cover stor y I wannabe famous A wave of Disney-manufactured musical teens has captured the imagination of millions of small girls worldwide. Felicity Monk meets some living-room pop stars “Who said, who said, I can’t be Superman? a speaker in its chest. There is Hannah with tennis ensemble, I say, I say that I know I can. with ‘soundbytes’, with electric guitar and with light-up dance Who said, who said, I won’t be President? lounge. In February, Disney deemed the Hannah Montana I say, I say, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” franchise so important they convened an 80-person, all-platform, international meeting to discuss her future. This, audaciously sung by one Miley Cyrus, the toothy, saucer- Cyrus is just one of the new wave of Disney-manufactured eyed teenager, helped her bank a cool $25 million over the past musical teens who has dominated the pre-tween scene for year. Far more than any superman or president. Cyrus is the star the past two years. Other major players include the key cast of of Disney Channel’s insanely popular television series Hannah High School Musical (Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Montana in which she plays a character who leads a double life. Tisdale), the Jonas Brothers, and the crew from the movie By day she is schoolgirl Miley Stewart, and by night she is Camp Rock. Gone are the half-naked Britneys and gyrating famous pop singer Hannah Montana. Only close friends and family Christinas who purr such lyrics as, “I’m a genie in a bottle, (her real-life father, Billy Ray Cyrus, of ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ fame, baby. You gotta rub me the right way, honey.” The new guard plays her dad, and Dolly Parton plays her aunt) know the truth. chirrup, “We’re all in this together.” They are wholesome and hop Like most Disney child stars, Cyrus, 16, hit the genetic jackpot. earnest and blather on about following their dreams. Good K S oc She is cute, she is peppy, and she can sing. It’s a husky noise thing, too, since their adoring fan base is mostly made up of R he ) D but it’s in tune. And for someone who still has homework, she small girls. Teenagers largely feel that Miley is, like, OMG, T : ’R K is ridiculously self-assured as she minces around the stage. fuggedaboutit, way too cheesy. In the course of this research, ( guitar Tickets for every one of her concerts sell out, with some one jaded teenage source officiously informed me that word on hop K S Kitty being scalped for thousands of dollars. Her concert film,The the street is, ‘Miley Cyrus is not cool.’ Some factions even oc R Best of Both Worlds, brought in more than US$8.5 million cruelly refer to her as ‘Smiley Virus’. ello he : T : on its opening day, breaking all kinds of records. There’s the Six-year-old Nico Penny, however, is a MAJOR fan. She threw . H merchandise: Hannah Montana DVDs, CDs, a fashion line, a rocking Hannah Montana party for her birthday in April. Her nunes guitar Y K dinnerware, furniture, sheet sets, drapes, jewellery and friends came over dressed as pop stars. “I was wearing a denim K blac bec Playstation games. And there are dolls: Hannah dolls, Miley skirt with gold glitter on it and some purple leggings with glitter, : ), dolls, fashion dolls, singing dolls and one particularly alarming and a really cool top. I was wearing a special wig.” Nico dashes Nina and Heidi Simpson rock out at home in New Lynn specimen which, when you push its distended belly button off to retrieve the wig. “I’ve got it,” she hollers from her enderson or crank its right arm, bleats a loud and distorted tune from bedroom. “It’s really hairy.” At the party they danced, sung, photograph (H 14 sunday sunday 15 cover stor y played dress-ups and ate Burger Rings off their fingers. Nico says she likes Hannah Montana because, “she has got a really cool voice and she has funny scripts. Sometimes when the show finishes I fall back on the couch because I hate when the show finishes. All night long I wish it would go on, and then in the morning I still want it to be on.” Nico is considering a career in fashion, but would also “kind of like to be a singer. It’d be quite cool because you would rehearse every day, and it would be fun and you would also do some dancing as well. You might have to learn the moves like Miley Cyrus. You might have to hit the microphone on the ground and then quickly put your foot out and go ‘bam’.” Nico considers for a moment whether it would be hard work and concludes, “Not really. But you will have to get used to singing for a really long time, like without swallowing your breath and stuff.” Thirteen seems about the right age to be a rock star, she reckons, “so you’re not too old”. “Who said, who said, I can’t be worldwide? I say, I say time is on my side. Who said, who said, I can’t be 10 feet tall? I say, I say that I can have it all.” There is nothing new, of course, about kids wanting to be stars. My mum wanted to be Lulu from To Sir With Love, my sister attempted to dress like Madonna, and I tried to moonwalk like Michael. It is the marketing that has changed. It’s slicker, savvier and far more precise, targeting ever younger audiences. This fertile and lucrative field of children besotted with the concept Miley Cyrus of fame is being carefully seeded and groomed, and is turning out crops of voracious little consumers. In a sunny lounge in the Auckland suburb of New Lynn, Heidi and Nina theatre the opportunity to see a musical in a movie format, that was, in a way, Simpson, aged seven and four respectively, are wrangling over who gets to like traditional theatre.” wear the long blonde Hannah Montana wig. The girls’ previous deep affection Janine Donnell, artistic director of ACTA (Auckland Children’s Theatre for Gwen Stefani and The Veronicas has waned, says their mum, since they Academy) agrees. “The sheer appreciation musical theatre is getting now is the entered their dedicated Hannah Montana phase. They like to watch Hannah upside. The grand scale of this craze of movie musicals, it’s kind of reminiscent Montana on television every day, and if they know they are going to miss an of the 1950s, the golden era of musicals when you had people like Doris Day, episode, they will record it. Heidi shows me some of her Hannah Montana and Rodgers and Hammerstein were at their peak. I think the good thing about booty: there’s a singing doll, a CD, a clock, a book and two tops which, it is that it is giving us press. It is giving music and singing and dancing an area when she wears them, she says, make her feel a little bit rock’n’roll. In the to shine in.” background, Nina waves about her naked Miley doll. (“Nina always takes Donnell says she sees many little pop star wannabes rock through her door the clothes off,” Heidi tells me.) Both sisters desire to be famous rock stars. come audition time. “They come in and they will have prepared a song for me. Heidi thinks she’ll be one at 15, and the more ambitious Nina thinks 12 seems A lot of times it has been High School Musical, and they tend to try to mimic a reasonable age. what they are seeing. They’ll hear somebody who has quite a powerful voice, In Rosa Macdonald’s bedroom is a Hannah Montana paper plate and cup that so they will push to try and be the same and will actually learn some bad habits. she brought home from a friend’s birthday party recently – neither was used I need to reverse that, and then once you get her to take all that bravado off, because she didn’t want to ruin them. The seven-year-old also shows me her you actually find there is a sweet little voice in there. And then you can start collection of Barbie dolls, Bratz dolls and her Ashley Tisdale doll from High to build that voice up properly.” School Musical, which fires up when you place a microphone in front of its face. Rosa wants to be either a zookeeper or a singer – she’ll decide when Seven-year-old Emma Gadsby sings me an entire Miley Cyrus song, complete images she’s about 13. In the meantime she and her friends will continue to listen with American accent and angsty twang. She’s very good, actually. She says getty : to the Ashley Tisdale CD and have rock concerts on her bed. when she watches Hannah Montana on television it makes her “want to be When the first High School Musical came out, Stephen Dallow, director of the very famous”. So last year she formed a band with five of her friends. Naturally, nation-wide performing arts school Kids-4-Drama, says he witnessed an influx of she was the lead singer. “I wanted people to know that I like to sing and that photograph students signing up for classes. “It gave people who might not go and see live I am good at singing.” She designated places for her friends and “made up >> sunday 17 cover stor y different dances for them”.