Word. Way back at his beginning, he was good, but that didn’t last.
Sigh.
You don’t seriously think that there’s no difference between a band wanting compensation for their efforts and just being in it for the money, do you?
Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton, Iris DeMent, Dwight Yoakam, Lucinda Williams. Just sayin’.
No, of course not. But in your first post, you said:
“I feel completely confident saying that none of the ones I just listed are in it for the money.”
To me, saying (in your second post, emphasis added) “just in it for the money” is entirely different. Madonna is just in it for the money, while the bands you list (none of whom I have heard of) would presumably not do it (or be unable to do it) without the money. I hope I’m making this distinction clear; I think we’re on the same page here, and this is more a communication issue.
So does anyone else feel as I do- that you’d be more pissed at someone marketing to people’s hearts than to their hormones or by using gangsta/decadent images? It just seems more despicable using ‘Jesus’ and America and family for $ than b**ches and hos and bling and halter tops (At least, to me. :mad: :D), although good points have been made so far and all that (yes I’ve read every post).
These people are performers and entertainers. They do it because they love it, they do it for the money, they do it for lots of reasons. But we don’t watch or listen to their personal lives, we watch and listen to the performance. Same with actors. If they’re good at what they do, who cares if they’re really like the characters they represent? The biggest difference is that actors sometimes play more than one character during their careers. I’m sure some of them are in it just (or mostly) for the fame and fortune. Probably moreso the fame. But nobody’s motives are totally simple or pure. At least almost nobody. (Since this is the SDMB and we don’t do generalizations.)
You just generalized all members of these boards :D.
:eek: Oh My God! Mark David Chapman is a Doper!
Put down the copy of Catcher in the Rye and back away. We don’t want anybody to get hurt.
Mark David Chapman didn’t condemn Lennon for being a phony. Chapman wanted to BE John Lennon.
Personally, I think John Lennon was one of the five or six greatest songwriters ever, and a great rock & roll screamer. I have loads of his albums. I just don’t make the mistake of taking him seriously. I think he was a phony, but an extraordinarily TALENTED phony, so I love his music even when I think he was full of beans.
Speaking of phonies I admire… look, I loved a lot of Johnny Cash’s music, but he was another guy ( like the Stones, Joe Strummer, and numerous rappers) who painted himself as a much WORSE person than he was, in order to maintain an outlaw image.
I mean, Johnny Cash insinuated strongly on many occasions that he’d done hard time in prison. Some of his album liner notes go into poetic detail about the horrors of prison life, and they’re written in a way that suggests Cash himself understood the boys in San Quentin, because he’d been in the big house himself.
In reality, Johnny’s sordid criminal past amounted to a few nights here and there for public intoxication or being drunk and disorderly. He was never charged with (much less convicted of) a felony, and never spent more than an odd night or two in local jails (mostly spent sleeping off a bender, I’d bet).
So, while I loved Johnny’s music AND his outlaw image, I don’t take that bad-boy image seriously, either.
And I still don’t see why it’s more immoral or outrageous for a not-so-good person to pose as a wholesome cherub for the media than it is for a genuinely decent person to pose as a gangster or outlaw.
We should all KNOW by now that an image in show biz need not have much to do with reality. Again, so what? It’s called SHOW business, not reality business.
Pat Boone isn’t quite as squeaky clean as his image, and Johnny Cash wasn’t nearly as bad as his image. Hence, they were both frauds. That’s no reason to shun either man, IF you like his music.
I love country music, and I can’t stomach Toby Keith. It always seemed to me that he has a fairly low opinion of women, judging from so many of his songs. I Should’ve Been A Cowboy is romanticizes a “love 'em and leave 'em” mentality, A Little Less Talk and a Lot More Action I renamed “Shut Up and Screw Me.” How Do You Like Me Now? was the worst of all. He’s actually offended in this song because a girl didn’t like the way he wrote her name on the fifty-yard-line along with the phrase “call for a good time.” Yeah, I’d be over the moon for a guy who used a football field as a men’s room wall to advertise my name. And taking gleeful pleasure in the fact that now her children hear her crying every night–that’s just pitiful. (And oh, how I hate I Wanna Talk About Me–EE–ee!)
Whew! It feels so good to hear someone else say it out loud in public. There’s something grotesque about a multi-millionaire posing as a non-conformist outsider and a rebel against a corrupt, oppressive social order. Lennon’s artistic, intellectual and moral pretentions were absurd.
That said, I still very much enjoy the Imagine and *Mind Games * albums.
(Are any of us ever really as good as we like to think we are? I like to think I’m not too much of a bastard, but there are some things I’ve done that make me wince when I remember them … )
The artists you listed are no more a pandering commercialism than most other music. If Britney has an image tied to her art that helps her make money from her music, how is it any different if the Decemberists do the same thing?
But who are these mythical entertainers who are only in it for the money?
Here is one suggestion, but I’ve got to ask, jackelope, how do you know Madonna is just in it for the money? Why do you suppose that it is impossible that Madonna enjoys making music and is thrilled that she has been able to be so successful from doing something she loves, and is thankful that she has the chance to continue doing what she does. I mean, Madonna has a new album out this week. She’s not in dire straits financially. Why do you suppose she is “just in it for the money”?
The problem is, people are wont to split artists between “authentic” artists who are all about the art and “inauthentic” artists who are all about the money. It is a false dichotomy. Every artist has an image, and every artist needs to make money.
