How much is a musician's success dependent on his/her looks?

Cafe Society
1

Sometime last year, I was introduced by a friend to the music of M. Ward. This is a singer-songwriter with a very folksy, quirky style, a great voice, excellent instrumentals, the works. However, he is not handsome. He looks like a cross between Adam Goldberg and Paul Giamatti. His chin weak, cheeks puffed and scarred, he is sort of aggressively un-handsome. Not ugly, per se, simply homely looking.

I have to wonder if he would be more popular if he looked something like Jack Johnson, who is obviously a big hit with the girls and a nationally-known and famous popster. Johnson has terriffic looks, like a Frat boy or a pro actor. If M. Ward had these looks, do you think that his popularity would soar?

Obviously Johnson and Ward are in different leagues - Ward plays to an alt crowd, collaborating with people like My Morning Jacket and Beth Orton. Johnson is the toast of the college campuses and people who drink on Saturday but smoke grass on Sunday, or call California “Cali” and wished that they lived there. Obviously I’m generalizing. But the music world is filled with generalizations. I have no doubt that if Jack Johnson looked like M. Ward, his popularity would not be a fraction of what it is now.

There seem to be some areas of music where looks are more important than others. The world of R&B, kiddie-punk-pop, contemporary country and college rock are obviously biased towards those musicians who look good - how many popular acts of these genres can you think of whose members don’t at least look good, and at best, look like pro models? Wraith-thin with dark eye shadow and scraggly hair, the pop-punk crowd and Panic at the Disco-esque acts are all trying very hard to look pretty.

Hip-hop and indie rock seem, to me, to be more forgiving of variations in terms of the looks of the musicians. There are many popular rappers who are just plug-ugly. Likewise, the men in Modest Mouse look like hard-core slackers and burnouts, and none of them are very good-looking men. Grandaddy, who are fortunately gaining recognition, look like programmers and lumberjacks. Many indie groups, in fact, from Broken Social Scene to the New Pornographers to the Decemberists, look like geeks who wouldn’t get noticed in a grocery store. I’m not just saying that they dress poorly - their faces, often times, are simply not handsome and look homely.

For women, there is definitely a hardcore bias towards the looks. Of course, this is a more general fact of society at large, but it certainly translates into the music world too. If you think it’s hard to come up with the name of a popular male entertainer who is homely looking, try doing so with a female. Besides a few pleasantly-plump R&B gals, there seems to be a requirement that you have to look like a model in order to be a success.

Is there an unwritten rule in the music industry that you have to be handsome, beautiful or sexy to reach the pinnacle of success? Or is music truly a meritocracy?

2

It’s not fair but in this era of Britney, Christina, Beyonce, et al., a female artist’s appearance counts a lot more than actual talent. Granted, this has always been true to a certain degree but it’s gotten even worse in the last seven years or so. It’s unfortunate but I think in today’s music industry, a female artist’s success often depends upon how easily you can visualize her on the cover of Maxim, Blender, FHM, or any of the other “lad” mags.

3

I was just lamenting the other day how the indie rock world has become its own little mirror of corporate cock rock, where looks are now just as important to a band’s success as they are in the mainstream music world. Just look at how it goes:

10 years ago: bands looked like Yo la Tengo and Pavement .

Now: Bands look like INterpol (who have received exclusive modeling and hair product endorsements) and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

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Geeks? HOMELY? (The New Pornographers’ Neko Case) She was voted by readers of Playboy as the indie chick they’d most like to see pose for the mag!

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The easiest musicians to market are the ones with movie-star looks. It’s a sad fact of life that pretty people catch more sweet breaks than the rest of us. But if looks are a recording artist’s only draw, he/she won’t have a very long or distinguished career. Fabian’s career lasted exactly as long as his teen-idol looks; likewise, Leif Garrett, Tiffany, the individual Spice Girls/Backstreet Boys/Wilson Phillips/Boyz2Men/Monkees/Partridge Family/what have you. I’m sure Peter Frampton and David Lee Roth can still rock as well as they ever could, but they specifically courted a teenaged audience in a way that, say, Rod Stewart and James Taylor stopped courting.

