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The podcast discusses the TV show "Victorious" and its music. The show was created for Victoria Justice, who plays the lead character, Tori. The premise of the show is that Tori is an average girl who discovers she can sing, while her co-stars are portrayed as talented and experienced performers. The music in the show is mostly original and produced by professional pop producers. Despite the show's flaws and inauthenticity, it is still enjoyed for its nostalgic value. The podcast explores questions of authenticity, mass culture, and taste in relation to the show's music. It also discusses how nostalgia and personal experiences influence people's enjoyment of the music. What a fitting introduction. Good evening, campers, and welcome to Campelodion, the smash hit podcast, which is a recap of the smash hit Nickelodeon television program, Victorians. Yes. How do we even, where do we even begin with this show? It's so unhinged. So Victorians was an early 2000s, I guess, children's television show. And the context is that basically the weird thing is that everything that transpires diegetically within this program kind of mirrors like what happens in the music industry in the real world. And so basically all of these children are attending a performing arts high school and they're implicitly kind of pitted against each other. And the whole point of the Hollywood arts, I was going to call it a program, but it's a high school. The point of Hollywood arts high school is that they're supposed to literally produce stars and produce pop stars. And that is a very important detail for discussing what we will get into later. Yes. And so in terms of the show's creation itself, to be glorious. So Victoria Justice, she was a young, blooming star and the show was actually made for her. Like literally, literally made for her. Not just like made and then they found someone to fit the role. No, they saw her first and they said, we're making a show off you. And this was because she was handpicked off of Zoey 101 and they were like, you know what? Zoey 101 fell off. So you are going to be the new star. The show runner literally saw her on set and there's an interview where he literally was like, I called Nickelodeon to say, you have the next star. He, it's not like made for her metaphorically. He literally handpicked her from the set and was like, she's the next star. It's her. Yes. And the premise was actually positioning her as a girl who's average and she discovers that she can sing, which is different from her co-stars who are meant to be like crazy, wild, zany, wacky characters. So she's positioned into the school of people who are unlike, unhinged. They're very unhinged. And she's just a basic average girl. And like, as opposed to her co-stars that are clearly like the narrative is that all of these people have like this very clear, innate talent and they're just like coming into the school and popping off. But the show literally starts with her being this basic average girl who has a latent, like discovered talent. Suddenly it's like, oh my God, Tori, she can sing. And so inherently with the premise of the show from the start, the premise of the foundation is kind of flawed in terms of Victoria Justice and how she's being unfortunately positioned because Victoria Justice is handpicked off a set to be a basic average girl. And she's put in contrast with these stars that have like not only clear, innate talent, but their backgrounds are so different. Like her main female co-stars, Ariana Grande, the Ariana Grande of Ariana Grande fame and Liz Gillies were literally on a Broadway production before coming onto Victoria. So they're literally Broadway trained. And then Leon Thomas was the main character in the backyard again. These people all have like clear, not even just musical experience, but they're coming from like a relative like nature of child stardom. And again, two of them are Broadway trained and they're being positioned as the other main singers on the show and positioned against the main girl who's supposed to be average. That's her whole appeal on the show is that she's an average, like everyday girl and like an audience insert. So just like from the start, the premise is flawed. And this premise is again, literally pulled from Victoria Justice's personal experience of going to performing arts school. The show is tailor made for her. It's not made for her in a metaphorical abstract sense. It's a very literal sense. It's called Victoria. It's named after her. She's the central star in this narrative positioning her as the basic average girl who is not like other girls. And she's alongside cast members with literal superstar potential, i.e. Ariana Grande. Like we cannot overemphasize how this show is made for Victoria, which is hilarious because they're literally trying to take her and make her the next star, like the star. That's what Dan Schneider himself is. Exactly. And it's especially funny because the context of the time, there were a lot of rising child pop stars, such as 10,000 of them. Yeah. Miley Cyrus from Hannah Montana, Demi Lovato, Camp Rock, Selena Gomez and the Jonas Brothers. So all of them are just popping off left and right. And now you have Tori who's in a different sort of setting because this is not like the narrative format is not the same. It's not identical whatsoever. It's very, very competitive in