RESEARCH: STARDOM

My Chemical Romance while their image was classed
as "emo"

After My Chemical Romance changed their
image to escape the "emo" trend

Stardom is not all glitz and glamor and its often the controversy around bands and artists that can draw in new listeners. A stars image can make or break them. If the media decides they like them they can help them every step of the way with good reviews and publicity. However, even if the media does set out to ruin a band, often any publicity is good publicity since it gets the bands name out there.

One extremely good example of this is after the band My Chemical Romance released their album "The Black Parade". The Black Parade was a concept album, which means that the whole album has a certain theme and the songs help to tell a story when put together. The story based around The Black Parade was about a man who becomes terminally ill and he was being comforted by his own thoughts and others but also had moments of hate and anger at what was happening to him. To go with the theme of the album, the band dressed up as if they were skeletal soldiers leading this mans "Black Parade".

After one girl who was mentally disturbed and depressed to commit suicide after having owned a copy of their album, the media immediately set out to ruin the band. The Daily Mail directly blamed the band for the girls suicide, saying that the band were members of a "suicide cult" and that they "glorified suicide" which were completely unfounded remarks, backed up by no physical evidence. However, even though the media set out to ruin them, it resulted in everyone was talking about them. It even got to the stage where there were fanatical religious protesters outside their concerts saying that they were "connected to the devil" but this just generated more news reports and more interviews. More interviews and more publicity meant that more people were exposed to their image and their music making the band and their publicity managers more money, it is a perfect example of how any publicity is good publicity. However, many stars cant handle the pressure of this and so to try and escape all the controversy My Chemical Romance's next album was another concept album, but with a much brighter outlook and style to go with it.

Here is the Daily Mail Article on My Chemical Romance
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-566481/Why-child-safe-sinister-cult-emo.html