How to cre­ate a fic­tion­al pop superstar

The crack­le and hum of a dor­mant amp await­ing noise. The dim­ming of the lights, faint out­lines of fig­ures on stage. The col­lec­tive held breath of a group of thou­sands briefly unit­ed. There is no expe­ri­ence on earth quite like the fizzing atmos­phere of live music, and nowhere is this more height­ened than at the sta­di­um show where excite­ment bub­bles over into hys­te­ria and years of ded­i­ca­tion come to a head for one unfor­get­table night.

Pop stars have been fill­ing sta­di­ums for decades, and the heady world of the music indus­try has had a sim­i­lar pull for film­mak­ers since the days of William A. Wellman’s A Star Is Born. But in recent years some­thing has shift­ed. The gap between indie artists rat­tling the walls of local booz­ers and megas­tars strut­ting the gang­way to tens of thou­sands has widened, as invest­ment in grass­roots venues plum­mets (over a third are mak­ing a loss) and the cost of going to a gig con­tin­ues to rise along­side the cost of liv­ing. Social media, stream­ing dom­i­nance, chang­ing music con­sump­tion habits and major label manip­u­la­tion mean pop stars can be mass-mar­ket­ed with greater ease, and cul­ture is more homoge­nous as a result. So how do you make a fic­tion­al pop star stand out?

This year alone has brought us plen­ty of new idols: there’s Smile 2’s Skye Riley who has received an immer­sive mar­ket­ing cam­paign, Lady Raven in M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap (played by his musi­cian daugh­ter Sale­ka), and Nicholas Galitzine’s sil­ly but watch­able Har­ry Styles stand-in Hayes Camp­bell in The Idea of You. And even if some peo­ple would rather for­get it, 2023 saw Sam Levinson’s icky but unavoid­able TV show The Idol hard launch Lily-Rose Depp as fledg­ling singer Joce­lyn. Even look­ing ahead to 2025, David Lowery’s Moth­er Mary will fol­low a fic­tion­al pop star (Anne Hath­away) and her rela­tion­ship with a fash­ion design­er (Michaela Coel), set to a sound­track by pop star-of-the-moment Char­li XCX.

But cre­at­ing a new pop sen­sa­tion isn’t as easy as dream­ing one up. Beyond the logis­ti­cal chal­lenges – thou­sands of extras (real or CGI) for con­cert scenes, huge expen­sive sets, orig­i­nal songs – it’s much more than slap­ping on a span­g­ly leo­tard. Pop stars make it because they offer some­thing nobody else can, some intan­gi­ble qual­i­ty that sets them apart from the mass­es. Cre­at­ing a ver­sion of this that view­ers can buy into in just a few hours is tricky and rarely works. Build­ing a pop star means nail­ing the essentials.

A pop star’s name car­ries weight because it’s a call­ing card. When she arrived on the scene Lady Gaga’s name sound­ed fair­ly sil­ly, and before it was one of the most rec­og­nized names in the world, Tay­lor Swift sound­ed pret­ty unre­mark­able. Years of con­text and asso­ci­a­tion with their spe­cif­ic per­son­al­i­ties mean that these names now instant­ly hold whole sto­ries with­in them. You can’t real­ly do this over the length of a film, so it’s hard to make a fake pop star’s name feel spe­cial. It doesn’t hit quite right in the case of M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap pop star Lady Raven. It’s clear where both parts of that name orig­i­nate – by look­ing a lit­tle too close­ly at exist­ing pop stars – but it sounds con­trived as a result.

His daugh­ter Sale­ka Shya­malan does a decent job of fill­ing this tough role, and the stag­ing of the film is con­vinc­ing, even where the plot some­times is not. It’s a fun envi­ron­ment for a thriller and there’s an under­stand­ing here of what makes teen fans tick. Com­bined with a prop­er­ly filled-out crowd, low-angle shots among the mass­es, and hys­teric crowd noise; Lady Raven’s show feels immer­sive. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, every time some­one says ​‘Lady Raven’, that fades slightly.

The upcom­ing sequel to hor­ror smash Smile has made some clever attempts to coun­ter­act this through its mar­ket­ing, build­ing in some lore for their pop star main char­ac­ter. Huge bill­boards adver­tis­ing a new album from Skye Riley (shared by cred­i­ble stan accounts like Pop Base) made it seem like a new pop star was about to emerge. These adverts were then adapt­ed over time to reveal chill­ing adverts for Smile 2. Skye Riley isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly a ter­ri­ble name for a pop star, but much like Lady Raven it does feel a lit­tle blank. What the mar­ket­ing attempts to do here though is bed this name in as a fea­si­ble pop­star in our minds through repeat asso­ci­a­tion. See­ing the name on bill­boards sup­pos­ed­ly as a real per­son out­side of the con­text of the film ini­tial­ly may help to give it some more weight.