nature. Exactly. So more on that later, though. That's so important. We're already seeing like the problems of like authenticity and mass culture. Not to give spoilers, but we're already seeing these tie ins and the music of the show in particular is also really specific to dig into because it's not like it's not like it is a jukebox, kind of like a jukebox musical in the sense that the songs are written for the show, but they're not covers or anything. I don't know if they sing any covers in this show. I don't think they do. I don't think they do. It's all made for the show. It's made specifically for the show. Actually, wait, they sang the Jackson 5. Oh, God, I didn't want you around. But that's important context for how unhinged and camped some would say the show is. But besides the one prison cover, they all the songs are written exclusively for the show. And I think there are maybe two or three songs where like the cast members are involved in writing them. So there's different conversation about authenticity there. But for like 90 percent of the songs, they're pulling like literal professional pop producers and having them cook in the studio like they have people that produce for Taylor Swift coming in to write like begging on your knees for this. It's so wild. So it's not like this thing where they're just singing covers. It's not like Riverdale. They're having people come in and write songs specifically for the show and for the cast again to be pop hits. They're trying to manufacture pop hits to manufacture a pop star, which is what happens on the metal level, but also as we get into that's mirrored completely diegetically in the show. Yes. So essentially what we want to say is that despite the Victoria soundtrack not being objectively good, aided in part by the blatant inauthentic positioning of Victoria Justice as the lead, which consequently led to her musical career floundering, such a shame. We can still enjoy it within the context of which it was created an entertaining show and appreciate it for its nostalgic value rather than its necessarily artistic value. I can't believe they put that in the actual show. That may not be the cover, but it's certainly something that exists. Speaking of Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5, it's like when you have lines like that, it raises questions of like, how could people possibly enjoy this? But they do because it's hilarious because it's camp. It's just like, what am I even listening to? It's nostalgic value. I listen to it and I'm like, oh yeah, I remember when they did that crazy, indescribably bad thing. And they put in Michael Jackson's choreography talking about how he died. It was like two years after he died, too, when the show was made. It's literally fresh off the press. How does the show get away with things like this? So the way that we're going to structure the rest of this, the Campelodian podcast, is we're going to bring in central questions related to the thesis and kind of get at what we're trying to uncover with this show. We're going to bring in central questions that then we're going to dig into using concepts like authenticity, mass culture and the culture industry, including the fetish character, and then Hume's spin on taste in terms of judgment and sentiment and bringing into conversation like how those things can help illuminate why a show with some or a soundtrack of some sort, a show with some, quote, objectively bad qualities can still be considered good by so many people, including us. How a show that says, I might not dance like MJ, RIP, can be considered good and camp by so many audiences. And so as I get that, the first question that we're getting at is, is the music good or bad? How do we interrogate this when so many people like us still enjoy it? And then how does that reflect on its normative value? Where does the normative value come from, if any? And so what makes it good or bad? So when we're talking about taste in terms of like how Hume articulates it, we're looking at the tensions between like these objectively-slash-judgment-based bad qualities of the music versus the subjective or like sentiment-based good qualities that we carry towards the music, so to speak. And so the sentiment-based element of it, and why so many people think it's good even today, is the nostalgia element. So Fritz says that bad music is music that doesn't communicate between a musician and audience. But the Victoria soundtrack, I don't think, is like this because it communicates very strong like affective attachments and nostalgia and like memories of childhood with its audience. So it's not bad in that sense. It very clearly communicates like things even with us, like when we listen to it, because like I'm such a defender of this show. Anytime I listen to the soundtrack, like I'm literally like, wait, this is so good. And you're like, well, objectively, judgment-wise, because it communicates so strongly like affect and nostalgia with the audience and the listener. And then Fritz also says that we listen on the basis of who we are and what we musically know and expect, which ties to this concept of acoustimology, which is that positionality in your experiences really influence your listening. So that's the nostalgia-based element, where if you're familiar with Victorious, and you're familiar with the show, and you grew up with it, and you grew up with its songs, like alongside it, alongside the cast, it