Post by Roimeister on Feb 7, 2016 22:27:25 GMT -5
Sawyer: Great American story
Fultonville phemon's humble life and sweet demeanor helped his star qualities rise to fame
By Amy Biancolli Updated 5:05 am, Sunday, May 24, 2015
On Tuesday, Sawyer Fredericks took the prize as season eight champion of "The Voice," scoring $100,000 and a record deal after months of wowing judges and wooing audience votes with his sincerity, his easy-going musical gifts and his bowler.
But the Fultonville 16-year-old won something else, too: a type and intensity of American pop stardom that can morph a farm kid from the sticks into a golden boy bound for glory. He was all of 15 when he blind-auditioned for the NBC singing competition, rendering "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" with a purity and depth that sounded incongruous — outrageous, really — coming from the mouth of a teenager.
That very incongruity fueled his rise on "The Voice," where he kept singing tunes that should have been too old for him but weren't. On a show peopled with enormous talent, Fredericks stood out with his heady mix of innocence and emotion. Young girls loved him; pre-, peri- and post-menopausal women loved him; so did anyone else with a soft spot for kind boys with long hair and gravelly voices.
Just ask his mom.
According to Kirsten Fredericks, there are two parts to his appeal. "There's the singing part, which is the way he sings — I think he touches a core emotion that's so honest, and so authentic, that people can't help but respond," she said on Wednesday morning, still short on sleep but happy and proud.
"And then he's just a beautiful, beautiful child. He's just a wonderful boy. And you know, he's almost always in good spirits and always kind — and he's just been that way since birth. He's always been the one that kept the peace in the household."
Whatever propelled his rise, Fredericks breezed through "The Voice" each week by drawing votes and downloads — consistently hitting the top 10 on iTunes, multiplying the value of each purchase by 10. But he's hardly the first pop icon to be plucked from obscurity on a singing competition, and he won't be the last. Talent shows have been around for generations, surging and fading in popularity on a seemingly cyclical basis.
"Before 'The Voice' there was 'American Idol,' before 'American Idol' there was 'Star Search,' before 'Star Search' there was, back in the age of radio, 'Major Bowes Original Amateur Hour,' " said Robert J. Thompson, an authority on media and pop culture based at Syracuse University.
Frank Sinatra rocketed to stardom in 1935 after the Hoboken Four won "Major Bowes," which utilized audience participation — listener postcards, a gong for bad singers — long before the advent of texting and iTunes. "So before television started, big, huge stars like Sinatra were being discovered," he said.
Early TV kicked in with its own shows — Ted Mack's, Arthur Godfrey's — but the phenomenon waned eventually, only to rise again in the 1980s with "Star Search." "They go through biorhythms ... but these things will never completely disappear, because the basic drama of them is pretty compelling," Thompson said. "You know, you get a bunch of unknown people, and you slowly single them out. And it's fun to watch all these other people fall by the wayside as one gets to have the dream. I mean, it's a very dramatic story."
And the humbler the contestant, the more dramatic the arc.
One major part of Fredericks' allure — and the allure of many who emerge into stardom from such shows — is the average-joeness of those competing. "What makes people like him really attractive or appealing is the way that the shows are produced to create drama for ordinary people about ordinary people," said Michelle Janning, a sociology professor at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash., and another scholar of pop culture. The celebrities spawned by "The Voice" and its ilk are created in large part by audience members who get a buzz from the thrill of participating. "Anybody who participates in the voting feels one notch closer to celebrity."
Fredericks, she said, is "interesting because he's ordinary, and he's ordinary because he seems to be humble in his appearance and demeanor, and he's young and he comes from a modest background. ... I mean, he's a great American story in general. He kind of perpetuates the myth of 'anybody can make it,' and if you're a kid who lives within a 20-mile radius of the winner, well, you could be part of the great American story, too."
(That proximity has a downside: Kirsten Fredericks wishes people wouldn't just drive up to Windrake Farm, their home in Fultonville, and hop out to snap a picture. "They just pull right in," she said, adding that fans are welcome to contact her son on social media. "Thanks for the support, but please respect our privacy.")
Jannings, who has written about squealing girls at boy-band concerts, said the teens and preteens who backed Sawyer may feel empowered to express themselves in a realm that's safe and structured — maybe too structured, but still. They wield some control; their votes heavily influence the outcome, no matter how scripted the framework. "There's this kind of paradox for young girls of feeling as if they have a lot of voice, a lot of say, by voting for the winner and by going to concerts and screaming — by letting loose. You know: really, literally having a freedom of expression."
All of which points to another piece of Fredericks' appeal and a driving force behind his victory on "The Voice": The simple fact that he's young. And male. And one other salient thing. As a fan named Karly gushed ungrammatically on http://www.sawyerfredericks.com: "Omg! your so cute."
Mom understands. "I don't think that hurts at all. Although that could have backfired, because people could have thought, 'Oh, he's just popular because he's a pretty face,'" she said. "But it came in a good package, maybe."
abiancolli@timesunion.com • 518-454-5439518-454-5439 • @amybiancolli
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www.timesunion.com/7day-arts/article/Sawyer-Great-American-story-6283449.php