Anastacia in new talent show, but slams reality TV

Anastacia says reality TV shows try to 'make stars out of people that are just average, everyday people'. Picture / Reuters

LONDON - US soul star Anastacia got her big break on a TV talent show in 1998 and is appearing in a new, similar series to be aired on MTV.

Yet in a recent interview to promote "A Cut", a five-part programme which kicks off on Monday, the 31-year-old railed against talent-spotting shows and the cult of instant celebrity promoted by the likes of "Pop Idol" and spinoff "American Idol".

"There is a desperate need for a show like 'A Cut', because the shows that are out there are all pre-fabricated shows that are trying to make stars out of people that are just average, everyday people," she told Reuters in London.

"In this business, TV is being taken up not by the true artists or the actors or the musicians any more, they are just being taken up by the common man, which gives everyone that feeling that there's a chance for me yet to be a star."

Anastacia, who has sold 20 million records mainly in Europe despite a low profile in the world's largest music market, the United States, said "A Cut" would promote bands already playing and recording rather than manufacturing them from scratch.

"'A Cut' is a show that is not contrived," she said at the end of her European tour.

"It is not put together by a bunch of panels of people trying to find a band and find the music that they need to put in that band. It is about real bands that have been put together before we found them, that write their own material."

The programme follows the fate of 10 groups shortlisted by Anastacia and music industry expert Olivier Behzadi. Two acts are thrown off the show each day until a final winner is chosen to play in front of 35,000 fans at an Anastacia concert.

EUROPE IS ENOUGH

Anastacia shot to fame after appearing in 1998 on MTV's "The Cut", similar to "Pop Idol" but a newer concept at the time.

The diminutive singer has released three albums and plans a greatest hits compilation this year that will feature four new tracks, prompting some fans to question whether she is cashing in too early in her career.

"I just thought that greatest hits comes like some 15 years down the line, or after you start growing grey hair," she said. "But I guess that's normal."

Despite success in Europe, Anastacia remains relatively unknown at home in the United States.

"I have not wanted to take another huge territory on my back when this career has been as huge as it is," she said, adding that her record label, Sony BMG's Epic, supports her decision.

"I don't need to have America. I still get on TV shows, I'm known as Anastacia, the great singer from Europe."

Born Anastacia Newkirk in 1973, the pop star campaigns to raise awareness among young women of the risks of breast cancer, after being diagnosed with the disease in 2003.

"It's almost my own version of trying to help others through my own experiences ... and experience the whole cancer in front of everybody's eyes and not be ashamed, shy or embarrassed.

"What I think I have brought to music ... is just keeping the humanism in a world that's not supposed to be real."

- REUTERS