really colors your listening and allows you to enjoy it a lot more. And Victorious still has like an affective chokehold on people to this day. Like people that listen to it, you play like Take a Hint at a party, you put that on for karaoke, the room is getting turned. It's bumping. Everybody's lighting up because it has such a strong attachment with audiences. Because of like acoustimology and what Fritz says about you're listening based on like what you musically know. When it's familiar, it's good to you. And then this is also all kind of anchored in this idea of residual culture. And Raymond Williams talks about residual culture as old cultural practices that still influence contemporary society. And you also see that you see residual culture in residual media as well. And the authors Jenkins, Ford, and Green in one of their papers talk about residual culture in media as evoking sentimentality and nostalgia, which is exactly what's going on here. As Fritz said, familiarity with the music plus nostalgia and affective attachments to media really allow us to derive a lot of enjoyment from it, even despite some lines about MJ. Like the nostalgic attachments to the familiar make it good to us, and that's based on sentiment. Yeah, a little bit more in the authenticity category. So when making a judgment about a piece of music, authenticity is very important for a lot of people in saying it's objectively good. So for example, authenticity is a very core way in which we decide the quality and value. And to Fritz, the most common account of bad music is that it's inauthentic. This is certainly the case in a show that is literally manufactured. It's not meant to be authentic. Well, I mean, in the context of the show, these songs are meant to be authentic, but in the context of a more broad sense, in the real world, it is a little less than authentic. They're manufacturing. That's part of their manufacturing process. As Moore says, authenticity is when something is real, genuine, honest, sincere, and that's definitely not the case when something or someone is positioned to be a very specific thing. And now in terms of the actual qualities of the music, Fritz talks about the degree of imitation or lack of originality, which essentially deteriorates the quality of a work. So bad music is imitative and generic. So you know it's bad when it's cliché or expected, and how else would you describe Victorious music? It was meant to be cliché and expected. That's how they're trying to brand their star, by placing it into generic pop conventions. So again, Moore talks about genre conventions, and both Victorious and the music adhere to these conventions. It's done purposely. It's meant to adhere specifically to pop. So as such, it's imitative. It's like Victorious and also when we get into later Victoria Justice, even her own music is meant to be generic. It's meant to adhere to these very average genre conventions. Even after the show. Yeah, so it's not even on a meta level. It's not even intended to be authentic. Yeah, it's supposed to fit seamlessly into the pop scene. Pop mold, yes. Which gets to our next point. Yes, about the culture industry, Adorno. Our favorite. Music, as Adorno says, has acquired this sort of fetish character, and it's treated as a commodity, which shifts the essence of music away from its intrinsic artistic and emotional qualities and towards marketable elements, such as standard formulas, generic melodies, and patterns, which are the literal basis of the show's creation. Yes, the whole point of them handpicking. I don't live in Dan Schneider's brain, thank God, but when you look at Victoria Justice on Zoey 101 and you handpick her as your next star, you're thinking, what's marketable about her? Exactly. What's formulaic about her? What can she fit into? And I think that's an element of handpicking her, is she fits very perfectly and she's moldable into mass culture. She's a generic voice. She's a very objectively, perhaps, a good voice. She's an inoffensive appearance. She doesn't have the same je ne sais quoi as an Ariana Grande or a Liz Gillies voice. Which is funny because she's meant to be the average character. Exactly. She's meant to be the audience self-insert into the show because she's generic. Non-diegetically and diegetically, which is what's so interesting. And you have this mass culture stuff is obvious in the show, but it's also very obvious when you look at who, again, who they had producing for the show. They were literally pulling the biggest big wigs from 2010 pop. They had the guy that produced All of Me, they had the All About That Bass Dude, and they had the guy's name is Shellback, I guess. He was a professional producer. He was producing Britney Spears, Femme Fatale, the biggest singers off of Taylor Swift's Red. He produced all of 1989 and Reputation, Payphone, One Direction, DJ Got His Phone in Love. Just think of a pop star. He's produced them. He probably has. Honestly, he probably has any of them. Pink, Katy Perry, literally, Nicki Minaj. Crazy. He's so decorated. He needs a purple heart for music production. And they got him in the studio cooking for Victorious and that's intentional. They're pulling these producers that know the mass culture and the genre conventions of pop inside and out. And they're bringing these massive guys in to specifically make sure that the Victorious music adheres to genre conventions and cultural standards