The other day I ended up watching the ceremony in which Miley Cyrus received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. As I watched, I found myself thinking: why do I still pay attention to this? I can’t recall the last time I discussed a Walk of Fame ceremony with someone. A few years ago, these tributes seemed far more important than they appear now. And yet here we are, writing about them.
Now that Karol G, Pedro Pascal, Lisa Kudrow, Nicole Scherzinger, and even Linkin Park will have theirs, it’s clear that the Walk of Fame now merely certifies careers rather than consecrating them. Miley had already been one of the most significant pop artists of her generation for more than a decade before her name ended up embedded in a Hollywood sidewalk.
A lot has happened in the last twenty years. Attention no longer centers in a single place, and prestige is spread across dozens of different storefronts. Television lost its monopoly on popular culture long ago, and the internet distributes our attention among the Met Gala, Tiny Desk concerts, Coachella, Rolling Stone covers, or a celebrity eating spicy wings on Hot Ones. None of these milestones by itself defines who a star is, but all of them help build that image.
And yet the Walk of Fame endures, and we keep watching. Also because these ceremonies continue to give rise to memes. There’s the viral image of Jennifer Lopez with a supposed “ft. Pitbull” etched on her star, a wink to the rapper’s role in her commercial comeback with “On the Floor,” or Mariah Carey posing with her children on top of her plaque. Today the news rarely centers on the star itself. It’s everything that happens around it.
It’s also curious that some of the biggest artists never wanted to be part of the Walk of Fame. Madonna rejected her nomination in the ’90s, and Prince never showed much interest. None of them needed a star to prove who they were. And the system itself isn’t as romantic as it sounds: there are nominations, a committee that decides, and someone must pay for the star’s installation. The myth loses a little of its shine when you know the details. What’s striking is that it still works.
Perhaps it’s because the Walk of Fame is one of the few physical symbols of pop culture that we still have. In a moment when success is measured in streams, followers, and week-long trends, there remains something special about a career being summarized in a name engraved in pavement. It doesn’t change anything. But it’s hard not to wonder who will be next.
