Even if you aren’t very interested in Carly Smithson’s new band, We Are the Fallen, you really must watch this interview with the band by Lindsey Parker of Yahoo music, just for the band’s Lulzy mocking of Constantine Maroulis.
When Lindsey expresses surprise that Carly wasn’t snatched up for a record deal as soon as her season was over, Carly said she did “get approached” after the show, for “not who I am reasons..the music wasn’t something I wanted to sing.”
Carly got a little defensive when Lindsey brought up the Carly Hennessy years, “You can’t really question a record I made when I was only 14,” she bristled. Carly was actually 17, but whatevs.
Band member, Ben Moody, outlines the band’s unusual rollout–they’ll release two new songs every 8 weeks while the band continues to tour.
- Carly Smithson’s Band Receives a Cease and Desist
- Carly Smithson and the Fallen Register for a Free Download
- Carly Smithson and ex-Evanescence trio form The Fallen
edit: dial back the defensiveness
Between the rawker poses and the the whole attitude, that was really an unpleasant interview. Kind of like the YouTube floating around of their performance.
She does come accross awkward on the interview but I don’t think she is denying whatever she did on Idol, she says that she had to show a more PC part of her personality and as a performer as well, just like Adam did (he never did a Crawl Thru Fire type of performance on the show).
What I love about Carly and will always love is that gorgeous and distinctive voice of hers with the beautifull irish accent, she’s also a true performer on the stage as she proved last year on the tour.
Her personality and style wasn’t suited for the AI audience and her first record deal was a very bad experience for her, this gig is great and it does have potential for major success.
I also think it’s great for AI because it’s a complete new direction for an AI alumni and makes the show look more hip and young.
She was definitely trying to affect an aloof “rock” persona to go along with her bandmates, but then again her bandmates are the types who are predispositioned to hate everything about Idol to its core. And yet they were there being interviewed by Yahoo’s “Idol reviewer”, so that probably affected the band’s overall bearing, and Carly wanted to seem like she fit in with them at that moment.
Honestly, she probably wants to get as far away as possible from American Idol, and can you blame her? The only thing the show can do for her at this point is to offer the band the chance to perform on a results show. That’s a big opportunity, but it doesn’t provide so much benefit to them that it’s worth her acting like she’s in any way associated with AI as an artist.
Yep exactly. I think she is again lying about the many record deals she got offered after AI… like she has lied about so many things before.
noctem, I completely agree.
I’m really excited about this new band, and the more I think about it, the more excited I get. Right up my rocker girl alley….
I don’t think much has changed since she’s been off the show. So, no, as far as I can see, she still doesn’t know who she is.
The only difference is that here, she’s replaced Simon Cowell with a quartet of cool rawker guys who she’ll look to for validation and a path to define herself.
I’m still not seeing a self-possessed artist here.
As an Evanescence fan, I’m actually excited and curious to see how this is going to play out. Carly’s definitely a rock chick. I don’t know why it took her so long to figure out something which was fairly obvious.
About ‘getting away from American Idol’ – 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. You were part of the show= fact. So have a sense of humour about it, but also appreciate it for the enormous exposure it gives (and will continue to give). She has name recognition and a lot of fans including in the media (*cough, Rushfield, cough*) and in the music biz who wouldn’t have heard of her if not for Idol. And that couldn’t hurt this “new” band. It might even bring in new ‘left-field’ fans who would check them out not just coz they’re a new rock band but because of Carly. And stick around.
The AI audience always gets a bum rap LOL. What’s wrong with liking both old school balladeers and hard goth-rock?! They can’t mix? Which moron made up that rule?! Hee.
To Carly: relax, and have a ball with this. Don’t forget to crack silly jokes under that ton of black on white gothic makeup you’ll be carting around on tour. If you guys are lucky, you can tap into the vampiric twilight mania that’s plaguing the tween set right now!
Know what? I never really cared for Carly, the person, on Idol though I did download a few of her performances because she did well in the recording studio. Now that she’s in Evanescence Reloaded (and lo and behold, it seems that I’m a nominal fan of the band because the Fallen album is on my iTunes (when did I do that?)), I’m just gonna deal with her the same way I did with Amy Lee. Not give a single thought about what she’s got to say or do outside of when she sings to me on the radio.
Still wish her the best of luck though. These kids chose a pretty tough path for themselves career-wise and it’s always nice when they see some level of success.
That was painful to watch. Carly came across very bitter and as others have said the band mates seemed to think they were ‘too cool for school’, how ridiculous. Idol has a massive fan base and to sit there and be so derogatory about the show and act so much better doesn’t sit well with me or many other fans I suspect. Get your album out and sell millions before you start acting so smug is what I suggest. I was curious and would have downloaded them until NOW-I have no desire to feed their egos now…
mj you really dont like carly
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.
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.
wow. I’m really not liking Carly here. She comes off as overly defensive and just plain rude to the interviewer. Didn’t like the other band members either – just a bunch of people trying to prove they are “cooler” than someone else. And how many times did she actually say “14″ when defending her first album. Funny.
LOL at this interview. I thought the guys were hilarious. I think they were being truthful about not having seen the show before. Regarding Carly, I don’t think she was being defensive about her time on the show, as much as she was being cautious because of the person doing the interview – Lindsey Parker. Congratulations to Carly! I think she has an awesome voice and this seems like a perfect fit for her.
Carly is defensive about her first album and I don’t blame her because she has taken so much crap about it over the years, starting with that fact-challenged Wall Street Journal story and continuing through the witch hunt from VFTW (and others [eye move accusingly about the room] ) during her Idol run. And all “it” really means is that even as a kid she had enough singing talent to make a label want to sign her, which is kind of silly to get defensive about but what ta’ hey.
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.
CRB, as usual making a heck of a lot of sense.
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.
There is too much good music out there to worry about Carly and what’s she’s doing these days. I didn’t really like her on the show and I sense she still has an attitude.
There is so much great music to come from Carly to worry about too many others these days. I loved her on the show and I sense she still has everything it takes to succeed in this business.
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.)
Yeah, it’s too bad Carly was SO damn defensive in this interview!
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:
You were part of the show= fact. So have a sense of humour about it, but also appreciate it for the enormous exposure it gives (and will continue to give). She has name recognition and a lot of fans including in the media (*cough, Rushfield, cough*) and in the music biz who wouldnà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢t have heard of her if not for Idol.
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.
The band started a YouTube channel and put up a really good sounding “EDITED MASTER” of the live press conference performance. Here is the link…
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.
Just to clarify, Carly’s album was released just after her 18th birthday. However, she was signed at 14 and began recording it. Because of disagreements between Carly and the record company on the sound of the album, the album took much longer than usual to be produced.
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