A little before winter break, I went to two very different concerts: Imogen Heap and the B96 Jingle Bash. Imogen Heap was at a very small venue; I would guess that there were about 300 people there and attracted a crowd that was mostly older than me. The B96 Jingle Bash was not at all like this. It was a huge venue; thousands of people were there. And the crowd was not like city dwellers at Imogen Heap. It was mostly girls my age or younger screaming there little hearts out for Justin Bieber.
After going to both these concerts I noticed a significant difference between the music itself. At the Imogen Heap concert, she was on the stage making the music herself with various instruments and sound tools. During several songs, she would start and then stop suddenly saying: "I think I'm going to start over." I thought this was interesting because I had never seen an artist do this before. I was amazed because I realized that she had the option to stop because she was actually creating the music herself, unlike a lot of artists these days whose music just comes blaring out of gigantic speakers, and you have to wonder if they're really singing at all, or just lip syncing. It was genuine and that's what I liked about it.
This got me thinking to the types of artists at these two concerts. In my opinion, Imogen Heap is a very talented artist, with genuine talent, but she is not widely known. But the performers at the B96 Jingle Bash who are very popular, like Sean Kingston, Jay Sean, and of course Justin Bieber, do not posses the genuine talent that I see in other artists. And here comes the connection to our class discussion during the past two days about advertising targeted at children. It's not just toys and food targeted at children: It's also singers and actors. These days an artist doesn't have to be talented, they just have to be marketable. Take Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers for example. Contrary to what most young girls would say, I do not think these singers posses any real talent. They are just able to market themselves extremely well, and like some people were saying "brainwash" kids into liking them. So my question is how have we allowed advertisers to overlook true talent like I saw at the Imogen Heap concert, and advertise crap artists? I want to hear about talented artists, not ones that are just an advertisement to get me to buy t-shirts and Hannah Montana wigs.
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Yeah, B96 is all about the marketing. I used to be forced to listen to that god-awful channel every morning because my bus driver would blast it, and literally, they play the same 7 songs at the same time almost everyday. That's not music, and that's not new music-- that's being paid to market the same product over and over and over and over again, with a quota per day (if not quota per hour or half hour).
ReplyDeleteI thought something else was kind of funny yesterday. I was watching MTV briefly (not of my own accord, I can assure you) and they had all of these really "rebellious" bands playing. I recall one song singing all about changing the world and Latino power (which is great and all), and Green Day (or some other generic angst-band) singing-- "To all the white girls, sit down! To all the latina girls, stand up! To all of the black girls, stand up!" and while I was watching this I was thinking, 'What are they talking about? How can they try and pull off a 'rebellious' attitude or message when they're playing on MTV?' And aside from that, every member of the televised audience was white. Does MTV's music speak to minorities at all, or does it just pretend to? Rebellion is very profitable, even if it's canned.
I completely agree Zoe. My ipod contains very mixed types of music. I have all from top hits to music non of my friends have ever even heard of. And I love it all for different reasons. If you look at all the "popular" songs now, and even years before each bad or popular artist has something about them that makes them marketable. Whether its their looks, or even how crazy they are they dont have to be "good", depending on your definition. Some artists have the quality of actually being artists, in my opinion, creating their own music, writing intriguing lyrics, and more.
ReplyDeleteWhat really interests me is Lady Gaga. She is so popular really because of her "strangeness" but no one, or very few, know that she actually won awards for her composing and lyrics before she was so..Lady Gaga-ish.
It's interesting to me what the general public looks for in their new itunes song they download and dance to at parties.
I also agree with you. Like Sam, I have a mix of top hits to sort of random songs. I really like listening to good quality music however the songs from iTunes top ten are more for parties/social events. This is probably because these songs are more "danceable" (made up word!) than others. I guess what it comes down to is where producers want an artist's music to be heard.
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