Can Connecticut’s ‘American Idol’ Winner Nick Fradiani Expect Stardom?

On the two-hour season finale of “American Idol” earlier this month, 29-year-old Guilford native Nick Fradiani beat out Nashville’s Clark Beckham, becoming the first Idol winner from Connecticut and across the Northeast.

So what happens now?

Fradiani will headline the American Idol Live! tour, along with the four runners-up from Season 14 (Beckham, Jax, Rayvon Owen and Tyanna Jones); the tour kicks off on July 7 in Clearwater, Fla., and hits 37 cities in less than two months. (As of this writing, that includes concerts scheduled in Rhode Island, New York, New Hampshire and Maine, but, strangely, none announced in Connecticut.) He’ll enter a recording studio with producer Scott Borchetta, his “Idol” mentor and Big Machine Records honcho, to try to spin his victory into gold — or better, platinum. (Big Machine has artists like Tim McGraw, Rascal Flatts and Taylor Swift on its roster.)

Past seasons have taught us, however, that winning “Idol” doesn’t guarantee stardom.

Season 13 winner Caleb Johnson has been virtually invisible since his win, other than to announce he was leaving Interscope Records in search of a label “that’s actually going to support me.” (“Testify,” his first album after winning “Idol,” sold fewer than 25,000 copies.) The Idol Live! tour has downsized from 10 finalists in previous years to only five. The show’s ratings have dropped steadily, mirroring its waning influence on pop culture, while competing shows like “America’s Got Talent,” “The Voice” and “The X Factor” have eaten into its market share (without producing any lasting superstars of their own).

Last year, Coca-Cola, one of the big three sponsors (along with Ford and AT&T), ended its relationship with the “Idol” franchise. And shortly before Fradiani’s win — perhaps in an attempt to draw more viewers to the season finale, but otherwise showing terrible timing — Fox announced the 15th season of Idol would be the very last.

Jena Irene, a Detroit-area singer and last year’s runner-up to Johnson, was only 17 when she auditioned for Idol. “I knew I wanted to do something along the lines of music for my career,” Irene said, “so the fact that I got so far was a blessing, because it made that so much easier.”

But when the 40-city tour ended in August, 19 Entertainment, “Idol’s” Los Angeles-based developer and co-producer, didn’t sign her to a management contract.

“I was kind of freaking out,” Irene said. “But I kind of just used everything I learned over the season — you learn so much about the music industry when you’re under a microscope like that for 13 weeks — and all the contacts from the tour, and in L.A. I basically got advice from them about how to proceed.”

In December, Irene signed with an independent label in Detroit called Original 1265 Recordings. There were other paths she could have taken, Irene said, “but I loved the fact they were so close to home for me. I literally live 25 minutes from where I work. The relationship grew to be really close. My manager put a team of writers around me, and they helped write the album. It’s pretty much done … I’m about to start playing some shows, so look for some singles very soon.”

Fradiani, Irene said, has a “long amazing ride ahead of him.”

“My advice would be to make decisions that will affect your career for the long-term,” Irene said. “You don’t want to be a one-hit wonder. There will be a lot of opportunities coming his way because he won and the hype is so great right now. Just take all the advice with a grain of salt and take it one day a time. Make decisions that will help you in the long run.”

Being on the Idol Live! tour, Irene added, “was really amazing. One of the things he can look forward to is meeting all the fans that have been voting for him. If you don’t have fans, you’re dead. You’re a dead artist.”

Fradiani shares the title of oldest Idol winner with Taylor Hicks (Season 5). After his victory, he sounded wary. “The biggest thing is the songs,” Fradiani said at a press conference. “If [winners] come off the show and the song isn’t big and it takes a couple months for you to get your first single out there, that’s going to be damaging.” His first single, the acoustic-rock waltz “Beautiful Life” (written by Dashboard Confessional’s Chris Carrabba, a West Hartford native), has done well so far (although, as of writing this, it’s not in the Billboard Hot 100) and was chosen to be the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup theme song, guaranteeing a slightly longer shelf-life than most pop singles.

The definition of music industry success, too, keeps changing.

“A lot of ‘Idol’ alums have kept a career going, even if they haven’t won multiple Grammys,” said Katherine Meizel, an assistant professor of ethnomusicology at Bowling Green State University in Ohio and the author of “Idolized: Music, Media, and Identity in American Idol.”

In terms of name-recognition stardom, the first four seasons (the pre-Hicks era) of Idol still carry the greatest weight: Kelly Clarkson (Season 1) and Carrie Underwood (Season 4) remain household-name stars; Jennifer Hudson (Season 3 finalist) won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the 2006 film “Dreamgirls”; and even Clay Aiken (Season 2 runner-up), who has appeared on Broadway before running (unsuccessfully) for North Carolina state congress, still generates a low-level buzz.

“Idol’s” early, enormous influence, Meizel said, paradoxically led to its own obsolescence. “It sparked so many other versions,” she said. “Its impact on American culture is still powerful, but it’s not centralized now. It’s become much more diversified.”

What we’re looking for in our Idols, Meizel said, is a tale that reflects some aspect of the American Dream — success stories so embedded in American culture we forget how deeply rooted they are in political strategies for creating a national identity. “They are about capitalism, competition and the ability to move up the economic ladder, about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps,” Meizel said. Recent winners, Meizel said, simply don’t have the compelling backstory of, say, Carrie Underwood, who emerged from rural Oklahoma to become a star. “That’s the kind of story that we’re really keen to hear, even though we might be cynical about it now.”

Even as they dodge barbs from celebrity judges, Idols are chosen exclusively by viewers — who, it turns out, aren’t looking to create a superstar. “It’s about re-affirming that their opinion matters,” Meizel said, “that they have any sort of good taste and the capacity to impact their own culture. So everybody wins. I wouldn’t say the winner is incidental, but they’re not the center of the project.”

Entering the final round, I suggested, Fradiani had an edge over Beckham, simply because he’s from Connecticut — a place not known for producing pop stars, unlike Nashville (Beckham’s hometown). That likely baked in a certain level of excitement (and voters) from across the state and New England.

“That’s a great theory,” Meizel said. “Certainly, if someone comes from a big city that’s associated with entertainment or music, they’re going to have less of a demographic that’s going to vote for them… Clark [Beckham], coming from Nashville: there are wonderful musicians in Nashville, and Nashville is used to the competition and they’re used to the market saturation, so there isn’t as much excitement,” Meizel said. (Meizel cited Katharine McPhee, the Season 5 runner-up who barely registered a blip when she returned home to Los Angeles for the homecoming episode.)

Regional popularity, however, doesn’t necessarily translate into record sales. “If everyone from Connecticut votes for you eight billion times, they’re not going to buy eight billion copies of your album. There’s a distance between how the popularity on ‘Idol’ works and how the popularity when you’re off ‘Idol’ works.”

Fradiani’s post-‘Idol’ prospects, Meziel suggested, are hindered by the abundance of white male singer-songwriter types who’ve dominated the show in recent years. (Counting Fradiani, seven of the last eight winners fit that description.) The musician himself, not surprisingly, couldn’t be reached for comment. But no matter where he ends up, Meizel said, his win is at least significant because of its timing.

“He’s the second-to-last chance that ‘Idol’ has to create a superstar,” Meizel said. “That could work in his favor, or that could work against him. People might think, ‘Oh, ‘Idol’s’ ending so we don’t need to pay attention to him,’ or they could think, ‘Let’s see what the second-to-last winner has going for him. Maybe he can bring the show home on a good note.’ “