Kings of A&R

Dear Ashley Dupre, Enjoy Your 15 Minutes of Fame: Mark Beech

Dear Ashley Alexandra Dupre, here’s your big break. You have 15 minutes of pop-music fame. Sadly, you’ve already used up six and a half minutes of it with two underwhelming songs. This isn’t a great start.

Your single “What We Want” has been played to death on the Internet. Your other track, “Move Ya Body,”  also shot up to the maximum download price on the web site Amie Street.

Your two-track ‘album’, as the site calls it — surely the shortest album in history — is called ‘Unspoken Words,’ which couldn’t be more apt when you’re not giving interviews. Either way, it costs $1.96. And you’re getting 70 percent of the sales, according to the site’s co-founder Joshua Boltuch. Not a bad deal.

There are some worrying things though, such as the online poll by New York radio station Z100. As the weekend wore on, people were turning against “What We Want,” with more than 36 percent voting “This sucks.” Almost 40 percent thought it was just okay and less than a quarter liked it.

You won’t be so pleased with the tags that users on the AmieStreet site have associated with you: “Eliot Spitzer” (why does it have to keep coming back to him, you may ask) and “call girl, prostitute, Heidi Fleiss.”

“Move Ya Body” would sound okay in a hair salon or gym. It’s beyond bland, just dull. “Move ya hips, move ya body up against mine.” Nobody in their right mind expects Dylanesque poetry in a dance track like this. Which is just as well because “sex, money, drugs that’s what I’m about” is as good as we get.

Ashley, don’t worry that you can’t sing well. It has never stopped Madonna.

While some major record labels might see you as “damaged goods” you’ll probably get a contract, and beyond music there’ll be publishing, modeling, and “Spitzer the Movie” is a sure thing once the lawyers have slugged it out. (Read full commentary by Bloomberg contributor Mark Beech)