But there’s also a list of fugly musicians with great talent whose careers went the distance: Paul Simon, Jerry Garcia, Janis Joplin (posthumously), Roy Orbison, Lyle Lovett, k.d. lang, Jack White, Aretha Franklin, Rivers Cuomo, Brian Setzer, etc.

Not too many people have terrific looks and a lasting, distinguished career. Madonna is kind of a freak. Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, Shirley Bassey, Lena Horne, Tanya Tucker, Tom Jones, Tina Turner… I think about half of these people have pacts with the devil and the clock is ticking.

Looks get you in the door, but talent lasts longer.

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Is she the only member of the Pornographers?

Look at this photo and take a look at those guys - not a single one of them is handsome, by any conventional standards. Some of them are downright offputting.

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Those guys in pavement all look pretty good to me. One or two of them look like they could be in GQ, at least in that photo.

But Tengo? BLECHHHH.

8

Well…as much as I hate to insult my favorite musicians, Tears For Fears were pretty popular back in the 80s, and Radiohead (consisting of Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Colin Greenwood, Phil Selway and Ed O’Brien) are one of the biggest acts currently going.

I’ll let that statement speak for itself.

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One of them looks like Luke Wilson with bad hair; another looks like Rufus Sewell. Ony the one guy looks downright disturbing.

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There was a fun article in GQ a few months ago-- the issue with Cameron Diaz in the cover–where they took the scariest-looking UK rock stars (incluidng Robyn Hitchcock, Jarvis Cocker, Belle & Sebastian and the Kaiser Chefs) and stuck them in some designer suits. Rockers can get away with looking a little freaky.

11

Unfortunately Grandaddy just broke a couple of months ago.

As for the OP, sure, looks matter. With all art, there is a constant tug-of-war between raw talent and artistic integrity and the stuff that Big Music thinks will sell. Same as it ever was.

  • Sometimes no-talent, good lucking pure pop fluff charts
  • Sometimes unattractive but talented folks chart - more rarely, but it does happen
  • Sometimes there is some alignment and a person generally regarded as attractive also has talent and charts
  • and in each case, there are far more examples who fit the description who never chart…

One artist comes to mind: Sheryl Crow - when her first CD, Tuesday Night Music Club, came out, she went nowhere with Leaving Las Vegas, then got a hit with All I Wanna Do. She was kinda dismissed as a whiskey-kitten pretty girl with solid music connections - ooo, she sang backup for Michael Jackson; ahhh, she hung out with very “insider” musicians as part of the actual TNMClub, but had little to do with the actual songs. And when she had her big faux pas on Letterman - she sang Vegas, and Dave approached her right afterwards (a very big deal) and asked if it was autobiographical - and she said “yes.” Problem was it was written about the guy who wrote the book of the same name - he was a good friend of the Club - and not written by her. Much derision, deviseness and accusations of sell out and betrayal. She said she froze in the moment, pure and simple.

Then she comes out with her second CD - just called Sheryl Crow. She wrote or co-wrote all the songs and produced it. Blew everybody’s hair back - brilliant stuff (you are welcome not to like it, but don’t deny the quality of its craft all around - songs, production, etc.). She went from pretty girl to deeply respected artist in a hearbeat. These days, you may or may not like her - YMMV of course - but if you mention her to a working musician (I have discussed this with a lot of them) they all have a deep regard for her and her accomplishments…

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Being very successful in the music industry requires two things:[ol][li]You have to appeal to a lot of people.You have to be memorable.[/ol]Being very attractive certainly helps with both of those (although you still have to write songs that don’t sound exactly like everything else out there), but as has been pointed out, it won’t last forever, or even long. And there are other ways to hit those goals, even if you’re not attractive. Would anyone call Nirvana or any of the other grunge acts beautiful? They were certainly successful.[/li]
That said, I think I’m seeing an assumption in the OP that musical success is an all or nothing thing–that either you’re at the top of the charts, or you’re nothing. That’s just not true. There are any number of musicians on the SDMB who make a living at it, and I’ve never seen any of them complaining about not being rich and famous.

13

Sheryl Crow and The Globe Sessions are fantastic albums. It’s too bad that she’s since reverted to crowd-pleasing blandness and party girl antics.

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You’ll notice that I used the term “Pinnacle of success.” Obviously there are different kinds of success in the music business. I would personally consider making more than $50,000 a year by playing music to be a great success, depending on where you lived. Of course I don’t think you’re either at the top of the charts or you’re “nothing.”

