This week, Miley Cyrus cracked the top 3 on the Billboard Albums chart by moving 128,000 copies of her album Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus. The 15 year old Cyrus debuted at #1 two weeks ago and has only slipped down one spot a week since.
The teenage duo Aly & AJ (mean age = 17) also had a strong performance with their record Insomniatic, debuting at #15 on this week's chart. Yet another sensation among teenagers, the Cheetah Girls (featuring former "Hanging With Mr. Cooper" star Raven Symone), have gained a large following.
However, none of these popular teen acts have been able to put up a strong showing on the Top 40 Charts. For all her success, Miley Cyrus is yet to have a Top 40 single. Many people above the age of 20 have never heard of the Cheetah Girls. Only Aly & AJ have had any success with a specific song, and even that song -- the pop/dance tune "Potential Break-Up Song" -- hasn't done great. This isn't a new trend, either.
Gary Marsh, Disney's President of Entertainment, tells the AP, "We had the No. 1 album of the year and nobody seemed to pay attention in the mainstream radio world, they didn't care."
Marsh is refering to the High School Musical soundtrack, which outsold all other 2006 albums by moving 4 million copies to teens and their unsuspecting parents. Marsh believes that radio programmers don't want to risk alienating older fans, and thus the lack of airplay for popular teen albums.
How has Disney overcome this problem? By charging $12 for an ice cream cone at Disneyland. No, just kidding. They've decided to turn the tables, ignoring radio and the mainstream public, instead building a devout fan base of teens. As the artists get older, so does that aforementioned fan base. It's at this point when the artist drops the Disney title and launches a solo career, gaining mainstream fans while still keeping the devout base of teens (some of whom are now in their twenties). Hilary Duff is the template for this success; she began under the Lizzie McGuire moniker, and by the time she released her solo debut in 2003, she was already a star. Duff even went the extra mile and named her first solo album Metamorphasis, you know, to show how she wasn't that little Disney girl any more and she had totally changed.
And that's why all music is going to suck by 2012. No, just kidding, again. When I first read this story, it made perfect sense. The mainstream public doesn't want to hear kids' music; of course Hannah Montana isn't going to get radio airplay. But then I thought about it. Adults love the Shrek movies, and those are for kids. Adults love Harry Potter, and that's for kids. Why wouldn't adults like teen music? You may say, "well Shrek has adult jokes too!" I'm not going to argue that -- even though you're wrong -- but what about Miley Cyrus? Her songs are not much different from some of the so-called adult pop artists out there. In fact, I think Hannah Montana might be more mature than most Fergie songs, and Fergie's like 50 years old.
It all comes down to one thing: Shrek and Harry Potter are fiction. But Miley Cyrus is a real-life 15 year old girl. And despite what Chris Hansen and "Dateline" might have you believe, most of the people in this country are not pedophiles. Even if I loved the Hannah Montana CD (which obviously is false), I would have a very tough time listening to it, because I know she's a 15 year old girl, and that's just creepy.
That said, someone needs to set up a "Hannah Montana 18th Birthday Countdown" website ASAP.
[Also, I would be remiss if I didn't make a joke about Gary Marsh being "...more like Gary Darsh!"]
