Definitely NOT the One: Making a Music Star a Weak Imitation
Definitely NOT the One: Making a Music Star a Weak Imitation by Roxanne McDonald
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It’s a given: they’re new, green, and desirous of being a music star by being willing to work hard. But the performers on The One: Making a Music Star just don’t seem to deliver anything all that star-worthy. |
While, understandably, (all art being a response to something, even other art), the show is a knock off, The One: Making a Music Star has less redeeming worth than many successful knockoffs. The pattern and process is too similar to Idol, Making of the Band, and other performance/reality shows, but is too derivative.
Even, or expecially, the contestants seem to be weak imitations of other celebrities: Aubrey Collins (who was told she was not “the one” on the fourth episode) has the Carrie Ughderwood thing going on: and Jadyn Maria (who was booted in episode three) bears an uncanny resemblance to the actress, Kimberly McCullough, who plays/played Robin Scorpio on All My Children.
Maybe we have done it all one too many times.
Maybe executives are not musicians and are therefore not REALLY the most fit for judging talent (though, as we all know, of course, the judging is based on sales not on musical prodigy).
In one commentary, for example, two of the three panel experts spoke to the contestant about grooving and upping and really making it by grasping at another level gibberish that while paraphrased here was equally incomprehensible on TV. There was, in other words, not one musical term, not one even performance euphemism that this viewer (of hundreds of shows) found worth diddly crap. The contestant was humble, but the look on her face suggested she, too, was no better for the “advice”.
Okay, again, granted, sigh…one judge is the former (why former, I wonder) president of Motown Records; another is a “contributor” to songwriting legends; and a third is Mark Hudson, writer of superstar hits (GO AEROSMITH!). But there is still something OFF about this show.
Maybe it is the impossibility of being able to pronounce the last name of The One’s master of ceremonies, or host, George Stroumboulopoulos.
Sure, it is a beautiful, musical name, but how about George S.?
Maybe it is the high drama included in the “behind-the-scenes” footage—of so-and-so getting pregnant by so-and-so-2’s boyfriend, taking us so far away from what would be an original setting for a copycat show (the academy) that gripes the guts of viewers who would prefer talent, art, music to be the relevant elements over personal, unrelated crap. I mean, even ANTM, showing the model hopefuls on the phone in between challenges, lessons, and make-up time, edits and airs only model-related material.
Maybe it is that the show was technically originally the “critically-acclaimed” Spanish Endemol series, “Operacion Triunfo”–which reputedly “garnered a 70% share and broke Spanish television records”—and is now remade in English with American hopefuls only. Maybe we lost something in the transition and translation.
Then again, maybe we just have enough music TV contests—among them the truly stellar, popular, and engaging and alluring Rockstar, Idol, and So You Think You Can Dance.
SirLinksAlot The One: Making a Music Star Links
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