Update on attempts to preserve the Pussycat Dolls brand

Remember the Sugababes? They were the band that had significant membership turnover, so that by 2009 there were no original members in the band, prompting one last.fm biographer to refer to the band as the Sugafakes. That particular edit has long since been removed from the Sugababes' last.fm biography, and life goes on.

Well, another band's last.fm biography has been edited, though not that dramatically.

You'll recall that in June 2010, I blogged about the Pussycat Dolls.

For those who are not familar with this band, they're a bunch of half-naked women who sing and dance. Actually, the Pussycat Dolls band is an extension of the overall Pussycat Dolls brand, which initially started as a dance troupe before any music was released. Now this sounds like it could be a formula for disaster, but they've actually put out some pretty good music.

But, as I noted in my post, there appeared to be two schools of thought concerning the band. On the one hand, band members such as Ashley Roberts were making public statements saying that the band had broken up. Band manager Robin Antin, however, denied that those words were accurate, even after most of the band members had left.

Note the semantic difference. If the Pussycat Dolls had broken up, then they would no longer exist and the brand would be dead. If the Pussycat Dolls merely changed 80% of its membership, then it would still be a going concern, no different than before.

So at the time of my June post, a new set of Pussycat Dolls was performing - lead singer Nicole, and new members Kherington, Rino, Vanessa, and Jamie. I figured that band manager Robin Antin would take steps to get the band into the studio, get some recordings out, and do whatever possible to ensure that people thought of the Pussycat Dolls as a brand, and forgot all about Kimberly, Melody, Jessica, and Ashley, just like most Beatle fans have forgotten about Tommy Moore (who?), who preceded Norman Chapman (who?) as drummer. Chapman was followed by Pete Best as drummer, but Best is primarily remembered by IBM Watson and other trivia maniacs. So if Antin could get an album out with the new Pussycat Dolls, all would be fine.

One night I was scrobbling stuff on last.fm, and I happened to peek at last.fm's Pussycat Dolls page, which included the following title:

The Pussycat Dolls

(2003 – 2010)

The biography included a December 11 edit from last.fm user wadamz:

On December 5 2010, Nicole Scherzinger, the lead singer of The Pussycat Dolls, announced that she is leaving the band to concentrate on her solo career and acting projects. Scherzinger follows the four other members - Kimberly Wyatt, Melody Thornton, Jessica Sutta and Ashley Roberts in exiting the group.

last.fm is not really set up to include citations in biographies, so I had to search for the story. I found a post in The A Music Blog, which referenced a News of the World interview. The interview is now behind a paywall, but Scherzinger reportedly said:

We had our time. Some of the girls left the group. That was out of my hands. I wouldn't want to be in a group with other girls -- we were like a tight family.

So I figured I'd get Robin Antin's side of the story, starting at the Pussycat Dolls' website. The site's news page, however, hasn't been updated since September 2009, and doesn't even mention new members Kherington et al. I did find a mention of the new members on the blog Homorazzi, but somehow I suspect that this wasn't an authorized press release from Antin:

The new line-up consists of a SYTYCD alum, ABDC alum, Girlicious reject and a Laker Girl. Warning girls, you don’t want to piss of the HBIC (Head Bitch In Charge) Nicole or else you might be the new Melody, Kimberly, Jessica or Ashley.

Read more at: http://www.homorazzi.com/article/pussycat-dolls-new-lineup-new-members-kherington-rino-vanessa-curry-jamie-lee-ruiz/#ixzz1EPE7a9ue


Homorazzi lists the Twitter accounts for the new members:






Because we're in the home stretch of the NBA season, I figured that I'd see what former Laker Girl Vanessa Curry was saying about Robin Antin's fabulous band. And I found a tweet in which Curry retweeted Antin:

Oh sugz so precious!RT @robinantinpcd: My little Sugar baby, she's such a Lady! ♥ http://yfrog.com/gzqxuqjj

The tweet goes to a picture of...a dog. I went through several weeks of tweets, and Curry never explicitly mentioned the band at all.

But Antin is keeping up the publicity, with this January 22 tweet about a Dolls performance. It links to a Twitpic, but unfortunately for Antin, someone chose to leave the following comment:

What the F*ck???? OMG They Are NOT PCD

Apparently Antin needs to do a little more work to sell this thing.