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The Invisible Revolution
Introduction As recently as early 2003, he was invisible, at least on the landscape that is American popular culture. He was living an -ordinary life in a smallish city, a university student just a few months away from becoming a Special Education teacher. A good life, but an anonymous one. The people who were about to change his life so dramatically were not greatly different except that some were younger, some were older, some lived in small towns and others did not. They didn’t know him and, for the most part, they didn’t know each other. In the weeks following January 28, 2003, they began to “meet” anonymously and invisibly on the Internet, brought together first by their interest in a young singer they saw on a television singing competition and then united by their commitment to his success. Using the Internet, they created something much more significant than a fan club. They became a highly organized grassroots marketing machine with the single purpose of creating a superstar. They succeeded, and in the process, made cultural history. This is the story of how they did it and why. The star they created, of course, is Clay Aiken, and the fans are now known as the Clay Nation, which is populated by Claymates and Claydawgs as well as a few Clayniacs, and which crosses borders to include Claynadians and many other nationalities. For the information of any reader who somehow manages to avoid pop culture and yet is interested enough to read this, Aiken is a singer, a highly successful recording artist with a large, dedicated, and, I will argue, unique fan base. With a triple platinum debut album, a platinum Christmas album that broke Billboard and Soundscan records for holiday recordings, sold-out concert venues, television appearances, and high-profile charity work, Aiken has become a major figure in the music industry in a very short time. If he had won the American Idol crown in 2003, his success might not be quite so surprising. But he was the runner-up, and possibly that is one of the reasons for his success. America does love an underdog, after all. But the hype of also-ran status usually wears itself out very quickly—witness Justin Guarini and whoever finished second in American Idol’s third season. And yet, three years after his season on that show, Clay Aiken’s popularity continues to soar and shows no signs of waning. Why? The singer has often said that he is where he is because of his fans. Well, yes. Since success is defined for an entertainer by the number of fans who care enough to buy their “products,” that is a given. As we shall see, though, Aiken’s fans are not like others, and that may well be because Aiken is not like other celebrities. What Aiken and his fans accomplished is a minor revolution. Whether it turns out to be a musical revolution remains to be seen, but they have transformed the nature of fandom by creating a new kind of relationship between celebrity and fan. By forming on the Internet and then making it their mission to make Aiken a superstar, Aiken’s fans began to revolutionize the relationship between celebrity and fan. The passion, dedication and organizational skills they continue to exhibit in support of his every endeavor have made them pop culture revolutionaries. In the beginning, they were invisible, as the book’s title suggests, to each other and to Aiken, but they made their existence known in the votes they cast each week to keep him on American Idol during the program’s second season. That was only the beginning. When he lost the crown to Ruben Studdard, these fans channeled their disappointment and their anger into a determined, organized campaign to show the world who the true idol was. Today, they are no longer invisible, to each other, to Aiken, or to the music industry which is, though somewhat bemused and befuddled, beginning to take notice. Clay Aiken has an undeniable talent, but can a clear, powerful tenor voice and a natural gift for selling a song account for the phenomenon that he has become? The creators of American Idol would likely credit the voice and the leg-up that the show provides. Their hope, and the premise of the show, is that the fan base created during the season will translate into sales of the new artists’ albums. To some extent, that has happened. Although the fourth season winner has been crowned, her album has not yet been released as of this writing, but the winners of the first three seasons have enjoyed impressive sales for their first singles and albums. None of the winners has yet matched Aiken’s sales figures for their debut albums, and the sales trend for the winners seems to be turning downward. It’s far too early in Idol’s history to talk about longevity (the first Idol, Kelly Clarkson was crowned late in 2003), but it is essential for their careers that contestants establish a durable fan base, one that does not shift loyalties as soon as the new season of Idol begins. The danger to American Idol alumni is that the fans who put them where they are will behave like those of other reality shows. There might be a small number of hard-core fans who follow the fortunes of the “Bachelor” and his bride, but for the most part they move on. There is even evidence that many fans of American Idol, particularly the younger ones, do the same thing, changing allegiance as readily as their message board avatars from Ruben to Fantasia or Carrie or whomever. Clay Aiken’s fans appear to be the exception. In a poll commissioned by Bravo/TV Guide (TV Guide, August 11, 2005) in July of 2005, Aiken was named the favorite of all Reality TV stars to date. That finding is confirmed by the number of Internet sites devoted to him, the number of hits logged by major search engines, not to mention the sales figures for his CD, book, and concert tickets. It seems safe to say that interest in the singer has not diminished at all. In fact, it appears to be growing. Again, why? American Idol has introduced approximately 50 new singers to the American public in the last four years, many of them also very talented young performers, and yet most are