In the summer of 2002 on the Festivalbar stage, a young Latina singer won the Italian Revelation Award. For Tiziano Ferro they were the years of Rosso Relativo, those that would lead him to sold out tour, with facilities filled with an audience that is mainly adolescent, predominantly female. For some fans he had become a real idol, for whom passion and love could almost be confused. He would have been the ideal boyfriend: handsome and talented. Tiziano Ferro insinuates today that that self-image was built in the recording laboratory led by Mara Maionchi and her husband Alberto Salerno. To become the girls’ dream, a teen idol, the singer had to conform to their desires: a strict diet to shed the 111 kilos he had reached and love songs aimed at hypothetical female partners. Revealed homosexuality would have prevented the young women from fantasizing adequately.
This is the story that Ferro suggests about his career, in which lying about himself would have made him slide towards unhappiness and alcoholism. Maionchi and Salerno deny it: there is no obligation to say they are straight, in fact it was he who denied homosexuality to them. And regarding his weight: “he was an 18 year old boy and in my opinion it wasn’t right that he weighed so much. Plus the show has some needs. Some, it’s not an obligation.” Regardless of how the specific story went in reality, entertainment needs often lead to the construction of the teen idol, a particularly lucky product, since the very young market is often the most profitable one, even for the recording industry. “The marketing of teen idols generally focuses on the image they present,” says writer P. David Marshall of the phenomenon, “The teen idol is designed to appeal to pre-teen and teenage female audiences and children. Teen idols are treated as relatively harmless products for young audiences and the adjacent market aimed at their parents.”
Record critic Ernesto Assante, speaking of teen idols, said how talent was often not the key element of successful careers: “You can also be good, or even mediocre, if there is another quality, beauty.” The poster prototype, perfect for decorating the walls of teenagers’ bedrooms. At the same time, “a pretty face with ‘poorer’ music does not guarantee any certainty of success.” Teen idols were lucky after the Second World War and those of the 1960s “were often built with real marketing operations, both abroad and in Italy, ‘heartbreaking’ singers who aimed straight at the hearts of their fans with their sentimental songs” .
The relationship with the fans is particularly important for a teen idol and in some cases takes on almost exclusive aspects. In South Korea, where these figures are driving the recording industry by bringing it to international panoramas, recently a famous singer – Karina, from the South Korean K-pop group Aespa – apologized to her fans for having started dating the actor , Lee Jae-wook. Fans felt betrayed by the fact that she could date another person, because evidently the love of her fans wasn’t enough for her, so the passion she put into her work wasn’t the same as the passion they put into supporting her.
“A single type of relationship is not established between the idol and his audience and a lot depends on the perceived distance, also by the will of those who build his image,” Matteo De Angelis, professor of marketing at Luiss, tells HuffPost, “The distance is increased to make the idol appear more perfect than it is, a model to aspire to, something to imitate. In other cases we try to shorten the distance, make it more human, to see in the idol someone who can be approached, with whom we can enter into a relationship. When you feel so close to your idol, finding out that he has a life you can’t enter can make you feel betrayed.”
Be careful to consider the story of the South Korean Karina a cultural oddity distant from us, which could not be replicated in any way in Italy. Because in Italy, in some way, it has already happened. “In the 70s Claudio Baglioni decided to marry Paola Massari in secret, because it didn’t seem like an intelligent marketing operation to let people know that he had a wife”; recalls with HuffPost the music critic Paolo Talanca, author of the book “Musica e Parole. A brief history of songwriting in Italy” (Carocci editore)”. “We have always aimed at the young public, because it has moved the record market since the 1950s, when the music industry restarted in Italy after the Second World War Even singer-songwriters were listened to by young people in the ’60s and ’70s,” says Talanca, “Record companies do market research to understand what young people like and to copy what already worked in the ’90s the explosion of Take That, followed by a whole series of groups that imitated them”.
The artist, however, can choose: “It is not true that at twenty you are too young to take on responsibilities. At twenty, Tiziano Ferro, from what he says, accepted Maionchi’s choices, Samuele Bersani at the same age sang Spaccacuore and returned to the public the stuffed animals that were delivered to him on stage. I find it absurd that there can be music that does not reflect those who sing and play it. Let’s be clear: I’m not naive, I know that this model is popular. But I find it abominable.”
Of course, if you choose a certain way there are consequences: “It can work out for you anyway or you can end up completely anonymous. At the beginning of a career, if you decide not to comply with the requests of producers and record companies, you may never make it. Another example is Gianluca Grignani: the first album, ‘Destination paradise’, went very well. With the second album, ‘Plastic Factory’, he denounced the world that had allowed him to sell so much: it was a very courageous operation, with much more rock, he didn’t pander to the record companies and paid for it with lower sales. What he did in my opinion is what should be done. Battiato, Fossati, De Andrè have challenged the discography by imposing their own way of being. And that’s the music that makes the difference.”
