"Stardom" is an ineffable quality. It defies description with words. It has very little to do with "talent". Go to any university music department and you will find individuals with tremendous talent. Yet, you most likely will not be able to identify any one from another by name recognition by listening to their recorded audio performances. Later, you hear Folsom Prison Blues on your car radio - instantly you say to yourself "Johnny Cash !" A man of simple background and education who had to strum his guitar in order to hear the pitch before he began singing so he could sing on key. A man whose voice could, charitably at best, be described as 'rooted in the soil' or 'a voice which the common man relates to" etc. - certainly not a "natural talent" and certainly not a highly gifted baritone with years and years of training with the world's best singing and songwriting professionals. Yet he is a "star" with instant voice recognition by the public and his recorded work remains valid and sounds fresh year after year.
Is "stardom" achieved merely by "hanging in there" and "refusing to give up"? That usually has something to do with it, but for every one working artist who achieves "stardom" status over the course of a life long career, there are tens of thousands more who die penniless and unknown after a lifetime of performing for a subsistence livelihood in out of the way bars, road houses, or indie film productions. Many of those who don't find success are gifted with beauty along with immense talent. And for each of these there are thousands more who after years and years of dedicated struggle finally have a "hit" recording, or land a top role in a Broadway production, or are chosen the lead in a hugely successful film - only to then suddenly fade from or drop out altogether from the public view after a brief career in the "limelight" - never to be heard from again. Go to google and type in "What ever happened to ..." and look at all the vast number of "stars" from various decades who once were "on top" and then disappeared from show business. Chances are you find yourself thinking "Oh! I remember them ...they were huge way back in (fill in the year) ... I always wondered what happened to them !" The "end" for most of them came the same as it does for most everyone else: marriage, kids, selling life insurance, or sometimes alcoholism or drug addiction leading to early death or worse. Some simply came to the realization that the "stardom" they sought and achieved was a big disillusionment and so they dropped out of show biz for other life goals.
In addition to "stardom" being ineffable it has many other attributes. It has little to do with luck and even less to do with talent and perseverance. Once achieved, "stardom" becomes a "curse" to those who have it. Their public and private lives become everyone's but their own. They can't even drive down the street to Wal~Mart without being stalked or even 'attacked' by fans and paparazzi lurking on their property. They earn huge gross sums but are the last ones to be paid because the huge corporate empires they nurture all take their "cut" first and foremost. The managers, booking agents, unions, public relations firms, attorneys and accountants, entourage employees, tax officials, all take their cut before the "star" who generated the income gets what's left of it. And almost all "stars" live in constant insecurity and dread that their next artistic move will "bomb" at the box office or move down and off the audio/video charts - the "kiss of death" whereby all who praised and worshiped them earlier in their career suddenly turn on them and attack them in the press, drop their contracts, trash them endlessly in gossip rags, etc. etc. Once that happens it's way better to be a never was than to be a has been !
"Superstardom"? That term usually means "grossing super amounts of income from personal or recorded appearances". However, the human trash heap is littered with the lives of those who were once "superstars" who today can't even get hired to sweep up the warehouse in Guitar Center or Sam Ash.
Stardom and how to achieve it is mostly out our hands and in the hands of a Power far beyond our human reckoning. Now if you all will excuse me, I've got to go practice my double bass drum kit before my agent calls.
