When I was still a kid, I wished to become a rockstar. It's a cliche ambition, and it's probably one of the most frequent answers adolescents give when asked what they want to be when they grow up. In urban parlance, a rockstar is defined “as someone who is in a popular rock band. Some of these guys live the craziest life that exists. They tour around the world to play their music while getting worshipped by their fans. After the concert they f[**]k a bunch of groupies and leave for the next gig while taking some drugs” (definition from http://www.urbandictionary. com/define.php?term=rock+ star).
Well, I probably won’t go as far as f**king a bunch of groupies while taking drugs, because the usual connotation of being a rock star is having a cool life in which there is absolute freedom of action and also boundless expression through music. Since it's more of a lifestyle, the term rockstar has been extended to include not only those who are in well-known bands and engage in the activities abovementioned, but also those who have a lifestyle similar to such. Justin Timberlake, Avril Lavigne and Hannah Montana for example, have been considered rockstars, probably owing more to the way MTV gave another connotation to the term than to how they used the songs they composed to depict their rockstar lives (and yes, even though the genre of their music is categorized as pop music).
Those are the perks.
One thing about being famous is that all eyes are on you. If you were a rockstar and you did something really scandalous or humiliating, expect it to spread in the internet like wild fire. Some examples of this are what happened to Lady Gaga (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= MheF1fexck0), Beyonce (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= 0dhdeIca G6E), and even the recent mistake in the dance performance of Jennifer Lopez in the 2009 American Music Awards. The internet helps a lot to achieve a rockstar life, because it spreads the news on the artist, whatever gimmick their publicists have to package and gain fame for such artists. However, it also has some disadvantages, like the way it spreads both criticisms, bad news, and humiliating stuff around, probably faster than the good/positive PR the said publicists were able to circulate.
In recent years, I do find ironic how rockstars live their lives so flagrantly and yet require privacy in their lives. The internet is one of their most used mediums in disseminating information on their upcoming albums, gigs, and music videos, yet they despise it so much when time comes that humiliating news on what they do, which are generally their own fault, crop up in YouTube and Facebook. That's probably the trade-off of becoming a rockstar, fame on the both the fancy and the humiliating facets of life.
So, do you still want to be a rockstar?
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