Quick, I want you to name off the last four winners of American Idol…too hard? Okay, how about the last two winners of The Voice? Umm, the winner of X-Factor? Okay, okay, I get it, you don’t know. How about if I asked this…name the judges of American Idol, The Voice, or X-Factor. Personally, I know I named more judges than winners, hands down.
We have all seen one or all of these shows at some point in our life, but who’s the real winner of these shows? For example, we have Carrie Underwood who on average has made about 6.5 million dollars a year since she won American Idol in 2005. But in 2012 we have Mariah Carey coming in to sit in a chair and “judge” people making $18 million dollars this season, you read that right, not year but season. A television season in “Reality TV” is approximately 9 months of work. Please, can someone tell me how that is even right?
Some of the judges are using these reality television shows as springboards to a comeback. Take for example, the mess we all call Christina Aguilera. On July 8, 2010, her Bionic album was released. She said that it was going to be a totally new aspect of herself because of the birth of her child. A tour was planned and every one was excited. Did anyone go to the Bionic tour? No, because in May prior to the release, she postponed the tour, and not surprisingly after the album was released and bombed, the tour was never heard from again.
However, in April of 2011, The Voice debuted on NBC. With the help of The Voice and Adam Levine, Aguilera rocked out the bridge of “Moves Like Jagger” on June 11, 2011. It only took a year, an amazing sound, and the help of television but Christina was on her way back to what we all knew of her. We were all singing that song and wishing we were rubbing up on a half-naked Adam Levine like she was, but let me ask you this…who won The Voice that season?
Oh, Javier Colon, that’s right. Where is his album you may ask? Well in June of 2012, he announced that he was leaving his label because of a lack of support for his album. I’m glad to see Christina was able to spring back and have a $10 million dollar pay day for season two of The Voice.
In 2004, Jennifer Lopez married still married Marc Anthony in an escandelo that made the papers. Was her marriage legal? Was he technically divorced yet? All questions, I didn’t care about. Then in 2008 she became a mother of twins. She was being a full time mom and still doing some singing and acting on the side. However in 2010 Epic Records released J.Lo from her contract with them. She took her seventh album to Island Records and released it in April of 2011…which is weird because in January she debut as one of the two new judges of American Idol. BOING!!! Yes, my friends, that is the sound of Jennifer Lopez using the springboard of American Idol to propel her album and comeback further then we could imagine. Jennifer made a whopping $12 million dollars for being on Idol. Far more then the winners did the year they won. Not to mention her smash hit “On The Floor” sold over 5 million copies worldwide. Whomp, whomp.
And last but certainly not least we have Brit Brit. We all watched Britney Spears lose her mind publicly in the year 2007. Bless her heart! Since she brutally attacked that poor car and was committed by her family, we have watched her be under the conservatorship of her father and the court. We all made fun of her dull rounded dancing during her Femme Fatale tour and if you say you didn’t, you’re a liar. She had a great album but personally she hadn’t done anything in years. She was touring and then hid away. In the beginning of the year it was rumored that Britney was in talks with X-Factor to become a judge at the extraordinary amount of $15 million dollars. Rumor was Jennifer Lopez tried to hold out to get more money than Britney and look where it landed her…unemployed. Let’s all hope that X-Factor doesn’t turn into a night in 2007 full of hair clippers and umbrellas. I have faith that she will turn the stress and fame of this show into something good for her and I can’t wait to see how X-Factor propels her career forward.
The real winners of the reality TV singing shows are obviously the…judges. I mean I would much rather sit around drinking from plastic glasses to conceal my vice and tell people they are my “dawg”. It’s less pressure, way more money and if you’re lucky, a break for a comeback that will be prosperous. However, it is sad that we have fallen into a place that we put washed up pop stars ahead of true talent. We are looking at you Nicki Minaj.
