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Aiken laughs off most of RCA's foibles--like the time he was forced to change his unstylish shoes before appearing at an industry convention, or the airbrushing of his eyes on the Measure of a Man album cover--because he believes that the label is clueless about how to market to an audience he knows instinctively. "I'm a battle picker," he says. "I try not to get upset about all this marketing stuff because I'm saving it for the time that they tell me that I need to do a song about 'Let's hook up and have sex.' But I'm like, 'Do not--ugh!--don't pretend that the public are a bunch of idiots! Don't pretend that you know what they want and they don't know what they want.' That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life!"
Of course, anticipating the tastes of the public--knowing that the world might be ready for a black woman to sing about respect, for example--is exactly what great creative executives do. They don't make art, but they facilitate it, fight for it and nurture it, often in the face of public opposition or apathy. Record companies have always made plenty of music aimed at the heart of the market, but the frustration of the anti-Idol RCA executives--and many others throughout the industry--comes down to timing. At the exact moment that American Idol has created a surge of people who buy their music with their mints as an impulse item, file sharing has siphoned off nearly all the adventurous record buyers. That leaves a whole lot of people buying Sanders' vanilla and very few interested in his Rocky Road.
It is telling that in just five months with RCA, Aiken has won most of his battles. The This Is the Night video was scrapped at considerable expense. His album is family-friendly pop. Aiken got to name his record Measure of a Man, even though Davis lobbied for any other title. The marketing department now says its strategy is to "let Clay be Clay." "Revolution is a strong word," says Aiken. "But RCA would not have picked me or Ruben. Simon Cowell would not have picked us. America has shown them that they don't know what they're talking about."