American Idol's Kelly Clarkson has answered the first question of the rest of her life: can she sell records? The answer so far is a resounding "yes," made all the more impressive by the overwhelming banality of her single: utterly generic pop/R&B balladeering. Perhaps the very blandness of the recording has been to her advantage, allowing those viewers who adopted her on the show - who literally made her by voting for her - to buy her, the singer not the song. Regardless, the records are selling:
- Kelly "Ka-ching" Clarkson.
Ms. Clarkson, the 20-year-old Texas waitress turned singer, captured America's fancy on "American Idol," the summer's hottest television series, with her Mariah Carey-like vocals.
- Now, she is winning radio listeners and raking in huge record sales.
Her double-sided CD, featuring "A Moment Like This" and "Before Your Love," has sold 450,000 copies and is the No. 1 selling single, according to Soundscan, which tracks such sales.
Some stores jumped the gun and sold copies of the single before its Sept. 17 release date because the demand was so high, people in the music industry said. At a time when CD sales are in a slump, it is unusual for a first-time artist to sell so many records, especially singles — at $4.98 apiece, they said.
"She has managed to capture the cultural zeitgeist for the MTV generation in that she embodies the new American dream," said Amy Barnett, editor of Honey, a women's lifestyle magazine.
From New York to Cleveland to Los Angeles radio, listeners are calling stations and asking D.J.'s to play the single, which was written for the television series.
"The requests have not stopped coming in since the first day we played it," Allan Fee, the program director of WQAL-FM in Cleveland, said last week.
Ms. Clarkson's single outpaces airplay requests for new releases by Ms. Carey and Whitney Houston, some program directors say.
"America's fascination with `American Idol' has played itself out on radio," said Tom Poleman, program director for WHTZ-FM (Z-100) in New York and senior vice president of programming for Clear Channel Communications. Nationwide, Clear Channel owns 1,200 stations. "She's an incredible phenomenon. It's been a long time since we've seen any artist with single sales this high and this consistent."
Ms. Clarkson follows a long line of famous artists who translated success on television and radio talent shows into success. Frank Sinatra, part of the Hoboken Four, got his start on the Major Bowes Amateur Hour, said Ron Simon, a curator at the Museum of Radio and Records. Gladys Knight, as a 7-year-old, got her start on Ted Mack's "The Original Amateur Hour."
Article comments