Will Vanessa Hudgens’ Leaked Pics Torpedo “High School Musical”‘s Sales?
So yesterday, a picture that was rumored to be of High School Musical star/Zac Efron paramour Vanessa Hudgens in the buff made its way around the Internet, with various people (including the celebrity-nude forensic investigators at the NSFW Fleshbot) figuring that the picture was faked somehow. Well, surprise surprise: Hudgens’ reps confirmed the picture as real late last night, thus setting off freak-outs all over the Web’s gossip sites. But there’s another issue at hand: How will this mini-scandal affect the sales of the High School Musical 2 soundtrack, which has had a vise-like grip over the Billboard 200’s summit since it hit stores last month? We asked our resident chart guru Chris “dennisobell” Molanphy for his take on how this shot might affect the fate of one of the few albums that’s actually shifting units these days. His analysis follows:
What could be most affected would be the purchase by grownups for kids factor. What you see on certain holidays is kid-freindly albums, like Kidz Bop and so forth, getting a boost from Aunt Flo sticking a CD in little Kaitlyn’s Easter basket, etc.–but there’s really only one adult-gives-CD-to-kid holiday left in the year, and that’s Santa Day. So one question for Disney is, will this Hudgens thing have blown over by then, because part of the whole success of High School Musical is its appeal to grownups who can’t believe their luck that their 13-year-old is loving such squeaky-clean music.
But the other thing the first HSM showed is that tweens have come of age in terms of purchasing decisions. The first sign that it was gonna be huge, back in January 2006, was when it topped the iTunes chart before the physical CD was even in stores. It could be argued that those sales were from young Kaitlyn buying the digital album for her own iPod, because Aunt Flo (or even digi-clueless Mom) wasn’t doing that for her. If kids are dying for HSM 2, they’re already bought it.
What could really hurt Disney, though, is the school effect. The kids that are buying HSM 2 in, like, week five are the ones who needed to go back to school and be swayed by their friends gushing about it. But now they’re also hearing about the pictures, or Mom already did. So: kid goes home, asks her parents for the CD, the parents say, “We heard about that girl–no way,” and…
Late-blooming Kaitlyn has to get her friend to dupe the CD for her, rather than buying.
“HSM” Nude Pic: It’s the Real Deal! [TMZ] Vaness Hudgens Is (Probably Not) Naked [Fleshbot, NSFW]