in order to help brand the music and therefore necessarily Victoria Justice. Which, again, the fetish character is so big here because you can literally tell that this is going on with the soundtrack. You interrogate it and you do some detective-ing a little bit. You dig in a little and you can tell that it's all meant to be commodified. It's a commodity. And on the soundtrack, this is so crazy, it's like an open secret in the fandom that in the soundtrack version versus the show version, in the soundtrack, they dampen the background vocalists. To give her the spotlight. They push her vocals to the front of the mix on purpose on the soundtrack version. You're listening to a song and you're like, ooh, Ariana and Liz are eating the backing vocals. And then you go on the soundtrack and you're like, where are they? It's almost as if they know exactly why she's flopping. Everything is so clearly done because the whole purpose of the show is, again, to give Poppets next star in the literal showrunner and show creators' words. It's all to commodify everything. Which is even funnier when you consider going on YouTube and typing in these videos, you'll see that people have literally taken the original track and they took out Tori's lead vocals, Victoria Justice, they took out her lead vocals and kept the backing vocals in. And they're like, backing vocal version? Because they literally don't like her and they like her co-stars way better. And it just emphasizes the fact that it didn't work. They know. They know. It's like the nostalgic value blinds you a little bit. But when you go on YouTube and you look up a float and reverb version, literally on YouTube they have Victoria's songs, they're like, backing vocals version. Or like Victoria Justice mixed lower. It's like they're aware of the fact that this music is done for the purpose of it being the fetish character. And even for Victoria Justice being commodified to be a pop star herself. Yeah! Did you recognize who that was? No? Oh. That's because it's in every song on the Billboard Top 300. 10,000. Anyways, that was Victoria Justice. Sing a reveal. Yeah. But it's this show, it's the songs, it's the soundtrack. It's so enjoyable. It's so much like that but also enjoyable. Then why didn't Victoria Justice flop so tectonically? Dang it. And by flop, I don't mean like... She was set up. She was set up and her music career honestly went nowhere. She releases music from time to time. She still does. But no one talks about her. No one really knows who she is. Her Spotify monthly listeners is like 12. She's not on anyone's raft. It's unfortunate. Anyways, so if that's the case, then why did she flop? Exactly. So audiences like us, we love the music from a show that's literally made for her. The music is enjoyable to us. So what happens to her career? Why does her career not follow the same trajectory of enjoyability? There's this tension of why Victoria Justice, handpicked to be a pop star, in a show about becoming a pop star, molded and slotted perfectly and generically with an objectively good, decent voice, fit into inoffensive pop songs that we have attachments to, that we love. How does she not make it as a music star? Like basically at all. Again, sadly, she's not turning up on anyone's raft. She's not like Ariana Grande. That's not happening. And so the key here is again, like now, in the present, in hindsight, now we have nostalgic attachments to the show's music that make it good. But the lack of authenticity still makes Victoria Justice's, and to be fair, the show, with a critical eye, makes that music read as bad due to the inauthenticity that it's literally manufactured for a specific purpose. The Victoria's generic pop music sound is good in the specific context of the soundtrack, but Victoria's music in the real world, it's subjected to different scrutiny and a different critical eye, which was not applied, obviously, when we were growing up with the show. Because we still listen to the music and we're like, freak the freak out. But when you listen to it critically, like the whoa, it's generic and it's intentionally generic. We just don't criticize it that way because of our nostalgia attachments to it. And so that's part of a strategy for actually enjoying the music. It's like, yes, there's a nostalgic value that we attach to it, obviously, but also kind of embracing the inauthenticity of the soundtrack and like the sound of it. Like Fritz talks about how something that can make a music bad, what can make music bad is that it's ridiculous in the sense where there's a, quote, gap between what performers and producers envision and what is actually achieved in the project. And I wouldn't say this is exactly the case here because there's sort of a knowing that audiences carry with themselves when they listen to it in terms of what the product is. And you embrace it and it makes it a little more enjoyable. It's kind of camp in a way. And when we say camp, we don't mean it in terms of intentionally. They're trying to do something that's over the top. But camp in the sense of it's hyperbolic. It's hyperbolically kind of ridiculous. It's meant to be ridiculous, over the top, unhinged, and just fun in general. Exactly. And so when you think about, when you embrace the camp context of the show and the fact that the victorious songs are so generically pop, and you embrace that, it's so generically pop, it's almost camp. Exactly. It's so