There is no absolute definition about success. It is very personal and can be very different for every person. Most people view and commercialize that success encompasses and represents all kinds of prosperities, one of which is fame. Fame is that you are known for something you are successful at. The reason why fame comes after success is because it comes to those who have worked long and hard enough. The following public figures that would be discussed in this essay prove it, and the fame they achieve is a good one. It lasts longer than the fame that someone achieves by creating scandals.
Who does not know Mariah Carey? She is a mesmerizing singer with 7 octaves vocal range. She had sold over 200 million albums, singles and videos world-wide, making her one of the most successful selling artists in music history. Until 2009, she had been nominated for 442 nominations and won 249 awards from American Music Awards, Billboard Music Awards, Grammy Awards, MTV European Music Awards, MTV Video Music Awards, Soul Train Music Awards, World Music Awards, etc. She has eighteen number-one hit singles in Billboard Hot 100 Chart with the songs that she wrote, produced and directed by herself, including Vision of Love, Love Takes Time, If It’s Over, Emotion, Always Be My Baby, Hero, I Still Believe, My All, When You Believe, We Belong Together, Don’t Forget about Us, Touch My Body, etc. Mariah debuted as an actress in Glitter (2001). Unlike her successful career in music history, her movie was a total breakdown. The accompanying original soundtrack album became her worst selling album. Her next movies, Wise Girl (2002), State Property 2 (2005) and Tennessee (2009), also received many criticisms. Only her latest role in Precious (2009) took positive responses. From the records, Mariah is much more successful as a singer rather than an actress because she was born to sing, not to act.
Cheryl Cole was a member of Britain’s biggest girl-band, Girls Aloud, because she won Popstars: The Rivals in 2002. Together with Nicola Robert, Kimberly Walsh, Sarah Harding and Nadine Coyle, she had twenty top-ten singles in the UK Chart, including four number-one singles, and five platinum albums, two of which went to number-one. After they announced their musical hiatus in 2009, Cheryl surprisingly launched her solo career a few months later with the album 3 Words. Its first single Fight for This Love was named as the fastest selling single of 2009. In 2010, she released her second album entitled Messy Little Raindrops, with Promise This as the single. Her first and second albums achieved triple platinum and had sold more than three million albums world-wide. Both Fight for This Love and Promise This went to number-one and were nominated for Best Single in BRIT Award 2010 and 2011. She was also nominated for Best British Female Artist in BRIT Award 2011. She planned to release her third solo album this year. Nowadays, Cheryl is well-known as the most successful pop star in United Kingdom.
While Mariah was born to sing, Gwyneth Paltrow was born to act. She is crowned as one of the A-listed actresses in Hollywood. She began to act on stage in 1990 and appeared in movies one year after. She started to get attention for her acts in Seven (1995), Emma (1996) and A Perfect Murderer (1998). Due to her performance in Shakespeare in Love (1998), she won an Oscar for Best New Actress, a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress and a Screen Actor Guild Award for Outstanding Lead Actress. Last year, she won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her appearance on Glee. Besides her incredible career in acting, she also tried sing. It started by recovering Sioen’s Cruisin’ as the original soundtrack of Duets (2000). In 2006, she recorded What Is This Thing Called Love for her movie, Infamous. She also released some singles, such as Country Song, Coming Home, Travis and Me and Tennessee. The facts that she has no music album, most of her songs are in duet, and so far, for soundtracks of her movies prove that her career in acting is more successful than her career in singing.
Marc Jacobs is a little bit different from other public figures above. He runs his company, Marc Jacobs International Company, as successful as his job as the Head of Creative Director of Louis Vuitton. Marc and Louis Vuitton are like key and lock; they cannot be separated because he has been working in that French design house, which is well-known for its iconic LV monogram, since 1997 when he created its first ready-to-wear collection. Four years later, he licensed his own clothing line, Marc by Marc Jacobs, in New York. By summer 2011, he has his own 239 retail stores in 60 countries, including Jakarta, Indonesia. Whereas, Louis Vuitton, not to mention as one of the oldest and the most legendary fashion brand, revenues $3.8 billion and employs 16,900 employees, and also gives him opportunities to collaborate with many popular artists, such as Stephen Sprouse, Takashi Murakami, Richard Prince and Kanye West.. A proof that Marc is more famous as the Head of Creative Director of Louis Vuitton than the owner of ‘Marc by Marc Jacobs’ is a documentary film about him entitled Marc Jacobs and Louis Vuitton by Loic Prigent.
There are two points that are being collated in this essay for the public figures above. Each of them is successful in one point, so they become famous for it, for example, Mariah Carey as a singer and Gwyneth Paltrow as an actress. It does not mean they fail in other point; they might just need to put more effort. To sum up, fame is defined by success.
Written by: Galant Nanta/PR
