Archive for April 7, 2009
The global Idol machine
I have to hand it to the folks at Fremantle Media (owned by the media giant Bertelsmann AG): coming-up with the Idol franchise was a stroke of brilliance. While American Idol might be getting a little tired at this point, it’s hardly in danger of cancellation with its millions-strong following, and Idol worldwide continues to chug along very nicely, thank you.
Say what you will about Idol, it brings to the spotlight talent we might not have heard otherwise, and while I’ve written plenty about the stars cranked out by the American version of the show, truth is, there are plenty of artists on the global stage that also have Idol roots, and as we’ve seen in the U.S., you don’t have to win the competition to get benefit of the “Idol effect.”
Take Danny Saucedo. Back in 2006, he appeared on Swedish Idol. While his Wikipedia entry suggests he wowed the judges, apparently his talent wasn’t quite sufficient to get him beyond the top 6 contestants on the show.
Apparently that was perfectly adequate, however, since Sony signed him in 2007, and he’s enjoyed a few #1 songs in Sweden since. Apparently he’s a bit of a sensation in Poland as well, but in any case, I just saw his name for the first time within the past few weeks when I got a promo of his track All on You.
It’s one of those tracks that was sort of, “yeah, this is good” on the first listen, and it’s been growing on me (thankfully not like a fungus in this case) since. As one might expect, it’s your basic polished remix of a basic polished pop song. Nothing wrong with that. And while I might feel a wee bit guilty for embracing another example of the vanilla ice cream of music (I normally prefer a little flavor and texture, figuratively speaking), good vanilla ice cream is still fun to eat, right?
It will be interesting to see if Sony are successful in getting Danny Saucedo to gain traction in North America. His “cute factor” should go a long way to help, but as I said, the music’s not bad either.
Check out his web site (if you read Swedish, anyway) at www.danny.nu.