inauthentic, it's like camp. Except it wasn't meant to necessarily be camp. But that's okay. Unintentional camp is always appreciated. Period. And you can kind of enjoy it in that sense. So the show, yes, some elements of it are camp and the songs are not intended to be, but you can still enjoy it that way. And embracing that makes it more enjoyable. But the issue, again, is that this isn't necessarily non-diegetically what happened. Like, the same gap in terms of what the producers and performers intentioned versus what the audience received, it existed for Victoria's music, which is why it read as inauthentic. In terms of that inauthenticity-authenticity connection, Moore writes that authenticity is when a piece resists any forces attempting to transform, dominate, or mess with an object, which was not exactly what happened here. Like, every convention is being adhered to, it's being leaned into. And, like, other stars from this show were actually successful. Like, Victoria's launched Ariana Grande. Being Ariana Grande, Victoria's literally launched her career. Like, Liz Gillies is still really successful. Leon Thomas is a very successful songwriter and producer behind the scenes. He works with people like SZA, for example. And so they were able to cultivate their own careers and identities because they were not held to these same standards of authenticity and weren't leaning into mass culture as much as Miss Victoria was. And that's also, like, why people love characters like Trina, who's the queen of camp! Like, she was so authentic. She was big and fishy and fun, and she was camp. And she's not, like... Trina is kind of an example of resisting these forces trying to transform, dominate, or mess with an object. She's so authentic and she's so ridiculous. Which is hilarious because the show, like, it literally positions her as the crazy, like, worst, unhinged, like, one of the pop stars you don't want to meet because all she wants is the fame, the money, the attention. Exactly. And it's hilarious because she's the fan favorite of the show in most people's opinions. It's, like, consensus. It's not, like, an unpopular opinion. People are like, yes, Trina! Which you could say is, like, a reflection of, like, how dominant irony is in our culture right now. But still, like, the fan favorites of the show are, like, the quote-unquote authentic people. It's Kat, it's Jade, it's Trina. These over-the-top personalities that read as more authentic resist these forces trying to transform them into something else. These people also, the more successful fan favorite characters, were also not hand-picked for the show because the showrunner felt like they could build a show around a narrative of them being an average girl who becomes a pop star. So in this sense, it's also, again, dooming Victoria Justice to fail. So fun. So it's, like, it's literally they hand-pick this child, basically, to try to manufacture her into a child pop star. And they're framing her as average alongside these people with such incredible innate talent. And they're specifically framing her in a way that's inauthentic and that can read as inauthentic. So now if we tie that into what Fritz and Adorno say about bad music, music is judged as bad by reference of a critique of mass production. And this music is formulaic rather than original or unique. Sound familiar? Yes, very. So despite whatever sentiments we hold towards the show's soundtrack, Victoria herself positioned as the star of the show and this was because she was average. And the released music, it was generic, it was average, it was formulaic, it wasn't authentic. And she was the most moldable image-wise and vocally as well. Like, you have, what's interesting is her range falls right in the middle. There's nothing particularly special about it. With Liz Gillies, you have, like, an incredible alto. Like, her range is, she can go very low. She can also go, like, mid-level. And then you have, well, Ariana Grande. Like, no operation needed. Because her music, like, it's branded by the fact that she's, like, very, very, well, Ariana Grande, she's a soprano and she's, like, an incredible soprano. And Victoria Justice falls right between that. They have a niche. Exactly. Which is why these other, like, her co-stars were able to cultivate these identities is because they had something unique about them. Something authentic. Exactly, something authentic. And Victoria Justice, her music and voice, while it's inoffensive in nature, is the reason she was given the role. Yeah. But it was also her downfall because she conformed way too hard to mass culture expectations that the show enforced. Yep. And, yeah, so just her being branded as average kind of sets an unfortunate precedent for aspiring pop stars who can relate to her. Because, like, the show wanted to, they wanted her to be sort of, like, the audience self-insert, like, a completely normal person, learning she can sing, like, entering a world of crazy characters, which ultimately led to the issue being that she doesn't stand out. And that's why they were able to kind of overtake her and take the spotlight. It's a city that's exciting. It's a city that's inviting. It's a city for a woman just like me. There's a lake they call Lake Michigan. I think I'm really fitting in. I'm fitting in. The city is my perfect cup of tea. Chicago. Chicago. That was necessary listening. That's Trina. Yeah. Speaking of Trina and