The thing with me is, I'm very determined and focused, and I know what I want. So there's no doubt I'm going to be around."
For Aiken, if there's anything to be learned from Clarkson's post-Idol experience, it's that singers from the show must step into other areas of showbiz with great care.
"Part of what made that movie a little more . . . difficult to swallow was the fact it happened so fast," he said, trying hard for diplomacy. "Justin (Guarini, runnerup on the first Idol) and Kelly went from being very successful on the show to trying to parlay that into something else very quickly. What we've been trying to do, and what Kelly has since done and what Ruben is doing, is trying to do things more slowly."
Still, Aiken knows he might not have much time until a new American Idol winner - or runnerup - emerges from the show's third edition, now airing, to steal a bit of his spotlight.
"I have prayed every single day that no guys make it into the Top 10 this year," he said, laughing. "The public really does pick . . . what they're in the mood for and what they don't have. Kelly was the girl next door, and there wasn't necessarily a female singer out there everyone could relate to. We didn't have a skinny, dorky kid from the South, so they picked me. And (this) year, they'll see a void and pick something else. . . . And as long as there are no guys, I'll be okay."
AT A GLANCE
Kelly Clarkson and Clay Aiken appear in concert at 7 p.m. Friday at the St. Pete Times Forum, 401 Channelside Drive, Tampa. Tickets $35 and $45; 727 898-2100, (813) 287-8844,
www.ticketmaster.com 