struggling. The only struggling that Aiken appears to be doing is to keep up with a hectic schedule of recording, concerts, television appearances, and charity work. After studying the phenomenon for more than two years, I have concluded that for a significant number of the second season American Idol audience, Clay Aiken filled a void that existed in popular music and, more broadly, in popular culture. Why Aiken was the one to fill that void was, in part, a matter of timing. He came along just in time to take advantage of the intersection of three forces in American culture—Reality Television, the Internet, and the mood of post 9/11 America. Reality Television and the Internet have been linked phenomena since the beginning. There are numerous Internet sites devoted to the Reality TV genre, to specific programs and even to specific contestants. People gather on message boards during and following the airing of the programs to discuss contestants, make predictions, draw comparisons with past shows and just to chat. In January of 2003, when the second season of American Idol began, Web sites such as Fans of Reality TV, Bolt, and even Fox’s own Idolsonfox.com were well established as meeting places for fans. Idol fans gathered all week long, but especially on Tuesday and Wednesday nights after the program aired, to talk about the contestants. The one they talked most about in 2003, and by a substantial margin, was Clay Aiken. Aiken is arguably the first bona fide Web idol, the most successful entertainer of the 21st century so far to understand the power and reap the benefits of this medium. In the early days of the Internet, its power was presumed to be in the information that could be easily stored, retrieved and transmitted. By the beginning of this century, however, Internet users had discovered that its real power lay in the ability to build relationships and to use those relationships to sell products. What the Internet did for fandom was to allow for the active participation of a more diverse fan base with greater frequency of contact and the sharing of more information. Before the Internet, there were large-scale fan communities, such as the Trekkies, but their sense of community was limited. These fans had to be old enough and have the resources to travel, sometimes great distances, to conventions where they could discuss their particular obsession. The Internet has neutralized age, geography and financial means, making it possible for fans of all ages, wherever they might live, to participate actively in the community. All that is required is a computer with an Internet connection. Clay Aiken and his fans appeared to understand very well the potential of the Internet as a communication and a marketing tool. Long before the American Idol competition ended, Aiken was leading the Web “hit parade” with twice as many Web hits as Ruben Studdard, the eventual title holder. By the end of 2003, Lycos reported that Clay Aiken was in the top 25 searches for the year, ahead of Christina Aguilera, Eminem, and The Bible, and in the category “most searched men,” he came in third. A year later, Lycos ranked him at #3 overall, behind only Paris Hilton and Janet Jackson, and he got there, as his fans noted, without a single sex video or wardrobe malfunction (although some might characterize his clothing choices, at times, as surely accidental). At the end of 2004, he was in the top ten searches for “public figures” at Google (no other Idol alums were on the list), and Yahoo reported: With only four weeks before Christmas (#2), if Web search activity is any indication, it’s Clay Aiken (#1) who’s at the top of everyone’s wish list this holiday season. During this same time period last year, Christmas was close to taking over the number one spot on The Lycos 50, but even Santa can’t top the Aiken juggernaut this time around. With his Christmas CD on the way, and an NBC Christmas special, not to mention his concert tour. Web users are Aiken for Clay. Yahoo.com Fans maintain a huge Internet presence, tracking and promoting Aiken with even more zeal than they did in the first months of their relationship when he was a contestant and they were focused on winning the competition for him. Why they were—and remain—so determined brings us to the third factor contributing to his popularity, the mood of the country following September 11, 2001. Having survived pre-millennial angst with all the media predictions of global chaos, the country had settled in to the new century with optimism. The dot.com bubble had not yet burst, and stories of instant millionaires helped to feed the American dream machine just as Reality Television did. Then came 9/11. When America first met Clay Aiken in a taped segment of his Atlanta audition, the country was still recovering from the shock of that catastrophe just 16 months earlier. When a cataclysmic event of that magnitude occurs, the reaction is predictable. Yearning for a return to the familiar, to what they perceived as the safety of the past, Americans began to espouse more traditional values. Decency became fashionable again. Church attendance rose as people searched for meaning in their lives, interest in pop psychology and psychic phenomena grew as people searched for meaning. The timing was right for a new kind of hero—for a young man who didn’t talk back to his elders, even when the elders roasted him unfairly for a performance, a young man who appeared to be decent, humble, and was unashamed to profess his Christian beliefs right out loud for everyone to hear. The nation that was turning to Dr. Phil to learn how to discover their authentic selves was predictably drawn to another television personality, one whom they deemed to be somehow like them, and who appeared to embody what Dr. Phil and a lot of other popular psychology writers were talking about. Clay Aiken appeared to be authentic. He didn’t preach to them about living a purpose-driven life. He simply did it. It’s a Matter of Timing Reality Television was at the apex of its popularity and quality, American Idol was the leader of the pack, and the Internet provided a place for Reality TV junkies to meet