It seems to be a common thing these days, movie and TV stars releasing albums. But how successful can you actually be as a singer being an actress? I can’t even count the number of headlines I’ve seen that basically said that yet another actress is releasing an album, people seem to be annoyed by it.

Of course there have been success stories in the past, someone like Cher managed to be successful as an actress and as a singer. But we of course don’t focus on that age group. But the double career seems to be becoming a more common thing, was it a thing not happening that often in the past it’s happening more and more.

With the success of High School Musical on the Disney Channel, it’s not surprising that Ashley Tisdale and Vanessa Anne Hudgens got record deals. The sales numbers of those albums didn’t quite match those of the High School Musical soundtrack though; the solo sales didn’t even come close to those of the soundtrack. Why is that? If you ask me it’s simple, they lack a sound of their own.

All the songs on those albums are just mass produced junk that don’t have the advantage of being attached to a successful movie. This doesn’t mean they can’t sing but they just don’t stand out. High School Musical 2 will come out next month so maybe that will be more successful for them. As for their acting careers High School Musical has been their high as well, they still have to establish themselves in both departments.

Someone like Hilary Duff is on her fourth album now and has quite a lot of movies to her name now. Her first album was quite successful but after that every subsequent album sold fewer copies. The concert tours for those albums have been quite successful actually making Hilary Duff one of the top earning recording artists over the last couple of years. But does she have staying power?

To really establish herself in the music industry she has to stand out more, experiment a little more with her music. The same pretty much goes for her acting career; she just needs to do more risky girls and not only the nice girl roles. But with her next movie coming up she seems to finally drop the nice girl roles. So she is finally expanding into other movie genres. So her next movies and her next album will pretty much make or break her.

If you look at someone like Lindsay Lohan it’s a different story. She has released two albums; the first one was more or less successful but the second one pretty much flopped. She still has a deal with Universal for several more albums but when and if those will be released is something nobody knows. It doesn’t seem to be high on her priority list at the moment, she’s an example of someone that just seems to focus on her acting (and staying sober for now) and doesn’t really take the singing seriously. It’s a side project to her; she never did a concert tour either, which is important in a music career. People want to buy their records but they also want to see them live; that’s how you build a fanbase. She is expanding the number of movie genres she’s active in, that’s one positive thing. But I think it would be better if she just announced that she sticks to acting. Singing doesn’t seem to be working that well for her.

But now there’s another even younger generation coming, just like High School Musical there are concepts which combine acting and singing into one format. Nickelodeon has Unfabulous starring Emma Roberts. Disney has Hannah Montana starring Miley Cyrus. Both combine the singing and the acting factor, though in different ways.

Emma Roberts hasn’t released a solo album yet and I don’t know whether she will. So far there only was the release of the Unfabulous soundtrack, but she did take care of all the songs on that. She also had songs on two other movie soundtracks (Aquamarine in which she starred herself and Ice Princess). But yet again she doesn’t really stand out; they’re all generic pop songs. Her acting career is still at a start, she seems to be focussing on that for now; the music career might come back into play at a later point. Even though I don’t have that high hopes for her in the singing department.

The success of Unfabulous doesn’t even come close to the success of Hannah Montana; the first soundtrack for the show is pretty much the most successful TV show soundtrack in history. And last week the second soundtrack debuted at number one in the billboard charts; it’s being shipped together with her first solo album. Besides Hannah Montana she doesn’t really have a lot of acting experience yet, but she seems to be focussing on both quite equally. In her case it’s just too early to say whether she has staying power in either career at this point. As for her singing voice at least she has a sound that’s a bit different and she did write part of the album herself which not a lot of other singers/actresses can say. She probably has the most successful double career at this time but she still has a lot to learn in both departments.

This year we’ll see other actresses releasing albums. Scarlett Johansson was offered a record deal even though she doesn’t seem to have the most obvious singing voice. I’ve only heard her sing once and that’s not too promising but maybe the album with Tom Waits covers will help her; but she’s clearly not someone who’s trying to have big album sales but just does what she wants. Hayden Panettiere was also offered an album deal and she took it as well; but she has been featured on soundtracks for movies before. I don’t expect big numbers for either album, I’ve heard a couple of songs by Hayden and her singing voice just doesn’t stand out enough for her to become successful, which makes me really sound like a broken record by now.

But those are all actresses turning singer or starting of with both. The other way around is also possible of course. JoJo has been in two movies, the success of these movies was limited. At the moment there aren’t any new movies on her schedule and she seems to be focussing exclusively on her singing career. So in this case the movies really just were a side-project, but she might have future ambitions in acting.

There are plenty of others that are taking a shot at doing a double career, if I had to mention them all this would be getting a bit long. But in general there isn’t really an example of an actress that stands out at both singing and acting. Though I really think that a large part of that is too blame on the material they’re given. There’s also the question how many of these girls can actually sing? With the magic of Apple Pro Tools you can make pretty much everyone sound like a pop star. Maybe that’s why you don’t hear all of them singing live. And you can’t blame them for doing it; it’s an extra way of making money.

 Written by bvang

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 13th, 2007 at 11:15 am and is filed under Ashley Tisdale, Editorials, Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettiere, Hilary Duff, JoJo, Lindsay Lohan, Miley Cyrus, Scarlett Johansson, Vanessa Hudgens. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.