She Made It! Kelsie Martin Wins iTunes Deal From Reality Show on MTV

Kelsie Martin, a recent Grossmont High School honors graduate, now has a song being sold on iTunes—Empty Ocean, produced by the MTV show Made last winter. The hourlong reality show segment titled “Chasing My Dream” aired Wednesday for the first time.

“This dream that I have is also for my mother,” Martin, 18, said of Kathy Horeth, who the show said was denied a singing career by her ex-husband.

Martin vied against Jasmine Symone Merritt-Camburn,  a 16-year-old foster child living in Kalamazoo, MI, and attending Comstock High School. The TV show depicted Jasmine as having an “incredible voice” but a poor attitude.

At the start of the two-week countdown to an audition before Universal Music Group execs in a snow-laden New York City, Martin introduces herself:  “Music is not what I do. It’s who I am. … I want to entertain people. I want to have fun.”

But saying she is a religious Mormon, she cautions her coaches that “I don’t drink or smoke” and “We want to be sexy, but not sexual.”

One of her MTV-provided producers replies: “We’ll protect that, honor that.”

After showing her performing at a Grossmont High School basketball halftime show and at home with her mother, an MTV camera crew follows her to Dallas and a studio session.

Her first assignment doesn’t go well. Martin disappoints her coaches—the Grammy Award-winning duo of Juan “Play” Salinas and Oscar “Skillz” Salinas. They don’t like the song she writes for later delivery in New York.  So they help her write another.

Martin’s rival, Jasmine—depicted as 16 in the TV show but called 17 in Wednesday’s Kalamazoo Gazette—has a professional-quality voice but is criticized by her coaches for not showing enough enthusiasm for the project—and her opportunity for stardom.

Jasmine, who is black, also tells the story of being adopted at age 10 by a white couple identified by her local paper as Jonica Camburn and Dave Merritt.

“Hopefully, it will help her see her way into a singing career,” the newspaper quoted her father as saying.

An incoming senior, Jasmine flies with her mother to Dallas and then New York City, where she and Martin room together and share their excitement and anxieties—as well as a fashion makeover at Lord & Taylor.

Martin’s mother is said to have stayed home after experiencing a bout of claustrophobia while boarding a jet for Dallas. When Martin tells where she’s from, she says “San Diego.”

Empty Ocean, classified as a pop song on iTunes, goes for the standard 99 cents and lasts 2 minutes, 56 seconds. Released Tuesday, according to the site, it had three reviews in its first two days, including: “I saw you on MTV and was like this girl ROCKS. Keep on writing and singing!” and “I can't wait to hear more from her!”

(The song also was being sold on JunoDownload.com for $1.32.)

More significant, the song has a four-star rating (out of five possible) among the 167 people who rated it as of early Thursday morning.

Martin hopes to succeed in a different way than Rebecca Black, a 14-year-old singer whose vanity production of Friday was universally mocked. Black’s song—which gained YouTube infamy—has gotten viral attention but low ratings. Her single has two stars since its March 14 release on iTunes.