11/13/03 CLAY AIKEN: MEASURE OF A TRUE IDOL

[Marilyn]

Pamela
Assistant Webmaster
CLAY AIKEN: MEASURE OF A TRUE IDOL
« on: November 13, 2003, 08:15:13 PM »   

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Clay Aiken: Measure of a True Idol
by James Shepherd (2003/11/13)
 

I thought that I would be writing this article after the second week of sales were released for "Measure of a Man." Instead, I had to wait for the fourth week's results to come in, for it was the fourth week that shot Clay Aiken's album to platinum sales (1.1 million copies). Previously, I had asked the question, "Is Clay Aiken a True Idol?"; and wrote a follow up shortly after.

I had set out three criteria to be used as a measuring stick to assess whether or not Clay comes close to "true pop idolship," i.e., is he another Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley? The first criterion was the event of having to put increased security around Clay on the Tour because of fan activity. This one was realized. The second criterion was evidence of fans fainting during his performances. This one too was realized, but I had to admit in the follow up that this was probably the weakest gauge for "true idolship," because such activity is not restricted to fans of true idols. The third criterion was the most critical, I thought, because it could be quantified -- first week sales of Clay's album would bring it to gold status, which did happen; but second week sales would bring it to platinum, and this did not happen. Therefore, not all three criteria were fulfilled.

So what does this mean? Perhaps the better question should be, "So, who gave you the authority to determine who is or who is not a true idol?" My answer is quite simple, no one has such an authority and when a true idol is born, or comes into being, everyone will know it including those who are not even fans.

Unique Circumstances

More than one person has pointed out the unique circumstances of the American Idol stars that have come to be. Since they come through a competition, it is sometimes hard to know when the competition ends even after it formally finishes. The winner and runner-ups know when it ends, but do the fans? It appears that many Clay Aiken fans are still focused within the competition mode. When you read of schemes to buy tons of Clay's album in the week that Ruben's new album is to be released, you then know that some fans might be taking things a bit too seriously, especially when the competition really ended SIX MONTHS AGO!

Of course, such circumstances make the executives at 19 Entertainment and RCA tickled pink. Do not think for one minute that they will not use these circumstances to increase profits, and from what I have seen so far, they are taking full advantage of the situation.

No other "true idol" had a fan-base that was in such a competitive mode set against other performers. Also, no other "true idol" was born in the age of the Internet when communication within the fan-base could be executed so quickly and efficiently. In addition, most "true idols" had to rely upon a market that had an allowance doled out by their parents, but in this case, we have a market of middle-aged, middle-class people who can dole out their own money at the music store with great generosity for themselves. Can you not hear the RCA management rubbing their hands in greedy glee? Maybe my imagination is too vivid.

The Controversial Clay Aiken Fan

Determination of a "true idol" is found within the nature of their fan-base. A "true idol" has a very large fan-base, and many within this fan-base are fanatical to the point of being irritating to the general public. Clay Aiken, at this point in time, qualifies on one point here. Although his fan-base is not huge, as the initial sales of his album reveals, he does have some within his fan-base that are very annoying indeed. I have to go by what other people say regarding this annoyance factor, because I have not personally experienced it.

It seems to me that those who are irritated by Clay's fanatical fans are those who have been in close contact with them, i.e., partaking in the many discussion boards on the Internet devoted to Clay Aiken. Since I only rarely go to such places, I have not felt the full brunt of what has been described:

I think if they could these "Claymates" would take over the world! and therein lies the crux of my complaint - when one cannot hear another artist because the polls, the phones, the radio stations have been flooded (and artificially inflated by those who live and die for their "idol") with requests for this one artist - and this type of cult-like fervor continues long after the AI competition is over, and imposes itself upon the listening community with the sole intent of making the point - not that Clay has an exceptional talent, but that (in their opinion) his is the only talent deserving to be showcase by the media - well then, heck yeah it makes me PISSED! - A Former Clay Aiken Fan

For convenience sake, I would like to label Clay fans who can upset others so much as a "rabid Clay fans." The definition of "rabid" in this case has the following Merriam-Webster definition: "going to extreme lengths in expressing or pursuing a feeling, interest, or opinion."

