“American Idol” has been proven time and again to give its winners the kind of immediate success that very few artists achieve at the outset of their recording careers.
Carrie Underwood, Kelly Clarkson, Adam Lambert and even Clay Aiken scored major successes with their first post-“Idol” albums.
Fantasia Barrino, the 2004 “Idol” champion, was no exception. She became the first artist to have a first single (“I Believe”) debut at number one on “Billboard” magazine’s “Hot 100 chart. Her first CD, “Free Yourself,” sold more than two million copies worldwide.
But Fantasia has found that winning “American Idol” also presents problems for artists that want to follow their own musical visions.
“Especially when you’re coming from a show like ‘American Idol,’ people would think that makes it easy,” Fantasia explained during a late October teleconference interview. “No it doesn’t. It makes it harder because a lot of times, they [record labels, management, producers] don’t take you that seriously and just stick you in that ‘Idol,’ she’s an artist, but not quite like most of the artists that fought their way here, who worked their way here.”
As a result, Fantasia has spent much of her career battling over her sound and visual style.
“After I won the ‘Idol’ and having so many opinions that people felt like ‘Let’s take it this way’ or ‘Let’s take it that way’ or ‘Let’s make it like this,’ I always knew in the back of my mind and deep down from the bottom of my heart that they can’t make me a pop artist,” Fantasia said. “I’m not a dancer. I’m not this and that.”
What Fantasia is can be summed up in three words.
“I am soul,” she declared.
And with her third CD, the recently released “Back To Me,” Fantasia said she made exactly the kind of album she has wanted to make, and has been able to define herself as an artist.
“It’s truly everything I wanted,” Fantasia said of “Back To Me.”
Fantasia, however, nearly lost everything.
On Aug. 9 – just three weeks before the new CD was being released – Fantasia was rushed to a hospital in Pineville, N.C. after overdosing on aspirin and an undisclosed sleep aid.
In interviews just before the release of “Back To Me,” Fantasia confirmed that she had tried to commit suicide. One factor in the incident was discovering that the man she had dated for the previous year, Antwaun Cook, was still married and she was being accused of having an affair. Fantasia has said Cook had told her when they started their very public relationship that he had separated from his wife.
Fantasia didn’t address the attempted suicide in detail when asked during the teleconference interview. But she did say she is doing better and learning to ignore what people say about her.
“I really don’t care anymore,” she said. “Every day I wake up and I just take baby steps and I do what makes ‘Tasia happy, and I focus on my music and my daughter , and that’s about it.”
The suicide attempt was the latest in a string of events that had dogged the singer since she rose to prominence.
They include surgery for cysts on her vocal cords in 2007, her split in 2008 with 19 Entertainment (the management company that guides the careers of several “American Idol” alumni) and reports of financial problems that included the near-foreclosure on one of her two homes in Charlotte in 2008.
But there were also several high points, including a popular 2006 movie biography, “Life Is Not A Fairy Tale: The Fantasia Barrino Story,” an acclaimed role as Celie in the 2007 Broadway production of “The Color Purple” and nominations for three Grammy awards for the “Fantasia” CD.
Having gone through those ups and downs, Fantasia was determined to make her “Back To Me” CD a true reflection of the music she loved. Its opening song, “I’m Doin’ Me,” serves as a statement of purpose.
“I always talk about how I grew up on great music,” she said. “Number one, I grew up on gospel music. So that’s always in me…I’d always be listening to Aretha Franklin. Musically, I loved how Stevie Wonder and Elton John would put their albums and their shows together. James Brown had so much soul to me. He was just church and anointed. I would listen to all of the artists who, again, kids my age probably weren’t listening to.”
Those classic influences are apparent on “Back To Me,” in songs like “Move On Me,” “Teach Me” and “Collard Greens & Cornbread.”
Fantasia’s fall tour carries the classic theme forward, she said, by blending elements of Broadway and the look of 1950s/1960s jazz and soul.
“I wanted to bring that to my show, the Cab Calloway outfits, the flapper dress, the spectator shoes,” Fantasia said. “All of that is going to be a part of my show.”
-- By Alan Sculley, for the AJC
Concert preview
Fantasia with Eric Benet
7:30 p.m. Nov. 11 , $62-$104. Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta, 404-881-2100, www.foxtheatre.org/
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