Back in 1984 or so, Madonna appeared on American Bandstand. Dick Clark asked what her goals were. She replied, “I wanna rule the world.”
She an attention whore. Which is okay as long as you fess up to it.
To me, they don’t. Britney’s raison d’etre is all about making money, and as much as possible. Her music is rather bland, inane pop aimed at young girls, that she doesn’t even write, and nobody will argue she has a terrific or even unique voice. She uses sex to sell, and makes news far more for her sordid personal life than for any interesting musical aspects of her career (aside from music videos that showcase her sexiness or album sales that are largely based on marketing).
The Decemberists need to eat and pay rent and break even with their record label too (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but they obviously haven’t gone for an overly-commercial image. I’d be surprised if one in 1,000 people have heard of them, they don’t get music videos played on cable or singles on commercial radio, they don’t market themselves using sex or controversy. They tour, they write and perform music they wrote, and their following is small, but loyal. See also: Tom Waits, Ben Folds, etc., as opposed to a Britney, a Madonna, even a Toby Keith. I know you’re just trying to play devil’s advocate here, but to me there is a WORLD of difference between popular artists (who are popular through looks, videos, marketing, airplay, media hype, etc.) and artists who have earned followings simply from playing good music.
Getting back to the OP, I would like to say Alan Jackson was the first person I thought of. His 9-11 song sounds like somebody sat down and said “how many strings can I pull out of this event to make everyone buy my glurge-fest?”
How do we know that? How do we know Britney doesn’t enjoy her career entirely apart from any financial return she receives? It’s very easy to say that Britney is all about making money, but neither you nor I really know what her goals are.
And yet one of her songs (Toxic) was one of the top 10 singles in last year’s Pazz and Jop poll, run by the Villiage Voice and produced by surveying hundreds of professional music critics. Obviously a lot of people whose job it is to write about music disagree with you. Of course, this doesn’t mean your opinion is wrong, but that perhaps you should not be so quick to assume that it is fact.
I don’t see why music aimed at one audience is superior to music aimed at another audience. Why is music better if it is made for adult, middle-class white guys? Why is music that has a young or female audience inferior?
All music involves some level of division of labor. You seem to value writing because you see it as a core activity; this is a problematic attribution for a start, since by that logic, Creed is superior to Johnny Cash, who did not write many of his hits. It seems silly to judge music by the division of labor that produced it. Britney may not have written her hits, but that is not her role. The Decemberists may have written their tracks, but they did not fulfill aspects of production that were not related to their role - Chris Walla produced their latest record, for instance. There is no reason to value the division of labor that is commonly used to make music adult white guys listen to over any other division of labor.
And nobody will argue that Colin Meloy is a terrific dancer. So?
And Colin Meloy uses faux-archaic Britishisms to sell. Why is sex such a bad thing?
I think most artists, good or bad, tend to attract media attention for what they do rather than what they make. It is immaterial, anyway. Britney does not control the media.
I think it would be very difficult for them to do so. They have a talent, but it is a talent that appeals to a niche rather than a mass audience.
Now you seem to be arguing that popularity and quality are mutually exclusive.
I’m really not trying to play devil’s advocate. I genuinely think perceived authenticity is a poor way of measuring the worth of music. I like the Decemberists, and I like some Britney tracks. I certainly like the Decemberists, and many of the other artists you mentioned a lot more than I like Britney. But that has nothing to do with aspects like division of labor in the production process or how much clothing she wears in a video. My problem with Britney is that she too often fails to play to her strengths. Her voice works best when she doesn’t have to do too much with it, and that’s not the back-handed compliment it seems; her thin, at times breathy style sounds great over club beats and electronic music, but does not fare well when she has to contend with a ballad. Then again, I wouldn’t be so impressed with Colin Meloy if he was trying to sing opera.
I also think that it is rather arrogant to assume that people who like popular artists do so because they like the “looks, videos, marketing, airplay, media hype, etc.” whereas you like your favorite artists because their music is good. Is it so inconceivable that people who listen to Britney do so because they genuinely like the music? Why are they all dupes and you clever?
I don’t think much of what gets played on Top 40 “Country” radio stations really has anything to do with country music. It’s all about the $$$.
When I want country, it’s Lucinda Williams, Iris Dement, John Prine, Lyle Lovett, Steve Earle, Merle Haggard, George Jones, Johnny Cash, Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris, Asleep At The Wheel, a handful of others. Maybe there’s some ‘image’ involved, but it’s not what these people are about. The music is.
Sorry for the double post, I just did not want you to think I ignored you. So - Madonna is ambitious. I don’t see that as a quality incompatable with making good music.
So, if a label came to the Decemberists, or someone else that you are a fan of (which I’m sure has nothing to do with your stand… 
) and offered them big bucks to make a video, and they did so, would that change your opinion?
To me this is a pointless arguement. Madonna makes music because a true musician of any stripe is incapable of doing otherwise. Just like a writer or other artist.
I think the problem lies in calling Britney Spears a Musician. She most certainly is NOT a musician. She is a singer, and a dancer.
Metallica- Musicians.
N’Sync- Not Muscians.
I feel too many people view commerical success as only attainable by “selling out”.
If Tori Amos suddenly had a huge hit, and started touring and was on the radio constantly, did an episode of Cribs (hiding the coke mirrors, of course) and maybe was a guest judge on American Idol, would she still be on your list? And if not, why not?
Or, what circus electrique said.
Dang preview.