Are ‘American Idol’ finalists quickly forgotten?

So why do successful recording careers elude almost all of them? A recent “Village Voice” profile of Constantine Maroulis hints at an answer. The singer was, for better or for worse, one of the standouts of the fourth season of “Idol,” a self-satisfied, ultra-theatrical smarm factory who desperately wanted to be a badass rocker. His fiercely devoted fanbase couldn’t prevent him from being kicked out in sixth place, an event that caused Abdul to bawl magnificently on national television.

That was a year and a half ago, and the “Voice” article reads like a cautionary tale for “Idol” contestants buying into their own hype. Maroulis seems to have never gotten over his ejection, and his plans to return to the public spotlight are so single-minded that they would more accurately be described as “plotting.” He broke up his band, Pray For The Soul Of Betty, and proposed modeling contracts and sitcom offers never materialized. Even his current Broadway gig, in “The Wedding Singer” (where his costumes are still labeled with the name of the actor he replaced), smacks of the sort of C-list stuntcasting that results in Brooke Shields playing Roxie Hart and Sally Bowles. (It happened.)

What the article suggests is that Maroulis (and, by extension, the dozens of “Idol” finalists to date) has the career not of a recording artist but of a former reality show star, with all of the fleeting fame that that implies. There’s no doubt that the show gives its contestants opportunities that they never would have had available to them otherwise: DeGarmo, Gray and Frenchie Davis have all performed on Broadway; Jennifer Hudson is about to make her film debut in the upcoming “Dreamgirls”; and Kimberly Caldwell is a correspondent for the TV Guide Channel.

For most "Idol" finalists, however, not only does the window for those opportunities fade quickly, so does the hysteria of their fans. That’s a warning that should be heeded by Donny Hathaway disciple Elliott Yamin, who was eliminated in third place this year by the slimmest of margins. The Yaminions may be clamoring for an album from their boy, but Maroulis and Guarini both serve as object lessons in the fickleness of the clamorers. If their fans couldn’t maintain their enthusiasm long enough to provide them with even short-term success outside the context of the show, who’s to say that Yamin will fare any better?

And there’s certainly something to be said for the fact that, without “Idol,” contestants like Yamin, Pickler and even McPhee might never have gotten the chance to set foot in a recording studio at all. (Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is another question.) But all that does is puts them roughly on par with the thousands of other struggling performers trying to make it in the music industry. Even with the cachet of the show behind them, success is not guaranteed. For that, it seems, you need to be a winner.

Marc Hirsh is a writer in Somerville, Mass.

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