speaking of authenticity, that's our fan favorite. She was so authentically bad. It just, like, puts my mind in a happy, like, environment. It's your happy place. It is my happy place. Listen to Trina's rendition of Chicago. Because I know I'll never be that bad. She's so authentic. She is so authentic. Anyways. That was necessary listening just to recontextualize the nostalgic value of authentic elements of some of the other characters that were, unfortunately, not Tori. And so, speaking of that, our final central question that we're going to be getting at is, it's a little bit more meta in how it ties into the show, but in terms of Victoria Justice's career trajectory, or, unfortunately, lack thereof, how does this floundering of her musical career distinguish her from other child stars of the era, like Miley, Selena, Demi, who had much more successful careers? And what does this reveal about mass culture and authenticity? And, yeah. So, for this section, we're going to be tying it all generally into Adorno theories on commodity fetishism and, like, how the capitalistic nature of music production functions in modern society. So, in terms of other child stars, like, first let's talk about Selena Gomez. Barney? Yes, Barney. In fact, she was in Barney. She was also in Wizards of Waverly Place, which is where she kind of first started her little singing path. She sang the theme song, recorded other songs on the soundtrack, but, like, the premise of the show wasn't based on anything to do with, like, music creation or being a pop star. It was just kind of its own thing. True. But she still, like, got fame from that. And then there's Camp Rock, which kind of was Demi Lovato's sort of beginning and entry into pop stardom. And along with them, they had Jonas Brothers, who they already had their own show, so they're just, like, They're surviving. They're just here. They're just kind of having a great time. So that allowed space for Demi to rise to stardom. And then you have an interesting anomaly, Miley Cyrus. So she was the literal star of Hannah Montana. And this is a setting kind of similar to Victorious, but there will be nuanced differences. But in the setting of Hannah Montana, there's no competition. She was the focal point of the show. She was hugely successful. It definitely helped that she had inherent nepo-baby status with Mr. Billy Ray. So that definitely got her a little more of a start. And she was also not hand-picked in the same way that Victoria of Justice was. As we've mentioned, Victorious was literally for Victoria. So, yeah. So it's very different in that sense because the setting really matters. Miley Cyrus wasn't placed in a setting where there's competition. But Victoria of Justice, as we've mentioned, was placed into a literal breeding ground for competition. Yeah. And it's like, when you brought up the Miley Cyrus point, we were talking off-screen, off-camera about this. It was so interesting because we were trying to figure out, what is the difference between someone like Miley Cyrus who's on a singing show and has a successful career versus Victoria of Justice who is still like good voice, again, makes music in the show that people like, inoffensive, like very moldable image, and she's unsuccessful. And the difference is that the problem is that you have a point of contrast in Victorious where she's put in a setting where she's competing against not only her co-stars on a meta level, but even like within the show, like the singers are being compared against each other in a way. And like competition is inherent to the show. She's being set up to compete with these people that are better than her. So when the show is trying to, when the show commodifies Miley Cyrus, she's not being posed or juxtaposed against like anybody else necessarily. But within Victorious, when they're trying to commodify Victoria of Justice, the problem is that she's being positioned alongside, you can say more valuable commodities. Victoria of Justice is positioned alongside Ariana Grande. Which is crazy because it's very different because in the world in general, like Miley Cyrus has competition with everyone except she's the focal point of her show, so it's way easier to like pick her out of the bunch. But with Victoria of Justice, it's like double capitalism. It's super capitalism. She has to compete to be the commodity of her show. And in the real world. In the real world too. That's so true. It's literally double commodified, double mass culture. She can't escape the mass culture. And it's like also, the show kind of knows it too, because the show literally tries to gaslight the audience into believing that Ariana and Liz are not as good of singers as her. Like in the show, Victoria gets like all the main numbers, and the soundtrack, they suppress the background vocals. In the show, there are several episodes where there are like literal singing competitions, and Victoria just beats them. Yeah, it's just crazy because you can literally watch the show, and you can see that the other like videotapes that the other characters submitted for the competition, it's like a thousand times better. It's just so baffling that they really try to gaslight us in this way. It's astounding. And it's not even to say that like, let me put this very academically. It's not even to say from like a judgment level that they're necessarily more talented than Victoria. But when you're looking at it in