A rabid Clay fan can be easily identified as such - when a "normal" Clay fan unwittingly posts on a Clay Aiken discussion board on the Internet their fanship for an artist other than Clay, the rabid fan will respond thus: "If that's how you feel, then you can't be a true Clay fan." As you can see, there is a definite cultishness in such a response as the necessity for exclusivity is demanded by the rabid fan. If there is such a thing as a "secular cult," then an organized collection of rabid fans of a pop star would most certainly qualify. But this is nothing peculiar to Clay fans. The hard core fans of Sinatra, Presley and The Beatles expressed similar feelings, but they did not have the Internet to use as a base for their communication. In fact, the rabid fans of Clay might be considered quite mild as compared to some of The Beatles fans - on December 1, 1964, a London newspaper reported:

FANS DRIVE NEIGHBOURS CRAZY! RINGO'S NEIGHBOURS FILE PETITION TO LANDLORD.
Lathom Gedge, neighbour to Ringo Starr, claimed that "Ringo's tonsil operation has given us our first peace for months. Teenage girls scream and shriek all day long. They get hysterical, fight and kick each other and chase every car that arrives in case Ringo is inside".

Can you imagine if Clay's rabid fans stalked him at his home all day long like this? Well, maybe they do, but it has not come out in the news, yet.

Quantifying the Rabid Fans

There has been speculation that the sole reason for the success of Clay's CD's has been because Clay's fans buy multiple copies. Well, I do not believe this is true. Most Clay fans are simply fans who buy one copy of a CD like most "normal" fans do. Multiple copies are most certainly bought by his rabid fans. But how many do they really buy, and, more importantly, how many rabid Clay fans are there?

In order to establish what a reasonable number of these rabid fans is, I had to make some assumptions. The first assumption was that the vast majority of Clay's rabid fans shows up on the Internet. This was based upon the fact that the Internet is available to most people who have access to television. If it's not available at home (70% of Americans having it at home in 2002), then it is available at work, at the library or at a friend's home. The second assumption was that the rabid fan wants to interact with other rabids and find out the latest news on their idol, and this can be easily found on the Internet.

I then reviewed those places on the Internet where Clay Aiken fans congregate - the discussion boards. I have had years of experience posting on various Internet discussion boards, and I have run some boards myself too for quite some time. I know how they work and how you can acquire some rudimentary figures about the number of participants for each board.

I am not going to go into the specific details as to how I arrived at the following "guesstimate," but I do believe it is fairly accurate. In essence, at the top end, there are probably around 10,000 rabid Clay Aiken fans, but more likely, there are probably less than 5,000 who are truly "rabid." For argument sake, I will use the top figure of 10,000 rabid Aiken fans to do the further analysis.

If these 10,000 rabid fans bought on average, 10 CD albums each, they have by now accounted for less than 10% of the sales of this album to date coming in at 100,000 units. So, essentially, Clay's album would have gone platinum already even without the purchasing power of the rabids. Please note that purchasing 10 albums cost about $120.00 to $150.00, versus purchasing 10 singles at far less - $30.00 to $35.00. There must surely be a limit to the rabid's willingness to shell out what I would consider large amounts of money for their cause. I think that money is a true test to find out where someone's heart really lies, and if there were a campaign launched amongst the rabids where for every dollar that they spent in buying Clay's music, they would commit an equal amount of money in contribution to Clay's charities, then this would be something to note well.

Yes, a person who is just a normal Clay fan who posts on those discussion boards devoted to Clay can get the impression that the rabids are everywhere, but this is just an illusion. Oh yes, they are posting on those boards, and oh yes, they will question your loyalty to Clay which will probably annoy you, however, ask yourselves this question: "Why is it that in their sophisticated Internet campaigns they have to call on other rabids to phone radio stations outside their own area? Are there not enough Clay Aiken fans within each and every radio station area to phone for themselves to make the needed impact?" The answer is obvious - of course there are not because mainly only the rabids do this kind of phoning and there are very few rabids.

Are the Rabid Fans a Liability to Clay?

The answer to this question is "No!" In fact, without these rabid fans, I would not even have bothered to ask the initial question, "Is Clay Aiken a True Idol?" What I do wonder now is though, why are there not more rabid fans? But upon reflection of the events this year, it is becoming clearer as to why.

Clay's struggle through the American Idol 2 competition created his rabid fans. Week after week they saw him being criticized by our friend Simon after giving some extraordinary singing performances. It was through this development that Clay became the underdog who overcame, but alas, at the end he lost. Nevertheless, his struggle and his singing touched the hearts of many people, some of which became the rabids.

It must be remembered that a very small percentage of the American public watched American Idol. Oh yes, the ratings were very high relative to the other programs, but the majority of the public still probably does not even know what Clay looks like or have even heard him sing.