Take Lady Gaga for exam­ple: a true out­sider who’s con­sis­tent­ly break­ing the rules of what a pop star should be. Her 2010 MTV VMAs meat dress would be a baf­fling choice for any­one else (it was even for her at the time). Now it has become a sig­nif­i­cant cul­tur­al moment, giv­ing her the free­dom to make bold­er choic­es through­out her career. The lack of this his­to­ry means fic­tion­al pop stars often lack cohe­sive cre­ative vision and end up look­ing a lit­tle cookie-cutter.

It’s impor­tant to have a cre­ative team with real ideas or a sto­ry that cre­ates sig­nif­i­cant moments cen­tered around a star’s image. Vox Lux does this with Celeste’s ever-present and evolv­ing neck brace, the trau­mat­ic back­sto­ry of which is eas­i­ly believ­able as some­thing that could launch a young singer to super­star­dom. This also shows the impor­tance of a strong back­sto­ry, films like Trap where we’re dropped straight in at the peak of an artist’s career with lit­tle con­text are more tricky to pull off.

A short­cut here can be to cast an exist­ing singer, as with Gaga’s Ally in A Star Is Born (or Bar­bra Streisand in the 1976 ver­sion). The cos­tumes in A Star Is Born are actu­al­ly not all that remark­able but this famil­iar­i­ty and sense of some­one spe­cial we already have with Gaga makes it eas­i­er to accept that Jack­son (Bradley Coop­er) could spot an innate tal­ent in Ally and makes her believ­able when she even­tu­al­ly emerges as a pop star (plus, it helps with the orig­i­nal music).

Gaga’s unique per­sona also helps keep a bar­ri­er between her real-life per­son­al­i­ty and the char­ac­ter; when you see her in plain clothes as Ally, you’re not see­ing Lady Gaga, a lot of that per­sona has been stripped away. That mag­ic qual­i­ty remains though, hint­ing at some­thing spe­cial. Of course, this can also back­fire for stars who lack Gaga’s act­ing chops (see The Week­end putting many peo­ple off him for life in The Idol).

A cru­cial part of cre­at­ing a believ­able fic­tion­al pop star is cre­at­ing the world they occu­py. We see this in the insu­lar Toron­to hip­ster scene of Edgar Wright’s Scott Pil­grim vs. The World which feels total­ly fleshed out. As a result, when local icon Envy Adams final­ly appears, she has been so dis­cussed and so eulo­gised that she feels larg­er than life. A good rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the way a tight-knit scene can lift a singer who is not actu­al­ly that big to lofti­er heights (not that Envy would see it that way).

Vox Lux does the oppo­site, nev­er actu­al­ly show­ing much of the wider world where Celeste is a house­hold name but rather remain­ing excru­ci­at­ing­ly con­tained with­in the claus­tro­pho­bic world she is forced to occu­py. Show­ing how lit­tle of the real-world pop stars often actu­al­ly get to see; from the moment Celeste is cat­a­pult­ed to fame and begins to be mould­ed by the industry’s grub­by hands, the film is sur­round­ed by oppres­sive high-rise build­ings, soul­less hotel rooms and impos­si­ble-to-trust han­dlers. This all serves to add weight to her final per­for­mance. This was also per­haps The Idol​’s one redeem­ing fac­tor; Levin­son and co nailed the gag­gle of self-serv­ing, heart­less indus­try types who sur­round­ed Joce­lyn, manip­u­lat­ing her at every turn for their own gain. It’s an unnerv­ing – albeit lurid – depic­tion of how tox­ic the indus­try can some­times be, espe­cial­ly where young women are concerned.

If all this is done right, with a com­mit­ment to every aspect of what makes a pop star (and a few good songs thrown in for good mea­sure), it can be an irre­sistible for­mat. For music fans, there’s noth­ing more thrilling than a glimpse behind the scenes and if done well it can even be a short­cut to real fan­dom. Look at Han­nah Mon­tana, the fic­tion­al teen pop star that Miley Cyrus made real. Cyrus even played anoth­er fic­tion­al pop star (Ashley‑O in Black Mir­ror) and brought her to life on Glastonbury’s Pyra­mid Stage (where Gaga and Coop­er pre­vi­ous­ly shot a scene). A head-spin­ning com­bi­na­tion of real and fake pop stars alike.