Dream Come True: The LeAnn Rimes Story by Jo Sgammato

Author:Jo Sgammato [Sgammato, Jo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, music, Genres & Styles, Country & Bluegrass, Entertainment & Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780307775528
Google: Wp1RHbbcJEoC
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2010-12-22T00:23:45.611540+00:00

Interestingly, the new version of “Blue” wasn’t even supposed to be the first single from LeAnn’s major album from Curb Records. “The Light in Your Eyes” was slated to fill this role.

Record companies take a number of important steps as they begin to market an artist and her music. One of these is to set up showcases to introduce influential radio programmers to new songs, hoping these powerful execs will respond positively and start broadcasting the song to their listeners.

LeAnn performed at showcases in Nashville at the annual Country Radio Seminar in March 1996. The CRS brings together radio personnel from all over the country to sample the newest “product” from Music City. Like every other big music event that takes place in Nashville, the CRS generates excitement for weeks in advance. Record companies and their marketing departments, public-relations firms, and artists’ management offices prepare to meet and greet some of the people who can truly make or break a new song.

MCG/Curb rented a hospitality suite for the occasion, and LeAnn impressed everyone with her poise and maturity. It was a first and important step in gaining the attention—and the respect—of yet another group of music-business veterans who have, literally, heard it all.

LeAnn performed at other showcases, one in Dallas and one at the Gavin Country Seminar in Los Angeles. She also did a showcase in Tampa that was particularly tough.

WXTU Philadelphia program director Kevin O’Neal told Billboard about the event.

“They had these risers set up, and I thought, ‘They’re going to put a thirteen-year-old on there singing to tracks. I don’t even want to see the massacre.’ ” Professional artists singing to tracks is what the rest of us call karaoke. The music comes out of the speakers, and the singer has to sing along with it. It’s a difficult way to perform. LeAnn had done it before in her talent shows, and she’d shown herself to be remarkably calm under pressure all her life. Still, even she had to know that these appearances amounted to a make-it-or-break-it moment.

According to O’Neal, “In thirty seconds, we were all spellbound.”

To heighten the group excitement record companies hope will be generated at the showcases, special representatives and promotion experts visit radio stations on behalf of the companies to present the artists and songs to program directors.

Like sales reps in all kinds of industries, these representatives bring elaborate sales kits featuring key information about the product and samples to show or play for their customers.

For five months before the release of the album, the folks from MCG/Curb circulated a four-song sample tape and an electronic press kit to radio stations. The kit included the video for “The Light in Your Eyes,” still slated to be the first single, and excerpts of four songs: “The Light in Your Eyes,” “Hurt Me,” “My Baby,” and, of course, “Blue.”

And everywhere in the sales kit, everywhere in the press releases, everywhere in all the presentations was the sales “hook” that convinced people they had to at least give a listen to this newcomer named LeAnn Rimes.

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