The crackle and hum of a dormant amp awaiting noise. The dimming of the lights, faint outlines of figures on stage. The collective held breath of a group of thousands briefly united. There is no experience on earth quite like the fizzing atmosphere of live music, and nowhere is this more heightened than at the stadium show where excitement bubbles over into hysteria and years of dedication come to a head for one unforgettable night.
Pop stars have been filling stadiums for decades, and the heady world of the music industry has had a similar pull for filmmakers since the days of William A. Wellman’s A Star Is Born. But in recent years something has shifted. The gap between indie artists rattling the walls of local boozers and megastars strutting the gangway to tens of thousands has widened, as investment in grassroots venues plummets (over a third are making a loss) and the cost of going to a gig continues to rise alongside the cost of living. Social media, streaming dominance, changing music consumption habits and major label manipulation mean pop stars can be mass-marketed with greater ease, and culture is more homogenous as a result. So how do you make a fictional pop star stand out?
This year alone has brought us plenty of new idols: there’s Smile 2’s Skye Riley who has received an immersive marketing campaign, Lady Raven in M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap (played by his musician daughter Saleka), and Nicholas Galitzine’s silly but watchable Harry Styles stand-in Hayes Campbell in The Idea of You. And even if some people would rather forget it, 2023 saw Sam Levinson’s icky but unavoidable TV show The Idol hard launch Lily-Rose Depp as fledgling singer Jocelyn. Even looking ahead to 2025, David Lowery’s Mother Mary will follow a fictional pop star (Anne Hathaway) and her relationship with a fashion designer (Michaela Coel), set to a soundtrack by pop star-of-the-moment Charli XCX.
But creating a new pop sensation isn’t as easy as dreaming one up. Beyond the logistical challenges – thousands of extras (real or CGI) for concert scenes, huge expensive sets, original songs – it’s much more than slapping on a spangly leotard. Pop stars make it because they offer something nobody else can, some intangible quality that sets them apart from the masses. Creating a version of this that viewers can buy into in just a few hours is tricky and rarely works. Building a pop star means nailing the essentials.
The Name
A pop star’s name carries weight because it’s a calling card. When she arrived on the scene Lady Gaga’s name sounded fairly silly, and before it was one of the most recognized names in the world, Taylor Swift sounded pretty unremarkable. Years of context and association with their specific personalities mean that these names now instantly hold whole stories within them. You can’t really do this over the length of a film, so it’s hard to make a fake pop star’s name feel special. It doesn’t hit quite right in the case of M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap pop star Lady Raven. It’s clear where both parts of that name originate – by looking a little too closely at existing pop stars – but it sounds contrived as a result.
His daughter Saleka Shyamalan does a decent job of filling this tough role, and the staging of the film is convincing, even where the plot sometimes is not. It’s a fun environment for a thriller and there’s an understanding here of what makes teen fans tick. Combined with a properly filled-out crowd, low-angle shots among the masses, and hysteric crowd noise; Lady Raven’s show feels immersive. Unfortunately, every time someone says ‘Lady Raven’, that fades slightly.
The upcoming sequel to horror smash Smile has made some clever attempts to counteract this through its marketing, building in some lore for their pop star main character. Huge billboards advertising a new album from Skye Riley (shared by credible stan accounts like Pop Base) made it seem like a new pop star was about to emerge. These adverts were then adapted over time to reveal chilling adverts for Smile 2. Skye Riley isn’t necessarily a terrible name for a pop star, but much like Lady Raven it does feel a little blank. What the marketing attempts to do here though is bed this name in as a feasible popstar in our minds through repeat association. Seeing the name on billboards supposedly as a real person outside of the context of the film initially may help to give it some more weight.
The Look
Take Lady Gaga for example: a true outsider who’s consistently breaking the rules of what a pop star should be. Her 2010 MTV VMAs meat dress would be a baffling choice for anyone else (it was even for her at the time). Now it has become a significant cultural moment, giving her the freedom to make bolder choices throughout her career. The lack of this history means fictional pop stars often lack cohesive creative vision and end up looking a little cookie-cutter.
It’s important to have a creative team with real ideas or a story that creates significant moments centered around a star’s image. Vox Lux does this with Celeste’s ever-present and evolving neck brace, the traumatic backstory of which is easily believable as something that could launch a young singer to superstardom. This also shows the importance of a strong backstory, films like Trap where we’re dropped straight in at the peak of an artist’s career with little context are more tricky to pull off.
A shortcut here can be to cast an existing singer, as with Gaga’s Ally in A Star Is Born (or Barbra Streisand in the 1976 version). The costumes in A Star Is Born are actually not all that remarkable but this familiarity and sense of someone special we already have with Gaga makes it easier to accept that Jackson (Bradley Cooper) could spot an innate talent in Ally and makes her believable when she eventually emerges as a pop star (plus, it helps with the original music).
Gaga’s unique persona also helps keep a barrier between her real-life personality and the character; when you see her in plain clothes as Ally, you’re not seeing Lady Gaga, a lot of that persona has been stripped away. That magic quality remains though, hinting at something special. Of course, this can also backfire for stars who lack Gaga’s acting chops (see The Weekend putting many people off him for life in The Idol).
The World
A crucial part of creating a believable fictional pop star is creating the world they occupy. We see this in the insular Toronto hipster scene of Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World which feels totally fleshed out. As a result, when local icon Envy Adams finally appears, she has been so discussed and so eulogised that she feels larger than life. A good representation of the way a tight-knit scene can lift a singer who is not actually that big to loftier heights (not that Envy would see it that way).
Vox Lux does the opposite, never actually showing much of the wider world where Celeste is a household name but rather remaining excruciatingly contained within the claustrophobic world she is forced to occupy. Showing how little of the real-world pop stars often actually get to see; from the moment Celeste is catapulted to fame and begins to be moulded by the industry’s grubby hands, the film is surrounded by oppressive high-rise buildings, soulless hotel rooms and impossible-to-trust handlers. This all serves to add weight to her final performance. This was also perhaps The Idol’s one redeeming factor; Levinson and co nailed the gaggle of self-serving, heartless industry types who surrounded Jocelyn, manipulating her at every turn for their own gain. It’s an unnerving – albeit lurid – depiction of how toxic the industry can sometimes be, especially where young women are concerned.
If all this is done right, with a commitment to every aspect of what makes a pop star (and a few good songs thrown in for good measure), it can be an irresistible format. For music fans, there’s nothing more thrilling than a glimpse behind the scenes and if done well it can even be a shortcut to real fandom. Look at Hannah Montana, the fictional teen pop star that Miley Cyrus made real. Cyrus even played another fictional pop star (Ashley-O in Black Mirror) and brought her to life on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage (where Gaga and Cooper previously shot a scene). A head-spinning combination of real and fake pop stars alike.
The post How to create a fictional pop superstar appeared first on Little White Lies.
0 Comments