Jewel's new look

Good thing I don't have to convince you.

 

after last week's posts, I doubt that!

 

I made you a better person for that and you haven't even thanked me.

 

math - you make all of us look like better people when you hang around...

 

whatchoo talkin' about?

 

Nope. Neither do a lot of country acts. Similarly, both country and pop tend to be the most controlled forms of music, and it always seems like the ones with the label's writing team behind them are the ones who get promoted hardest. But then again I imagine that women listen more to these genres, and they're where the mass music buying demographic is. So you pre-process an act, make the songs for them. It's all just a big package.

That's not the way it is in other forms, as much. Some of the younger acts, the singer-songwriter deals, aren't really that much so. They write lyrics, then a team comes in and does most of the music around it. Example: Avril Lavigne. The three person writing team "The Matrix" are now in really hot demand because of what they did to her album. Next album, she'll write most of it herself, I'm sure, and it'll suck.

I don't have a huge problem with the idea of bringing in a song or two that'll generate revenue that someone wrote. I do have a problem with an "artist" putting out 12 songs and not being able to claim any of them their own. Just like I don't have a problem with covers (save that Counting Crows shit song), but you don't make a CD of it.


Robert Plant wouldn't have done much at all by himself, now would he? And I think I'd rather hear what an artist wants to say, rather than having it spoken through Glen Ballard's pen. I find a big conflict

 

See, LJ? No thanks from anyone!

 

No he wouldn't have. I think a lot of his solo success is predicated on his Led Zep success, but at least he had an opportunity to write songs and have success. I like a lot of RP's solo stuff but his own work might not have stood on it's own without the LedZep experience first.

Then there's someone like Matthew Sweet, who writes his own stuff, but isn't a hit commercially. Too bad.

 

I sure can run on at the gums, can't I?

I think that for a lot of artists, though not a majority, the idea of success and comfortability over fame and insane riches is a nice way to go. Even bigger grossing acts like DMB or similar, including a lot of the people who've mingled with them in the past, had they not been subject to the big hit or two would have enjoyed a big cult following.

Granted, we can't all survive on college radio, but I'm glad there's someone being creative for the idea of creation rather than cutting a new single so it can go on a Chrysler ad. I'm not totally against selling out (bringing us back to Jewel's mocking of it) and I find a place for Celine in music, no doubt. I just think that the popularity of American Idol shifts the average adult's idea of what should be music a little more than I want to see it. I think that there's so much variety in music but so little gets heard by the masses.

I loved VH1's Band On The Run, and watched it a lot with guys from the band I was in. I'd enjoy a similar series, something that promoted band-based music and creativity. But I'm sure a lot wouldn't.


And I don't want to make it sound like Plant's a bad musician or singer. But Page was the innovator, and the song writer, and Bonham and JPJones were both excellent musicians in their own right. It took the lot of them to do well and by themselves they would not have created what they did.

 

Re: I sure can run on at the gums, can't I?

Indigo Girls comes to mind.

Cheap Trick came out with an album back when I was in college, and some song about a flame was on it. Big hit. But not their song. Album sucked and I don't think we've heard from them again.