My "Star Search" Dreams Were Torn Asunder By My Little Brother

I coulda been a contender!

You really had to give it your all.

I imagine you reading this email’s subject line and thinking: Star Search, Esmé? Didn't you want to be a writer? A doctor? A TV news anchor? Or a marine biologist, like 99.9% of kiddos from your generation did? (I was born in the early 80s. For some reason, marine biology was the dream job of many other early millenials.)

Admittedly, I did kind of want to be all of those things. But what I really, really wanted to be was on “Star Search.”

For those of you who are reading this and are perhaps younger than I am, a brief summary of the “Star Search” phenomenon: as you may be able to tell from the image above, “Star Search” was—save for the two years it came back in the early aughts—a true 80s/90s TV concoction. Hosted by Ed McMahon, it promised fame and fortune to those who won—kind of like American Idol, but not just for singing. You could go on Star Search for comedy! For being a spokesmodel! You could do GROUP DANCE! (Destiny’s Child, then called Girls Tyme, is perhaps the most infamous loss ever to occur on the show. Other so-called failures included Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Alanis Morrisette, Aaliyah, and LeeAnn Rimes. As C dryly commented when I shared with him this news, “Maybe Star Search is not so accurate.”)

I may not have been good at group dancing, but I was convinced I would one day appear on Star Search for the title of Junior Singer. One fundamental reason that I believed in this particularly delusional dream was that I had a secret weapon. 

That secret weapon was not singing lessons, a role in the local choir, or even a particularly spectacular voice. Nope. My secret weapon was a tattered paperback book called How to Get On Star Search and Win, which I obsessively borrowed and renewed from my public library as though it were the Bible itself. This central text, aimed at children and adolescents who wanted to be the next Tiffany, outlined the process of sending in an audition tape for the show. I was determined to make it happen.

Crisscrossing my desire to become a famous pop star was the gift my father received for his fortieth birthday: a LaserDisc karaoke machine. My extended family spent long evenings belting hits like “Endless Love” and “That’s What Friends Are For” in our living room. I practiced both older tunes like “Lady in Red” (which I still sing at karaoke bars, naturally) and the library of Disney songs that happened to appear on assorted LaserDiscs.

So when I came to the conclusion that I was going to make a “Star Search” audition tape, I decided that I’d do one of the Disney songs that I’d done over and over again, trying my best to perfect every note without training or, to be honest, that much talent: “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King,” from The Lion King.

Because I didn’t want to embark upon my “Star Search” adventure alone, I reached out to my best friend at the time, who also loved to sing. We decided to spend an afternoon recording ourselves. This particular friend had indulged in many a living room karaoke session alongside me and had often been roped into my ambitious yet silly projects and activities. We sang for hours that day, trying to hone our performances to the caliber Ed McMahon would truly appreciate: me with “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King,” and my friend with “Part of Your World.” By the time we either lost interest or finally hit upon our perfect renditions, we had two tapes: one for her to send in, and one for me to do the same.

Later that day, after my friend had returned home, I went to listen to my tape. Except—I could’ve sworn I’d rewound it to the beginning, and now the tape was somewhere in the first fourth of the A Side. After rewinding it and playing it from the beginning, I realized that I should have been more alarmed: the tape no longer contained any singing at all. Instead, it played… some kind of muffled talking, as well as a sing-song, babbling voice that I recognized as that of my younger brother, who was probably four years old at the time.

He’d taped over my vocal work of genius.

Immediately, I burst into tears. I stormed upstairs and tried to explain to my mother everything—my desire to be on TV, the hours I’d spent recording the perfect song, and now the ruined tape. If he’d wanted to tape over my submission, at least he could’ve done something that fit into a category! My mother, whom I’m sure had no idea what I was talking about, tried to comfort me to no avail. I was in a stormy mood for the rest of the day, though I didn’t bother to scold my brother. He was too young, I knew, to understand what he’d done.

And what he’d done, of course, was toss my “Star Search” dream into the rubbish bin. It was rude of him to deny me my destiny—but I am a writer now, and to be both a (disabled) author and an international pop sensation would certainly take up too much of my time. Alas. Taylor, you’ve got this one.