terms of like marketing a pop star or commodifying a pop star, Liz and Ariana, and Ariana is proof of this, are more like marketable and commodifiable in terms of their more authentic and unique voices. But the show literally tries to convince you that the opposite is true. And it's very important to note that these characters themselves are very distinct, and their personalities really brand them as a character, which then makes it way easier to like pick someone to like, because they literally take the role of certain archetypes. And it's way easier to connect to a character who has a very distinctive personality. And so that also puts them in a very like advantageous position. Yeah, and especially Ariana Grande. You see this with Disney stars in general where they have like this good girl mold that they're kind of stuck in, and that's like a marketable lane for them once they leave the show. But then after that, they're kind of like, and you saw that with Ariana Grande where her first album was very like, not good girly, but it was very like bubblegum poppy. But instead of picking a lane like that for Victoria Justice, they chose to frame her as like this basic average, unfortunately inauthentic girl. Dang. And again, in contrast with Hannah Montana, even if the meta-purpose of both shows, Hannah Montana and Victorious, to contrast them, is to like market them as a child star, and to position them as such, which is true. But even the differences that even diegetically within the show, Victorious falls into these mass culture traps. Because uniquely about Victorious, the purpose of the setting that they're in, Hollywood Arts, is meant to turn out pop stars. Like the students of Hollywood Arts are being offered like movie script writing deals, or record label deals. And ironically, Victoria Justice, like her character, doesn't often actually receive any of these opportunities. Yeah. It's all the other characters who are being like kind of put on a pedestal, and she's kind of left there to like fight for her right as a like blooming pop star. Like within the show. The underdog. Within reality. And we're meant to believe that she's the underdog that like is quote-unquote better than these other singers. Which is like, again, you can see the inauthenticity there. Yep. And it's like Ariana Grande was able to capitalize off of her success, and like release music catering to a specific fan base. Especially, yeah, she had her spin-off show, Sam & Cat. Oh God. Like that in itself is such a huge strategy to like boost her fame, because now she's the center of attention. So now we get to see like a more fleshed out version of her. But she also has, to your point, a more unique, quote-unquote authentic, sincere, like different image and voice. Whereas Victoria Justice was set up pretty much to fail, because she's handpicked for being average. Yep. And like, again, she has these inherent points of comparison with her co-stars that are also main singers. Hannah Montana doesn't have like, I mean maybe she has an alter ego, who's like a foil to her, but it's not the same. She's not being pitted against her co-stars like implicitly. Again, Victoria Justice is co-starring with two other women who have original, quote-unquote original and unique voices. And Victoria is handpicked to conform to a cultural narrative of the basic average girl that has like a meteoric rise to stardom. It's this very like culturally imposed idea of like the underdog that's able to rise up. So that's mass culture again. And it unfortunately creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where Victoria is chosen for being average, and this is what she ultimately becomes when she releases her own music. Dang it. What I like about cheese. That's awful. It's awful, but it's one of the songs in the show that is played that has nostalgic value, but clearly not much authentic artistic value. The context is they're performing for a children's birthday party dressed as food. It's a long story. Anyway. But in this section, what we're going to be trying to do is giving more specific examples of the songs in the show and the concepts and the ideas and the pitfalls that they kind of fall into in terms of like being mass culturally produced, illustrating an authenticity, adhering rank and file to genre convention pretty much across the songs, and giving a little bit more insight into which songs the fandom enjoys more and enjoys a lot less. So first up, it's really important to note Give It Up because this is like generally one of the best songs, and I would say objectively, like it's actually good. Universally the fandom ranks it as the quote best song from the show. Exactly. And it's sung by Liz Gillies and Ariana Grande. Did you hear the name Victoria Justice? No, you didn't. She wasn't even in the scene. She wasn't even there. Like it's quite unfortunate, but it's just the way their voices blend together so well. It's like everyone loves it, and it's like the perfect song for them to sing, and it's just generally like very much appreciated among the audience. So there's that. And it comes off as a little bit more like authentic in terms of how it's sung. Exactly. There's something about, and again, it's the way that their voices meld together where you have more quote authentic, unique voices positioned on a track together that lends the song like more, like basically superstar status in the fandom. Meanwhile, you have