As for Carly’s “attitude” in this interview, keep in mind that Lyndsey Parker was very unkind to Carly in her blog during Idol last year…

p.s. Carly is very proud of her Idol experience and is full of good things to say about the show and the people that work on it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PV2-YOqFSE

It sounds better than the studio mp3 that they gave out, less chanting in the intro & exit and ‘work’ done on the vocals, imo.

Egggactly.

In fact, Ià ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢m not sure there is any other major act that has an Idol connection that isnà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢t tainted by that connection in some way.

Wait, now doing the “Steel Dragon” thing from Rock Star bestows magic credibility? Every season of the show there’s been some variation of “so and so sounds just like (former pop star) they should totally take over (former hit band lacking their original star).” Carly’s just the first to actually take it up, because past singers have always preferred to take a shot at making it on their own.

The Fallen/We Are The Failed or however they’re morphing their name, are not a major act. They’re some guys from a major act that broke up, without the rights to their original name or hits, plus Carly Smithson, known only to the public as an Idol contestant.

Still Carly has a cool voice, and is lovely, and can be very appealing when she’s not nervous. Good luck to her and the band, they wrote some good stuff five years ago, and maybe this will give them the new start they need.

Lindsey was actually saying Carly NEVER sounded like a pop singer, even when she was a teenage Carly Hennessey. That she always had a voice more suited for rock music, but Carly didn’t really listen to what Lyndsey was saying because she was trying to pre-empt what she thought was going to be a criticism.

That or Carly isn’t terribly bright, a thought that has crossed my mind in the past. Lindsey was throwing her softball questions and Carly was swinging and missing completely.

She really needs to start watching interviews of David Cook, Kelly Clarkson, Adam and Kris and LEARN how to handle the PR side of stuff. She’s not skilled enough with the clever repartee to pull off what her bandmates were able to do here, but she must learn how to respond to criticism in a disarming way, to let stuff roll off her back and display some confidence.

I still like her, though, and am a big fan of her voice, but I STILL have no idea who the hell the Real Carly is! :blink_tb:

I love Carly and am very excited about this project but she seems to be coming out of the box a little defensive about Idol and her musical past in this interview. Hopefully ità ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s just because ità ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s the annoying yahoo interviewer, but Carly just seems super stressed,

I think Carly’s extremely talented, but weren’t these attitude issues, tension, wanting to please too much, freaking out and blaming other people and fibbing about stuff the things that pretty much messed her up on the show? (and for all I know, before the show?) … For example, I’ve heard enough of her singing to believe that she clearly has the goods to hit high notes, loud notes, rocker notes, all kinds of notes without screaming or looking like her throat is so tight it’s going to burst. But then so often that’s exactly what she ends up doing — which I blame on tension that causes her to just forget her technique.

HOnestly, I think she needs a lot of sessions with a good psychotherapist before she gets too far in a career because it seems to me that she gets in her own way all the time. And it’s a shame, because she’s very very talented, in my opinion.

(Plus, I disagree with her about dissing her first album — I think it is a very *good* pop album. Now, I know she doesn’t want to sing pop. But other people have changed genres without having to dis everything they did before — Heck, Dylan did it when he started rocking out. I don’t think they did her wrong with that album at all — the songs are good and they showcase the fact that she’s *capable* of excellent, flexible vocals. She ought to be proud to have that album on her resume and just say that, now that she’s grown up, she wants to go in a different musical direction. But, there again, you have the emotional/psychosocial issues that get in her way, I guess.)

I find the “distancing herself from Idol” view to be interesting. In the few interviews I’ve heard/read from her since the Idol tour, I’ve heard her say nothing but good things about the show. In fact, she called Idol “awesome” and said she “loved everyone that creates it” in the interview above and I heard no overt “shunning” of the show. But in the end, 19 chose not to pick her up, and she’s trying to move on with her career – I’m not sure she should have to spell out her affinity for Idol every time she’s interviewed. On the same token, I would think she’s well aware of what kind of exposure the show brought her.

And as for her demeanor during the interview, it might be worth noting that Lindsey Parker has written scathing criticisms of Carly as recently as the beginning of Season 8 when comparing Joanna Pacitti’s situation to Carly’s. Having that in mind, I can see how Carly may have been a bit wary when Parker started bringing up the past, but I think she answered Parker’s questions with grace given the situation.

The label, basically, any label in the history of music, isn’t about to hand a fourteen year old child (and that is the age that she was when she signed her deal on her kitchen table in Ireland) a six-figure bonus and let them discover their musical direction for themselves. So they hired a bunch of “old hands” Steven Dorff and eventually Gregg Alexander & Danielle Brisebois to guide her through the process.

What actually ended up on the Ultimate High album was recorded when she was sixteen and seventeen years old though and then held until her eighteen birthday. The first aborted effort was nine songs produced by Steve Dorff over six months when she was fifteen that was mostly ballads, a direction that was eventually shelved, and the only thing that ended up on the album from that was All Kinds of People. Her voice really hasn’t changed that much from those days, so I’d say she was wrong there.

I suspect the whole “distancing themselves from Idol” is more about attempting to position themselves in the marketplace. Carly (and the guys in the band) know that being an Idol alum is a net positive, just for the name awareness and exposure it brings, but I suspect that publicly embracing Idol isn’t in the cards for We Are The Fallen.

Theyà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢re not trying to appeal to the Idol audience at large.

That is unfortunate and short sited. I’m an “Idol” fan, not a Carly fan but I do like to follow up with what past contestants are doing. Strange as it may seem, I’m not a ‘music’ fan either, so what I like comes from Idol and what the contestants do after the show. If they intrest me I follow them and buy their material, if they turn on Idol and what it is, forget it, I have no use for them. I could be the minority here but I think there are many like me out there that have spending power.

About à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹getting away from American Idolà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ – bad move. I think Daughtry, Cook (the ones coming out of the gate as rockers) had it right, and now Kris Allen & Adam Lambert following their example.

All of the above are signed with 19. Of course, they don’t want to distance themselves from Idol. Idol offers them the chance to have pimpage out the wazoo for their music. But, like I said, the only thing Idol can do for Carly is to invite her band to perform on one of their results shows.

Now I do think that the vibe Carly projected in this interview may be off-putting to some general AI fans. But, she has to walk a careful line because the old Evanescence fans who may be interested in this project are likely to be VERY skeptical that it’s being fronted from someone who competed on American Idol.

Bottom line: Carly’s small, residual fanbase from Idol isn’t going to leave her. They would have supported her solo project, and now they’ll support this. Those folks combined with old Evanescence fans will form the base for this band along with whatever new fans they can attract. They’re not trying to appeal to the Idol audience at large.