Member Since: 1/1/2014
Posts: 10,242
|
Billboard shades Victoria Justice
Quote:
Victoria Justice's Music Career: Why Ariana Grande's Co-Star Is Still Worth Watching
June 21: Victoria Justice performs at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Universal City, California.
Getty Images
While Grande continues to score chart hits, Justice has struggled to kick-start a solo career. Here's why she shouldn't be counted out.
To paraphrase William Carlos Williams, so much depends upon a debut single in modern pop music. Want proof? Look at the recent career trajectories of Ariana Grande and Victoria Justice. One is a mega-star, and one is exploring new label options. And both situations seemingly stem from their respective debut single releases.
At the beginning of 2013, the profiles of Grande and Justice were strikingly similar: both were 19-year-olds from Florida whose hit Nickelodeon show, Victorious, was winding down. Both were aspiring singers whose vocal abilities had only been showcased on the various Victorious soundtrack releases. Both were obviously ready to put kiddie-show acting on the back-burner once Victorious wrapped up in February 2013, and establish themselves as convincing pop entities.
Grande went first, with "The Way," and the song was a hit from the get-go. Co-starring on Victorious had helped Grande accrue millions of Twitter followers before her debut single was released, and when the buttery R&B track dropped, a fan base for the song was already in place. Even with Grande's pre-existing TV fame factoring in, however, "The Way" took off with unexpected rapidity, debuting at No. 10 on the Hot 100 chart and selling 219,000 downloads in its first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Chalk it up to the delicious Big Pun interpolation, Mac Miller's flirtatious guest verse, Grande's gigantic pipes or all of the above: "The Way" made good on Grande's promise to longtime fans while introducing her to mainstream pop fans curious to know who was behind that big voice.
Less than three months after "The Way" blasted onto the Hot 100, it was Justice's turn -- and it was reasonable to believe that she was destined for even greater success than her former co-star. By the time "Gold" was released as Justice's debut single in June 2013, the 20-year-old had already been a more well-known star in the Nickelodeon world than Grande: she had co-starred on the mid-00s dramedy Zoey 101, headlined Victorious, appeared on several other Nick shows and starred in the Nickelodeon Movies production Fun Size, which hit theaters in October 2012. The Victorious soundtracks were primarily composed of Justice's voice, and had been relatively bankable, with two out of three scoring Top 20 debuts on the Billboard 200 chart. Days after "Gold" was released, a summer tour with fellow Nick stars Big Time Rush was set to begin. Justice was an enduring star with fiercely dedicated fans, and the surprise hit of her co-star was primed to precede her own pop smash.
Read more: http://www.billboard.com/articles/co...-ariana-grande
|
It's a pretty interesting article though, give it a read.
|
|
|
|
