in the music industry it probably feels
pretty good to be at the top of your
game
unfortunately it also means there's only
one way to go from there
down just ask these musicians whose
careers were destroyed by everything
from criminal scandals to wardrobe
malfunctions to lip sync nightmares
in 1958 rock and roll icon jerry lee
lewis decided to take his underage wife
with him on his tour of england
what happened next isn't much of a
surprise lewis had neglected to tell
anyone he was newly married so when he
rocked up with myra gail lewis in tow
the british press were naturally curious
a daily mail reporter paul tanfield
happened to ask how old the newlywed was
lewis said she was 15 and ended his
transatlantic career in one fell swoop
the worst part of all this is that lewis
was lying myra was actually 13
oh and she was louis's cousin too
naturally his british tour collapsed
those that showed up to his gigs only
booed him concerts were cancelled his
expensive hotel kicked him out
and when he finally hightailed it back
to the states he found he'd been
blacklisted from the industry
the radio would no longer play his songs
he was dropped from tv appearances
and demand for his performances all but
disappeared
though he never lost his recording
contract and continued to release a
number of mostly
unsuccessful singles dj and songwriter
alan freed's name is obscure today
but he left behind one heck of a legacy
he's credited with being the guy who
coined the term rock and roll
through the world's first rock concert
and was instrumental in determining the
course of post-war american music
between 1952 and 1957 he was practically
the king maker of rock and roll
but what happened in 1957 at the time
freed had a nationally syndicated abc
show big beat
which broadcast his newfangled rock and
roll to the entire country
one evening however something so
unbelievably and unremittingly
anti-american happened that the network
had no choice but to immediately pull
the plug
big beat showed a black performer
dancing on stage with a white
woman it might sound ridiculous to 21st
century years but that one
interracial dance was enough to get
freed's show canceled
and it couldn't have come at a worse
time for freed whose health was
collapsing
and marriage was falling apart two years
later the final blow came
while still on the ropes from his big
beat controversy
freed was investigated by the fbi for
accepting cash to play records as part
of the payola scandal
what was left of his career was over and
he died in 1965 as a penniless alcoholic
the moment that made ashley simpson fade
away came during her snl performance in
2004
when she realized her band was playing
the same song she had sung
earlier in the show unfortunately the
vocals had been pre-recorded
now simpson isn't exactly the first
artist to lip-sync a performance
but this practice is almost universally
despised by fans
and simpson was not forgiven for her
mistake according to people she was
relentlessly hounded by critics and
former fans simply for the fact that
she'd actually dared to engage in
deception
via lip-syncing and when she tried to
explain that a severe case of acid
reflux had prompted her decision to fake
the performance
everyone just ended up hating her more
even today
simpson hasn't shaken off the experience
the two albums that followed her fateful
snl performance
undersold the one she'd been promoting
at the time and she hasn't had a top 10
song
since at least ashley simpson can take
comfort in knowing that she's not the
only musician to have derailed her own
career on saturday night live
in fact snl related career derailment
was pioneered in 1992 by sinead o'connor
when she sang bob marley's war and
entered her performance by ripping up a
photograph of the pope
generally you're not going to get a good
reaction by attacking the pope on live
television
in a country where nearly 25 of the
population is catholic
to be fair however she was protesting
the abuse of children in the catholic
church
a problem the general public is much
more aware of today than it was in 1992
and back then most americans were
especially clueless about the issue
because at that point it was mostly
being brought to light only in ireland
still o'connor became so unpopular after
that little faux pas that she was booed
at bob dylan's 30th anniversary concert
just two weeks later
not long after that she announced her
retirement she didn't stay retired of
course but she was never able to quite
recapture the success she'd once had
i was genuinely very angry with what the
church were doing
by ripping that picture you know i
risked my career everything i could be a
billionaire now if i wanted
if i believed in that during the
halftime show with super bowl 38 in 2004
justin timberlake pulled down janet
jackson's leather bustier
and exposed her breasts to a television
audience of roughly 100 million people
both artists later said the stunt had
only been sort of intentional
timberlake was supposed to reveal the
red lace under jackson's bustier
but he ended up tearing off the whole
thing instead inevitably the american
viewing audience viacom
and the fcc proceeded to lose their
collective minds
around 540 000 people complained to the
fcc
and the fcc responded by attempting and
failing to find cbs
550 000 for the incident but the person
who suffered most was
jackson viacom which owns mtv cbs vh1
and a bunch of radio stations wanted
revenge
so they banned her music from all of
their properties
and then a bunch of other media
companies did the same thing and pretty
soon
no one was playing janet jackson songs
just to rub salt in the wound she was
also
uninvited from the grammys it's worth
