Idolator
So yesterday, a picture that was rumored to be of High School Musical star/Zac Efron paramour Vanessa Hudgens in the buff made its way around the Internet, with various people (including the celebrity-nude forensic investigators at the NSFW Fleshbot) figuring that the picture was faked somehow. Well, surprise surprise: Hudgens' reps confirmed the picture as real late last night, thus setting off freak-outs all over the Web's gossip sites. But there's another issue at hand: How will this mini-scandal affect the sales of the High School Musical 2 soundtrack, which has had a vise-like grip over the Billboard 200's summit since it hit stores last month? We asked our resident chart guru Chris "dennisobell" Molanphy for his take on how this shot might affect the fate of one of the few albums that's actually shifting units these days. His analysis follows:
What could be most affected would be the purchase by grownups for kids factor. What you see on certain holidays is kid-freindly albums, like Kidz Bop and so forth, getting a boost from Aunt Flo sticking a CD in little Kaitlyn's Easter basket, etc.—but there's really only one adult-gives-CD-to-kid holiday left in the year, and that's Santa Day. So one question for Disney is, will this Hudgens thing have blown over by then, because part of the whole success of High School Musical is its appeal to grownups who can't believe their luck that their 13-year-old is loving such squeaky-clean music.
But the other thing the first HSM showed is that tweens have come of age in terms of purchasing decisions. The first sign that it was gonna be huge, back in January 2006, was when it topped the iTunes chart before the physical CD was even in stores. It could be argued that those sales were from young Kaitlyn buying the digital album for her own iPod, because Aunt Flo (or even digi-clueless Mom) wasn't doing that for her. If kids are dying for HSM 2, they're already bought it.
What could really hurt Disney, though, is the school effect. The kids that are buying HSM 2 in, like, week five are the ones who needed to go back to school and be swayed by their friends gushing about it. But now they're also hearing about the pictures, or Mom already did. So: kid goes home, asks her parents for the CD, the parents say, "We heard about that girl—no way," and...
Late-blooming Kaitlyn has to get her friend to dupe the CD for her, rather than buying.
"HSM" Nude Pic: It's the Real Deal! [TMZ]
Vaness Hudgens Is (Probably Not) Naked [Fleshbot, NSFW]
Comments
We should use as a case study how the Lindsay Lohan-Vanessa Minnillo pics affected machete sales.
I prattled on long enough in the quote above, but one last thing I mentioned in our convo this morning: It's moments like this when I wish I had access to the full regional SoundScan breakdowns the label reps have. (They literally can track scans by region or even by city.) I'd love to see if, in "the heartland," HSM2 takes a percentage hit that's out of line with, say, San Francisco or New York.
Well, Disney has "parted ways" with Vanessa as a result of the picture. She's being replaced with Adrienne Bailon from Cheetah Girls. Has Disney ever officially dropped their support of Lindsey Lohan? I would think Lohan destroying herself on their dime would be far more damaging to their image than a fairly innocent nude picture.
@so1omon: Is that official? I haven't seen a confirmation yet.
Thank God she's 18, because I was powerless to resist clicking on that link, Chris Hansen be damned. I don't even think she's particularly hot, I just kinda like her because the 2 singles from her solo album are pretty much the only music churned out by the Radio Disney monolith in recent years that I've enjoyed at all.
My prediction is that this is gonna be good for her career whether or not it's bad for Disney/HSM. She's on the cover of People trumpeting a relationship with her co-star already, so she's already poised to cash in on her awareness with a non-tween audience and make pop music that reaches beyond that niche.
From the Associated Press story updated 7 minutes ago:
"The Disney Channel (part of the Walt Disney Co.) denied a published report that Hudgens will be dropped from the upcoming feature film "High School Musical 3." That movie is in development and negotiations with the stars are incomplete.
"Disney had no further comment about the pictures."
Re: the Adrienne Bailon rumors
It's odd for me to think about AB being associated with Disney and their tween audience. I still remember AB as part of 3LW when she was 16 and being marketed quite sexually suggestively [by Diddy] to the TRL crowd at the beginning of the decade. Later, somehow, AB and fellow 3LW-er Kiely Williams became part of [essentially] the same group, only now tween-friendly, and renamed "The Cheetah Girls". It seems like the career of this nearly-24-year-old is moving backwards in time.
The Adrienne rumor is false. I agree that if kids were going to buy the soundtrack, they already have it. Hell, this could work in Vanessa's favor. The girl couldn't get a non-Disney job. Maybe at least now she can do The Surreal Life.
Remember when WalMart stopped carrying Joan Jett for at least a while when the unlisted extra track on the cassette of "Album" was a *thoroughly* uncensored "Starf**ker"?
Back then, parents were apparently buying JJ for their tween-age daughters, and then someone heard that track...
They really couldn't come up with a better name for this hypothetical aunt?
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