American Idol 2 averaged a little over 20 million viewers each week. It was a series of media events that had its regular viewers. On February 9, 1964, when there were far fewer Americans than today, The Beatles  performed on the Ed Sullivan Show, to a viewing audience of 73 million people. Let us put things in perspective. Clay Aiken has many more hurdles to jump before he gets into the really big league of true idolship.

It is possible that an upcoming media event where Clay will perform and/or win an award will be that one event that will truly give birth to his true idolhood. It is the response of the public by being exposed to Clay that will bring him into that awesome and rare realm of being a "true idol."

It is also possible that if and when Clay goes out on tour by himself that this will give him the media coverage and exposure that will put him into that other category. If fans respond to him universally as being so very special, and if he has sold out performances wherever he goes, then perhaps this will bring him into true stardom. As for continually phoning radio stations to play Clay, taking out a second mortgage to buy more Clay CD's, or attacking everyone who dares to even give a hint of criticism toward Clay, none of these things will make him into a "true idol."

It is quite evident to me that Clay has far more "normal" fans than the rabid ones, and that they are buying his CD's. They seem to be growing in number too, and this is a very good sign.

LINK
 
 

[Marilyn]

stellium
Guest
  Numbers
« Reply #1 on: November 14, 2003, 12:01:32 PM »   

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I would just like to put a qualifier on the numbers of people who tuned in to watch the Ed Sullivan show when the Beatles performed. 
      1.   That was on a major television network, as that is all we had to watch then.   So the three networks were divided fairly evenly amonth the 200 million in this country.   73 million was one third of the stations on the air.

     2.   The Beatles had already established themselves as having crazed fans in England before they came to the USA in Feb. 1964.  We saw news items and pictures of this constantly, so when they arrived here, they had a ready-made fan base for established stars.   This was not the case with American Idol 2 contestants;  no one knew who they were.   It took years and years of performing for The Beatles to get to that point,  not a few months as with Clay.

     3.    The assumption is totally incorrect that Clay did not achieve platinum in the first two weeks.   Platinum is based on shipped copies of a record, and as we all know  (why doesn't this writer), Clay achieved Double Platinum the two weeks.   Clive Davis announced two million albums were shipped by the second week. 

      4.    This article reminds me of a beautiful girl in junior high school who would not go along with the rest of the girls' snobby actions in the "elite" group, and so she was not considered "popular" by them.   One day in gym class, they marched up to this girl and told her that so-and-so in their group had just been voted prettiest girl in school.   
        The stupidity of that is mind-boggling!   Why did they choose this girl to tell?   Because it was obvious to everyone that she was the prettiest!   
         To spend all this time trying to make up excuses why or why not Clay Aiken is a super-idol tells everyone just one thing:   he is.
 
 

[Marilyn]

cjrmax
Guest
  CLAY AIKEN: MEASURE OF A TRUE IDOL
« Reply #2 on: November 14, 2003, 12:25:10 PM »   

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"Although his fan-base is not huge, as the initial sales of his album reveals, he does have some within his fan-base that are very annoying indeed."

This is the part that cracked me up!  The initial sales of his album indicates he does NOT have ahuge fan base?  Selling over 600,000 copies in the first week of release and SELLING platinum in 4 weeks does NOT indicate a big fan base?  What does? Wasn't his the largest debut solo album in like 10 years?  It makes no sense!

[Marilyn]

Pamela
Assistant Webmaster
 CLAY AIKEN: MEASURE OF A TRUE IDOL
« Reply #3 on: November 14, 2003, 01:25:32 PM »   

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:  Don't you just love it?

I swear if I sat down and concentrated I could write better than some of these people...hey.  I might just do that.  And some of them even get paid? What a concept!    :

stellium

To spend all this time trying to make up excuses why or why not Clay Aiken is a super-idol tells everyone just one thing: he is.

Well said! 

You know, it occurs to me that the irony in the way Clay's detractors constantly beat the 'due paying' horse, is, that in effect, they are creating a situation whereby he is paying his dues now by being subjected to their ranting about the subject.

Does that even make sense?  Maybe I shouldn't become a writer after all. 

[Marilyn]

outthereforclay
Guest
  Great minds....
« Reply #4 on: November 14, 2003, 02:52:27 PM »   

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Pamela, my dear, you make perfect sense and I've been thinking the same thing!

I think Clay has proven to everyone that he can handle....whatever! And I'm awfully proud of us--his fans--too! I think as a group, we're pretty classy!