Byline: Jim Farber
Sustaining a pop career is like storming Normandy Beach on D-Day _ all by yourself. Every time artists release some music, they're besieged by the industry's equivalent to heavily armed soldiers (i.e. unsympathetic radio programmers, fickle consumers and cutthroat competing artists), all firing bullets that could end their career at any moment.
Never is this peril greater than in the fall. That's when the heaviest guns come out (i.e., the most starry competition), making the potential for failure that much more common _ and public.
Autumn `07 has its own bloody battles in store. 50 Cent and Kanye West will go mano-a-mano on an already loaded day ...