Have you seen this article?
I think that instead of assuming that the exact details of a song are correct, people instead tend to assume that they reflect the general tone of a singer’s life, and that he endorses the intent behind the lyrics (even if they aren’t literally true).
So, while no one really thought Cash shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die, they are wont to believe that he was a hardened (if reformed) criminal that had seen the inside of a prison.
Likewise people assume that Eminem, Ice-T, and other rappers with violent lyrcis are in fact violent people, and that they endorse the acts in their lyrics, even if they never comitted them in fact.
A non-fiction book, on the other hand, has a much higher standard for objective truth.
The word y’all are looking for is ‘poser’. A singer or songwriter who creates a persona to create a fiction of legitimacy or dangerousness or whatnot when actually they are no such thing. No one makes fun of Elton John for not actually being a ‘Rocket Man’ and such. Hell, Madonna got great waves of support (and condemnation) for Papa Don’t Preach but NOT because she was an actual pregnant teen but rather for making such issues prominent.
Heck, I’m relatively certain none of the Barenaked Ladies have been high-rise window washers for that matter.
Here’s something about Alanis and Courtney Love that might apply. Alanis had…hrm…a LOT of songwriting help from Glen Ballard on ‘Jagged Little Pill’. Courtney Love made fun of her with that saying she was just a poser and piggy-backing on someone else’s talents and further Love stated that she would NEVER have someone write her hit songs so she could succeed. Which, I was later told, came as a great shock to Billy Corgan after he had produced and written a bunch of songs for her.
Saying you’re X when you’re not can cause trouble. Performing as X or songwriting from another’s point of view is no worries.
That’s not really analagous. The controversy that arises when an author misrepresents him or herself for a work of non-fiction to the extent that the OP discusses is likely to be career ending. Frey is never going to be taken seriously as an author again. Whatever problem Morrisette and Love had in their careers after the events you discuss, it wasn’t a result of any misrepresentations they made.
One artist I can think of that vaguely suits the OP’s criteria is Ja Rule. The guy used to be seen as a pretty legitimate rapper, but after 50 Cent’s attacks on his credibility, his status fell to approximately zero and he’s career, at the moment, appears dead in the water. Nevertheless, even this doesn’t really compare to the memoir scandals. Ja Rule is a joke in hip hop now, but he’s nowhere near as discredited as Frey, and I’m sure Ja Rule could resurrect himself under the care of an appropriate artist, just like Mobb Deep, who under the G-Unit banner made their way back to respectability four years after Jay-Z buried them as a commercial and credible force. Frey, on the other hand, isn’t going to find a repected publication to help him restore his credibility. That’s the thing - despite its vocal claims to the contrary, the music world doesn’t really place a premium on truth and credibility the way the publishing world does.
Lots of musicians have personas they could never live up to. Mick Jagger was never a Street Fighting Man; he dropped out of the London School of Economics to be a Rolling Stone. Pete Seeger projects a romantic image of riding the rails and toe-scuffing Americana, but he’s a Harvard alum. I personally know lots of (not famous) folksingers with degrees from elite schools. Stage persona is just a jacket you put on for the show.
“He’s really middle-class and he’s just a phony.” --Ray Davies, “Prince of the Punks”
I don’t think anyone who is a fan of Charlie Daniels would think he served. Have you ever seen him? His eyesight is so bad I would never want to be near him on a range let alone in a warzone (I’m not a big fan so maybe he has been corrected by the new procedures out there but back in the day he was blind as a bat). I don’t think anyone believed that Billy Joel was a Marine even though he sang that “We’d all go down together”.
You have to understand, Courtney didn’t know what day it was, let alone who wrote what. besides, when the money keeps rolling in you don’t ask questions, you ask for a few more lines.
I think high school, university, and grad school have all made the difference between fiction and non-fiction quite clear, but thanks anyways. And clearly not all songs are seen as works of fiction - as others have metnioned, the lyrics of “Cop Killer” and “Folsom Prison Blues,” rightly or wrongly, have not been divorced from the lives of the performers.
This is a ludicrous example, but if it had actually been a mannequin and not Eric Clapton’s child who fell off that balcony, I think public reaction to the song “Tears in Heaven” would be quite different.
Not at the level of Frey, as you rightly point out, but this situation (which I’m not that familiar with, to tell the truth) sounds like what I’m interested in. I’d assume that rap (and also perhaps punk) have higher standards when it comes to lyrical authenticity.
Great Pitchfork piece, by the way - even if I had to wade through three paragraphs of hipster posing to get to the meat of the article.
Which is interesting, to me, because if I recall correctly Cash hardly spent any time in prison at all. I can’t comment on the other two - but it’s curious that people would put stock into the lyrics of Marshall Mathers, since he filters them through the dual personas of “Eminem” and “Slim Shady.”
There was a major stink about whether or not The Monkees played their own instruments which caused some to question whether or not they were a “real” band. Tork and Nesmith were in fact both accomplished musicians (source: Tork & Nesmith) but their instrumentals were overdubbed in early recordings. They did play on tour.