other songs that like kind of, not all give it up as like legendary status, but take A Hint for example. It's like number two ranked in the fandom, and that track is Victoria Justice and Liz Gillies, and the context of the scene kind of makes it iconic. It's very girl bossy, but also Liz Gillies being on the track, being audible and giving like a really like knockout performance with her more authentic voice versus Victoria Justice. That song also has like a stronger positioning in the fandom. Yes. Where it doesn't, it still fits into, all these songs fit into genre conventions, but some of them like. Some of them you just, it's just like a sense you get. It just feels more authentic. The singing feels more authentic. You can tell the actor is like really giving it their all. Yes. And that's also like authenticity is, I believe it's either leech or frisk that says that authenticity is something the audiences bring to it. And audiences get a sense of like how authentic something comes off as, usually the tracks where Victoria is leading. Which we also need to note that when we're talking about authenticity, sometimes it's hard given the context of the show, because the songs aren't authentic to reality, but they're more authentic to our show. In the show. Yes. The character motives and stuff like that. So it's a bit tricky to talk about. There's some nuances, but like that's generally the sentiment that you get. It's pretty complicated. Yes. But, and then other songs that come off as like a little bit more authentic and actually adhere a little bit less to genre conventions, Countdown is one that the fandom usually appreciates. It's pretty underrated. Leon Thomas actually leads that song. I believe he also had a hand in writing it. Yes. He was so underappreciated in this soundtrack. He really was. And he leads that song, and I believe that Victoria Justice is backing vocals. She's very much in the background. She's actually in the cover. Don't present. Yes. And the same for Song to You, which is also led by Leon Thomas. Those songs are more so considered as underrated, because like in the show, it's Leon taking the lead instead of Victoria Justice's voice, like overtaking that one. Versus some of the other tracks that she actually leads, like Best Friend's Brother, Begging on Your Knees are two of the really big songs from the show, but those are more so appreciated for a nostalgic attachment. The songs that I previously listed are more so appreciated because of the singers on them and how they actually are getting, quote, their flowers or getting their spotlight on those tracks. And you want to talk about nostalgia. Freak the freak out. Oh my god. This is the most iconic song. It is definitely not the most high quality song, but the context is like a karaoke bar where she's trying to outdo a group of bullies. The nepo-girlies that won a karaoke competition because their dad was judging. It was very interesting, but she disguises as an ugly person, essentially. And then she's like, just kidding, I can sing! And starts getting into the Tori Vega star quality. She freaks the freak out. She does freak the freak out. She dances on a table. That one was a rare Tori W. Because she was actually like, I mean, she wasn't incredible, but it's like the song holds so much icon status that you kind of have to love it. And that's the common thread throughout the songs that she leads, whereas the songs that Victoria Justice tends to lead have more nostalgic attachments to them because there's something about the inauthenticity that kind of bleeds through a little bit more there. The other songs we discussed, Take a Hint, Give It Up, Countdown, Song to You, those are more so, even L.A. Boys, which Ariana Grande also features pretty prominently on, those are more so appreciated in the fandom Some of them adhere to genre convention a little bit less, but also they come off as more authentic because of the voices and the uniqueness of the voices featured on them. He didn't say I couldn't sing! So finally, to just wrap it up, bring it all together and restate our thesis, objectively, the soundtrack and the music, from a judgment perspective, might not be the biggest serve in how it's inauthentic and adheres super rank and file to genre conventions in order to place Victoria and Tori within the show as a pop star. But audiences still hold really powerful affective connections to it based on our nostalgia for the show, which fosters our fan sentiments towards the music slash soundtrack as, quote, good. But, again, from a more judgment-based perspective, the inauthenticity that the music and show, but specifically the soundtrack is rife with, really inhibit it from truly achieving recognition as a piece of work that is considered objectively good. And unfortunately, Victoria Justice's career also gets caught in the crossfire of these same issues, namely, her blatant positioning as a projected pop princess. It was ultimately her own downfall. Her other co-stars who didn't receive the same favorable treatment ultimately had much more successful trajectories than she did, despite the lopsided conditions they were set up with because they were allowed space to flourish and to foster their own identities without having to adhere to inauthentic mass cultural pop conventions. And that is it for this edition of Campelodion! And it was... This is so good!
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