noting that timberlake was not uninvited
from the grammys
nor was he banned from mtv or viacom
the monkeys got a lot of shade for being
a so-called manufactured band but they
managed to survive for decades because
they never lied about what they were
history doesn't remember the 90s pop
group milly vanilli
quite so kindly because millie vanilli
was all lies front men rob paladis and
pab morvan had basically just lip-synced
their way to fame and fortune
and it wasn't ashley simpson-style i
have acid reflux lip-syncing either
peladas and morvan didn't even do their
own singing in the studio
their voices were 100 other singers who
had been sworn to utmost secrecy
so how did politis and morvan end up as
the faces of millie vanilli when other
people were doing all the singing
according to gizmodo producer frank
faryon thought the real singers were
unmarketable so he hired a couple of
models to pretend that they were the
ones singing
what he didn't seem to comprehend was
that you can't keep a lie
that size quiet forever especially when
it got you a grammy
in 1989 millie vanilli was doing a live
performance on mtv when the backing
track skipped
the media immediately took interest did
some further digging and discovered that
pelatus and morvan
actually did none of their own singing
for the group millie vanilli lost their
grammy and that was pretty much the end
of that
michael jackson's 2005 trial was the
media circus of the century
jackson was accused of molesting gavin
or viso who was 15 years old at the time
he was acquitted but since then no one
has really been able to agree on whether
he was actually a child molester
or just a seriously weird dude who liked
to have sleepovers with kids
still there's no doubt he made some
incredibly stupid and arrogant decisions
one of them was the fact that he
regularly allowed young boys to sleep in
his bedroom
and pretended like there wasn't anything
weird about it and he even said as much
in the 2003 documentary
living with michael jackson which was
probably what led to his downfall
police saw the film opened an
investigation raided jackson's neverland
ranch and the circus began
in the end it didn't matter that he was
acquitted because most people had
already made up their minds
in the years following the trial jackson
developed a dangerous prescription drug
addiction
his dependence on the anesthetic
propofol deprived his body of real sleep
and gave him severe symptoms of sleep
deprivation
which included an inability to remember
lyrics or learn new dance moves
his career stagnated and his deaths
continued to mount
ultimately it was propofol that killed
him in 2009.
even now the eye-opening new documentary
leaving neverland
seems on track to kill the last of
jackson's positive legacy
i was really into jewelry and
he would reward me with jewelry for
doing
sexual acts for him
fame does weird things to people and no
one knows that better than george
michael
who was a renowned singer and heartthrob
during the 80s
in 1998 michael was arrested for
engaging in a lewd act in a public
restroom
you've gotta admire his attitude though
because after all that went down he
didn't just crawl into a hole and hide
he actually considered it his moment the
once reclusive michael was suddenly
agreeing to interviews and by the end of
the scandal he'd gone from a closeted
pop star
to an out and proud gay pop star prior
to this incident michael had only come
out to friends and family
although he had often alluded to it in
the lyrics of his songs
michael's career never really recovered
though at least not in america where
homophobia is still rampant
but to many michael is today remembered
for publicly embracing his sexuality
and helping young gay people feel like
they could do the same
in 1990 police seized weapons
pornographic videotapes marijuana and
hashish and 130 thousand dollars in cash
from chuck berry's home
not long after that a bunch of women
filed a class-action lawsuit against him
alleging that he had video cameras
hidden in the bathrooms of his house and
a restaurant he owned
cameras that he would use to record
women some of whom were underaged while
they were dressing
undressing or using the bathroom in the
end barry got off pretty lightly
he was charged with drug possession and
child abuse but the child abuse charges
were dropped and he was sentenced to
just two years of
unsupervised probation plus five
thousand dollars paid to a drug
rehabilitation program
that seems like nothing but the incident
also cost barry 1.2 million dollars in
legal fees
although his career wasn't ruined in the
sense that he was blacklisted or forced
into destitution
pretty much no one could see him live
without feeling seriously icky about it
in 2014 ceelo greene proved that a good
career can easily end over a heinous act
of violence
green's career defining moment was the
one in which he took to twitter
to dubiously proclaim his innocence
after he was accused of indecently
assaulting an unconscious woman
and then he also tweeted some
nonsensical stuff about how you can't be
with someone if you're unconscious
which just served to make him look even
more guilty than he had before
somehow green managed to squirm his way
out of the allegations and was convicted
only on a lesser charge of supplying
drugs
because fame is powerful he got three
years probation
and community service but his career
never really recovered
and the most notable thing he's done
since was a performance during the
opening ceremonies at the 2017 world
aquatics championship in budapest
as well as some voice work on the
children's animated series teen titans
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