A sort of reverse of Frey’s past type PR camouflaging was the New Kids on the Block. They were packaged as a “smiling boys next door- the kind of kid you’d trust with your car and your daughter who say ‘Golly Gee’ and go silly for a Big Mac” type kids. In reality they were (by their own admission in recent VH1 style specials) foul mouthed rude little monsters who were as agressively horny and destructive as you’d expect massively publicized much adored internationally famous rich 15 year olds to be. Donnie Wahlberg, usually portrayed as “the bad boy” of the group, was in fact no worse than the others off-stage, but he just didn’t watch his mouth as well as the others.
Of course the recent revelation that The Beatles were in fact three brothers and their cousin from an upper middle class suburb of Baltimore and in fact lypsynched songs sung by a quartet of morbidly obese middle aged mechanics who had toured in the 1930s-1940s as “The Four Shetland Ponymen of the Alpaca Lips” detracted from their appeal to some, though others simply realized “good music is good music and Yoko’s still an amoral nutcase”.
I’m not going to say “beer all over my keyboard!” or anything like that because the only thing in human history known to make me laugh out loud is Tom Green’s Freddy Got Fingered, but I got a good rise out of this.
I had some friends who got upset when they learned the guys from Slayer did NOT, in fact, routinely sacrifice babies to Satan, piss on the Cross, or hack their girlfriends to death and have sex with her dismembered corpse. But then, I had some pretty freaky friends.
This doesn’t really count, but Twisted Sister’s career took a major nosedive after Dee Snider testified to Congress in the PMRC hearings. This guy’s supposed to be the scariest, baddest, most sick motherfucker out there, and suddenly he’s on TV without makeup, telling Congress how he’s happily married and has kids. Kinda broke the illusion for kids nationwide who only liked the band for scaring the shit out of their parents.
The thing is, music and journalism are two opposite ends of the spectrum. Journalism is supposed to be an objective description of reality (aside from FOX News); Music is an evocative interpretation of what might be reality for somebody, but not necessarily the performer. There’s a certain amount of suspending disbelief involved with ANY kind of musical performance, even more so than your average fictional movie or novel.
And anyone who takes NKOTB or any other pop band seriously, has deeper issues than mere credibility. 
Clearly, then, you were not paying attention when the class was being taught.
If people see songs are being true accounts – without any actual biographical information to back it up, then they don’t know the concept of “fiction,” either. Just because others don’t understand the difference does not make it right to think of a song as automatically being biography. That’s because you’ll be wrong considerably more than you will be right.
Songs – and stories and poems – are there to create an emotional response in the listener/reader. The “truth” behind them is in the story and the characters, not in whether the events actually happened. You (and many others) continue to hold the absurd opinion that just because something it based on “facts,” it is somehow more affecting or more “real” than something made up.
In fact, I’ll argue that fiction has much more ability to create responses because the writer/singer can craft it to best effect. Nonfiction is always limited to the facts, which may make is stranger, but does not make it better.
A false assumptions. “Authenticity” means if it garners an emotional response. If that response is due to the artistry of the musician it is no less authentic than if it is due to real events.
Was it a millionaire who said “imagine no possessions”?
– Declan MacManus.
Bon Jovi is not my favorite, but he’s doing a real good job with it. Plus I think he’s hot, stupid facial hair or not.
Sorry! Wrong thread yet again.
I like the way David Sedaris puts it when people ask if his memoir-style stories are true; he says they’re “true enough”.
Has Elton John’s boorish and insatiable heterosexuality become public yet? I hope I’m not betraying a confidence here…
Though it didn’t generate much controversy since the band was a one-hit wonder, this thread reminds me “You Get What You Give” by the New Radicals:
Ironically, the band’s frontman Gregg Alexander used professional songwriter Rick Nowels to help him pen that tune.
After the New Radicals broke up, Alexander focused most of his energy on writing songs for other musicians and groups. One of those groups was Hanson! :eek:
Though I’m sort of contradicting myself here, even the Ja Rule example is so problematic that I have trouble submitting it. For instance, when one rapper attacks another, an attack on his credibility is par for the course - saying that the rapper in question is not as real as he says he is. As such an attack on credibility alone isn’t particularly notable. It was so effective when 50 Cent did it to Ja Rule because 50 Cent’s disses were so on point, and 50 was so hot at the time that Ja Rule had no hope of defending himself. After all, one of 50’s most memorable criticism’s was saying that Ja Rule sounded like Cookie Monster. It wasn’t so much that Ja Rule was particularly lacking in credibility as that 50’s denunciation was so powerful.
You can compare this to rapper Jadakiss’s dis of 50 Cent, which he released at the beginning of last year. Jadakiss accused 50 of being a snitch - “I heard you put a couple good niggas behind bars . . . you can bet your last two quarters I’d never tell that much,” and of selling the hood out - “you got a felony, but you ain’t a predicate/ How the king of New York live in Connecticut?” The latter charge is true - 50 Cent does reside in a Connecticut mansion, and although I can’t speak about the veracity of the former accusation, this does show why the Ja Rule example is problematic. Despite the Jadakiss dis, 50 Cent went on to have the second highest selling album in 2005, and his standing in the hip hop community was pretty much unchanged. While attacks on another artist’s credibility sometimes have an effect, there are so many variables that one can’t say being real is the sole factor that will make or break an artist’s career. Even in hip hop, credibility is a malleable quality able to be defined by anyone with a stake in it.