and talk. Many Americans were fed up with the excess of celebrity and were in the mood for a hero who reminded them of earlier, safer times in their lives. So, when Clay Aiken appeared on that January night in 2003, they were ready, and they have been with him ever since. Aiken has more fans now. They are louder and more influential, and almost all of them are happy to talk about what motivates them. They will tell you that Aiken is a great singer, that they love his voice and the songs he sings, but they will also tell you that it’s more than that. A lot more than that. They are not just fans; they are passionate in their affection for him, as a singer and as a man. As signs at his concerts proclaim: “We came for the music; we stayed for the man.” Other singers have admirers, even ardent ones, but, if what fans write and say is any indication, Clay Aiken touches the hearts of his fans in a way that few celebrities do. …Definitely the saying “the whole is more than a sum of its parts” applies to Clay. I think for most it probably started with the voice coming from what has been called an “unlikely source.” I am referring to his Atlanta audition. What audiences saw from week to week, was this young man with an amazing voice transform from kind of dorky to kind of hot. What was also noticed is how he took the criticism, sometimes scathing, in stride. Even Simon remarked toward the end that Clay was one of the few who was able to take criticism like a grown-up. I think that many admired that. And Clay had some memorable performances…and his fan base grew. Throw in his devotion to mom, working with disabled kids, and the fact that he seems like a regular person… I am convinced that one of the reasons that so many are crazy about him is that he seems accessible, unlike more glamorous celebrities.… There are a whole lot of people out there who are or were not part of an in crowd and I think they feel a special affinity to Clay. An uncool kid that made good. Of course you can’t ignore the underdog factor. When he lost, I think that it mobilized a whole community of fans to action.… He has matured as a performer and amazed during the AI tour, again fanning the fuel of fandom. And believe it or not, he is considered handsome by many and seems to have found a natural style. He also is articulate, likes to talk and more importantly likes to listen. This all adds up to a type of charisma. Some have called it the “X” factor.… Although at the core of his appeal is his voice, Clay really is more than a sum of his parts.… htp, FORT * * * Some would go even further. Although they have learned to be a little cautious about what they say on Internet message boards, having learned that they are sometimes the targets of scorn and mockery by non-fans, many of Aiken’s fans will admit that they believe he has a higher purpose than to entertain the public with his songs. It isn’t, as their detractors claim, that they think that he is the messiah or a holy man, but they do believe that he is fulfilling a larger purpose. Some articulate it as a unifying force. Others speak of energy, and not just musical energy, either. Because of him, all these virtual communities have formed, and populating those communities are people who have come to love and care for one another. Love is an incredibly powerful energy, and the world has a lot more of it now because of this humble, unassuming young singer whose own heart is big enough to encompass us all. I know my own heart has increased its capacity for love and compassion and for humor. Posted at OMC Clay Aiken has caught the public fancy. Fans crisscross the country to hear him sing time and time again. They organize CD release parties. They campaign for radio-play and propel his singles and albums to the top of the charts. They vote in numbers to ensure a win in every online poll possible. Rumor has it that he was elected President of Albania last year, but as he is still residing in the US, this appears to be false. How Clay Aiken got where he is today is a story that is, thus, as much about his fans as it is about him. Understanding his success means understanding the fans who created and sustain it. Understanding the Clay Nation. Invisible Many of those who make up the Clay Nation had been invisible for years, at least in the record stores and at pop music concerts. They had not bought a music CD in recent memory, if ever, and the closest they got to a concert arena was to drop off their children or grandchildren. Hearing that Prince had a new CD, they would likely wonder whether it was Charles, William, or Harry. Until Aiken came along, they did not download music, and the only time they called radio stations was to try to win a prize, more likely cash than tickets to a pop concert. When Clay Aiken came along, though, and these older fans joined forces with younger, more hip fans, they created not just a diverse fan base for the young singer, but a stable market for him and an enigma to the popular music industry. In the following pages, we will see how and why they collectively became engaged in the business of making Clay Aiken a superstar. Finally, the question has to be asked: Will Aiken survive? And if he does, will he survive as the kind of celebrity he is now or will he, but for his talent, be indistinguishable from the rest? Will he always be his own man, or will he, too, start his own clothing line, sign an endorsement deal with a flatiron manufacturer or the maker of hair glue? Will he maintain the moral steadfastness that his fans admire, or will he succumb to fame’s less noble temptations? His fans would find these possibilities laughable, and yet, celebrity exerts a massive force on a person, especially a young naïve one who was thrust so suddenly onto the stage. Does he have that too-rare strength of character that will protect him from excess? Or perhaps these are the wrong questions. Maybe the real issue is how the relationship between Aiken and his fans will develop and change over the years and influence the direction he takes as an artist and as a man. Will he turn out to be the catalyst to change pop culture permanently and for the better? |
