Posted by Katherine St Asaph on 02/22/2012 at 11:41 AM News

The Popdust Files: nickelodeon, rachel crow, the x factor

Rachel Crow’s tenure on The X Factor, like that of collect-them-all group Intensity or any of the other under-14s who might actually have been added to Intensity (I forget), always seemed more like an audition for a kids’ TV career than a musical career–a career where a kid with a good voice but the life experience of a 14-year-old could sing and be charismatic without being encumbered by things like interpretation and mature songwriting and managing your image and other things best left to post-graduation. Or post-tutelage-contract, or however child stars are being educated these days.

In the TV world, this essentially means Nickelodeon or Disney. Crow’s musical career still might exist; she’s signed with Columbia and has an album in the works that she promises will a) be spunky; b) contain high notes. (OK then!) More pertinently, though, she’s earned a starring role from Nickelodeon in a pilot for a musical comedy show. Crow’s certainly showed she’s up for that (she’s got stage presence down, and on a scripted show it doesn’t matter how spontaneous it is); it’s her material that could go either way.

But! Because the world can’t have nice things without having barrels of crap foisted upon them, she’s also got a couple-episode arc in Fred, based on a YouTube series that is the equivalent of voluntarily reliving Rachel Crow’s hellacious elimination, plus adding, I dunno, snapping turtles all across the stage and a couple buckets of buzzing gnats and shrieking crickets. The show is very popular. That excuses nothing. We’re still far more excited about, er, literally everything else in Rachel’s career.

[THR]