A HISTORY OF TELEVISION AND MUSIC THROUGH TWO ANALOGUES

              Since its inception, television has had a strong role in the careers of musicians. From American Bandstand and the Ed Sullivan show to MTV Jams, television has always been a place for musicians to sell their talents and strut their stuff to a wider audience so that they could enjoy their stage presence and charisma as much as they could enjoy the music itself, but these are examples of shows simply showcasing artists as musicians rather than shows with musicians as actors. There are a number of musicians with laudable acting careers and actors with laudable musical careers, but how has television programming impacted their musical careers? MTV, Ed Sullivan, and American Bandstand gave artists a new platform to perform for a wider audience thus providing a boost to the careers of successful artists; but how did Elvis Presley’s film career impact his music career, how did The Monkees show affect The Monkees band, was Sabrina Carpenter’s career in television and film necessary for her to break out as a pop idol, and was Big Time Rush a successful modern analogue to the Monkees as a show about a boy band trying to make it big as rock stars? This project seeks to analyze how, over the course of its life in the American home, has television and film impacted the careers of musicians starting from its earliest days of burgeoning popularity to today as a staple of every living room in America. 

              Elvis Presley starred in thirty-one movies across his career, but as one of the most famous men in history, his filmography was stymied by profiteers looking for quantity over quality. His fame and stage presence promised a lucrative film career even as the movies themselves became derivative. He produced his best movies while he was at the height of his music career (Neibaur 10). One key aspect of his film performance is that he seemed to solidify the image as a “sullen, dangerous, sexually motivated deviant” which made him so unpopular among the older generation (Neibaur 10). However, his later films reflected the same sanitized version of Elvis that his music portrayed after his time in the armed forces. However, later in his career his place at the top of the charts was usurped by the Beatles and other new rock bands, but his films still dominated the box office. It was not until the latter half of the sixties, long after his moribund music career had lost relevancy, that his movies became unbearably pedestrian (Neibaur 12). By the end of his acting career, Elvis’ films had tumbled at the box office, so he was allowed to star in more experimental films that turned out to be exactly what he needed to regenerate his creative zeal. In turn he went back to the recording studio to produce some of his best music in decades and reclaimed his place at the top of the charts (Neibaur 12). Elvis Presley’s music career was impacted for better and for worse by his time in Hollywood. As his creative freedom was crushed under the domination of profit seeking managers and studios, his ability to produce record breaking music and give award winning performances suffered, but ultimately his music career did not suffer because of his acting career nor vice versa. Both suffered when his creative spirit and desire to produce quality work were quelled by his paymasters, but when given free rein to act and sing at his own discretion, his work prospered and he proved himself as the king of rock and roll. 

             The Monkees presents an interesting relationship between musicians and television show because, rather than being a band that uses television to promote itself, it was a television show that used a band as advertising. The Monkees television show was first aired in 1966 in September and contemporaneously released their first single “Last Train to Clarksville” three weeks before the first episode aired. They were riding on the tide of Beatlemania and were an immediate hit (Szatmary). The Monkees’s success is tricky to pin down as it is unclear whether their success musically was spurred by the success of the television series, or vice versa, but the immediate and stark success of their first single does prove that people did like their music independently of the show. The Monkees won two Emmy Awards and The Monkees first four albums topped the Billboard 200 charts, were multiplatinum and had ten Top 40 hits during the air time of the show (Bronson). It may be impossible to distinguish if one caused the popularity of the other, but it is undoubtedly true that each’s success was affected reciprocally by the other. It is possible to argue that the success of the band is due to their heavily manufactured nature. Their first album was written by external song writers, Neil Diamond and Carole King sang background for them, and studio musicians played the instruments. Outside of the lead vocals, The Monkees had little to do with their music, and they chafed under the thumb of their producer (Szatmary). They were eventually able to break free of their handlers and prove that they had what it took to top the charts in their third album Headquarters on which Michael Nesmith wrote five songs (Graff). The Monkees only aired for two seasons ending in 1968, and it is at this point that the wild success of the band started to teeter off. While on television, the band released four chart topping, record setting albums, but very quickly after the show ended their music plummeted on the Billboard 200 from the number one spot to three to forty-five and quickly fell into the hundreds (Billboard). The Monkees was prefabricated to ride the coattails of The Beatles and their existence as both a television show and a band is indicative of that, but both the band’s and the show’s wild popularity is proof that the formula worked, but the cancellation of the show coincided with a drop in popularity for the band and shows that even if one’s success did not necessarily cause the success of the other the two were inherently intertwined. 

                 Big Time Rush is an exact modern analogue to The Monkees in that it is both a television show about a band trying to make it in the music industry and also an actual band; the only major difference being the genres of music each band plays. A producer for the show even stated that his major inspiration for the show was in fact The Monkees (Martin). Big Time Rush like The Monkees saw great commercial success both on and off screen, with Big Time Rush being one of Nickelodeon’s most popular shows while it aired (Gorman). To coincide with the shows relative success, the band released three albums that broke the top twenty on Billboard 200 and four singles that made it to the Billboard Hot 100 (Billboard). Although none of these albums nor the show itself ever matched that of The Monkees, Big Time Rush was not unpopular and met a healthy amount of success (Billboard). Despite this, Big Time Rush was cancelled after its fourth season in 2013 and ended touring in 2014 (Dailey). For seven years the band was then on hiatus with no end in sight until they released “Call It Like I See It” in 2021 which preceded three more hits from 2022. Despite the long gap in the band’s history, Big Time Rush sold out its comeback shows in a matter of minutes and in 2022 they performed live for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (Dailey). Much like The Monkees, Big Time Rush finally wrested creative control from their handlers after the end of their show, but unlike their inspiration, Big Time Rush is seeing a resurgence in popularity that The Monkees never saw. However, for Big Time Rush’s comeback to surpass its initial run’s success is a much easier feat than for The Monkees to achieve as one of the most commercially successful bands in history. 

                Sabrina Carpenter is a modern analogue to Elvis in the sense that both she and Elvis have prolific movie careers that overlap with their music careers as well as periods in which they focused on each direction separately. Sabrina Carpenter has starred in 56 different films and television series since 2011 with most of her films being released prior to her breakout in the music industry (IMDB). She released her first single at Radio Disney in anticipation of what would be her break out role in “Girl Meets World” in 2014 (Fanlala). After her role in the Disney original her career on screen took off dramatically and she began being featured in more prominent films and television, especially being featured in Disney properties (IMDB). Her film career took a hiatus as she focused on her music which may have started in 2014, but it took off with her album “Emails I Can’t Send” which was released in 2022 and is marked by her increased creative freedom from producers (Avila). Sabrina Carpenter’s career is similar to Elvis’ in that as they each focused their creative energies more in one place or the other, they were forced to allow the other side of their career to fall to the wayside.