If I did, then very nearly every single group or artist that I listen to would be “nothing.”

Currently on my playlist: Of Montreal, The Sea and Cake, The Silver Jews, Tortoise, M. Ward, and Harry and the Potters. And these are some of the better known groups in my music collection.

And yes, Wordman, it’s a shame about Grandaddy isn’t it?

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I’ve always had a problem with melding the look with the sound, so I try not to know what an artist looks like. It’s always a mental battle for me.

I thought Robin Trower was black.

I thought Mama Cass sounded thin.

I’ve always thought John Lennon sounded old though I knew he wasn’t.

Try as I might, I cannot make James Taylor sound bald.

And so on…

(and yes…this has spilled over into non-musical voice/appearance situations.)

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Even more so with the era of American Idol.

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I’ve argued with people that there’s no way Janis Joplin would be popular today. If she was just starting out her career in the last five years, she’d be toiling away in some bar band, forced to either live or die young in obscurity just because the music industry is so much more shallow today.

I’m sad to notice that looks are so important even in jazz, which has never been as image-conscious as rock or pop. The biggest female jazz singers in recent years, as far as mainstream or crossover appeal, have been exotic, dark-haired Norah Jones and blonde babe Diana Krall (who I’ve heard from various people looks like Jewel, Joey Lauren Adams, or Renee Zellwegger). I personally love Jane Monheit, who I also think happens to be gorgeous, but she is a somewhat bigger, curvier woman (diehard FHM/Maxim readers might consider her “fat”), and even though she’s still out there, she was never considered as popular as Jones or Krall. I’d hate to think what the great Ella Fitzgerald would face today, since she was a heavy woman and not pretty or hot by anyone’s standards.

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Also, don’t leave out the fact she ended up half-naked on the cover of a “lad” mag (I think it was either FHM or Stuff) thereby proving the point I made earlier. In fact, Crow’s case shows that the greater emphasis on a female artists “eye candy” factor even applies to those who first achieved success in the pre-Pop Tart era. That’s why, in addition to Sheryl Crow, we’ve seen Liz Phair take a similar route when she released her most recent CD’s. In fact, it’s gotten to the point where it’s more surprising when an established female artist doesn’t do something like this. For example, last year when Fiona Apple released her first CD since 1999, I cynically expected to see her skanked up on the cover of Blender, **FHM ** or some other similar publication. To her credit, she hasn’t done this (at least not yet anyway).

19

This will be somewhat tangential, but I’m not sure I exactly buy this. In rock music, image has always been a component of success for most bands. I mean, look at bands from The Ramones to The Cure to even Nirvana and they all practically spawned fashion movements (whether intentionally or not).

Even the anti-fashion, just-a-buncha-dudes-and-chicks-with-instruments (see: The Pixies) is its own image.

Both have their place in independent rock music. To put it honestly, I was getting downright bored by the lack of theatricity in live performances in the mid-90s. Whatever happened to the David Bowies, the Queens, the Kisses and all the pyrotechnics? Then came bands like Interpol, The White Stripes, The Hives, etc., all who incorporated some of that old-fashioned rock-and-roll glamour and fun back into independent music. And I think it’s good they did.

20

I face this issue constantly. I have a great voice and am good on stage, but a lot of projects around here are too image-conscious to have a fat chick as their lead singer – especially if they have the option of someone equally talented but better-looking. Looking younger than my age works against me sometimes, too. It’s the way of the jungle, and I know and accept it. Doesn’t mean I’ll never front another band again, it just means I’ll have to find a bunch of talented ugly guys to work with. :wink:

My favorite contemporary jazz singer, Suede, used to tell a story during her shows about a meeting she once had with a big-time talent agent (or record producer, or something like that) after he’d been to one of her shows. The guy absolutely loved her voice, her original songs, her stage presence, etc., and he said, “If you’d just lose 50 pounds, you could be the next Barbra Streisand!” To which she replied, “Or I could gain 50 pounds, and be the next Mama Cass … and that position’s open!”

She would tell that story right before/after her version of “Built for Comfort,” which remains one of the top 5 songs I’d love to cover someday. :slight_smile: