You’ve obviously forgotten her “Criminal” video from the first album.
And Phair has never hidden the way she looks, either. It’s just been played up a lot more in the last couple of years. There have been PG-13 photos of her in magazines (and on line) since Exile.
There’s a reason the Pixies never got the kind of fame that Bush enjoyed. Gavin Rossdale was a truly mediocre talent, but he was a pretty boy and got magazine covers. And I think he was dating someone famous for a while too; Gwen Stefani?
(Side note: M. Ward is white? I’m surprised; I always pictured a black guy when listening to him.)
I tend to think of looks the same way I think of money-if you’re lucky, you’re born with them and if they give you an advantage in what you want to do, you’d be a fool not to take it (as long as it’s ethical, of course). That said, it’s not likely that looks alone will keep you in diamonds-eventually everyone ages, and there goes your trump card.
People who are only beautiful may have an edge, but it will only get them so far and for so long.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all, but I’ve never heard Lena Horne considered homely.
*Mick Jagger. *
'Nuff said.
You’re right (for some strange reason that slipped my mind). Still, there was a difference between the way Apple looked in that video and the excessively made-up, airbrushed, and plastic appearances of Pop Tarts like Britney, Christina Aguilera, and Jessica Simpson in their videos and on the covers of the “lad” mags. They basically represented two sides of the same coin.
Also, the fact Liz Phair has been played up a lot more in the last few years as a “MILF” indicates the greater emphasis the music industry puts on the physical appearance of its female singers.
To be fair (no pun intended), Liz Phair’s music has taken on a decidedly more poppy, mainstream sound since her major label debut a couple albums back. She has videos that play on VH1 now, and even though she is extremely attractive, she was still attractive during her more edgy *Exile In Guyville * phase and didn’t have any of the crossover success or mainstream appeal.
Shane MacGowan, anyone? Not only ugly as sin, but utterly incomprehensible. I heart him.
Except sometimes you get somebody like Kelly Clarkson, who has honest-to-God talent to go along with her looks.
I’ve always found the fact that Nirvana spawned a “fashion movement” to be hilarious. Nirvana’s stage clothes? That’s simply the way we dressed in western Washington! In an era where most artists carefully selected what kind of stage costuming they needed, Nirvana took the stage in their everyday street clothes. Next thing you know, most of Generation X is dressed for logging or fishing :rolleyes: On the other hand, because of the way I dressed growing up in western Washington, I guess it made me a fashion leader when my family moved east of the mountains. The 1990s rolled around and suddenly everyone started dressing like me 
M Ward sort of looks like a cross between Nick Cave and Tom Waits. I don’t think he’s really bad looking at all.
Johnny Cash was hugely successful, and I never thought he was spectacularly good looking, even in his younger days. Not bad, but not “celebrity handsome”.
A large part of why bands have to look better now is because of MTV. The more alternative bands that don’t look as good wouldn’t appear on there anyway probably.
Then there’s people who go from being not bad looking to ugly. Iggy Pop really varies from picture to picture, or he did when he was young. Now he just looks like an old junkie. David Bowie on the other hand looks better now than he did in the earliest part of his career, and better than he did at other times from early 80’s to the late 90’s.
I was slightly taken aback when I saw in that picture that Neko Case doesn’t shave her legs. It’s kind of weird if you’re not used to seeing it.
Given all the various theories being offered on this subject, can someone explain the total anomaly that is Aimee Mann?
At least to these eyes, she is well above average in terms of her looks, and I know of few serious listeners who would question her talent or craft as either a singer or writer…
Yet she has had a remarkably un-spectacular career in spite of her apparently having the sure-fire combo that spells success in show business. I’ve never understood her failure to catch on in a big way. It’s almost impossible to find a serious critic or even a casual “review editor” who fails to recognize and acknowledge her talent.
And then there are those who just listen… with both ears.
I always thought Mick was ugly, too, but he’s got sex appeal - a very related category which encompasses more than just looks. If you’ve got that, you don’t need to be conventionally attractive.
As hard as it is for me, a terminally hip person, to recommend “America’s Got Talent,” they pushed forward a little kid who has the potential to be the next Janis and who has, if you use the FBI’s “how she’d look at 21” software, is likely to be only “pleasant looking.” The kid has PIPES and that still counts for something.
Well, according to www.aimeemann.com, she provided backing vocals on Rush’s Time Stand Still (okay, I already knew that), so that counts for something in my book. But then in 2004 she appeared on a William Shatner CD, which cancels out the Rush thing …
Actually, all the people I listed are/were considered very good-looking, well into middle age. That paragraph of my post was specifically about recording artists with “terrific looks and a lasting, distinguished career”, in contrast with cute-but-untalented flavors of the month, or fugly-but talented artists with long careers. Sorry if I was unclear. Lena Horne was, of course, one of the last century’s great beauties and great talents.
Aimee Mann did have a fair bit of success in the 80’s when she was part of 'Til Tuesday. Since then, despite the fact she is both talented and a dead ringer for Darryl Hannah, Mann’s success has been limited because within the industry her music is considered too “different” for her to be more than a cult favorite. She’s not the only one to whom this anomaly applies. Kelly Willis is another good example (as I pointed out in this earlier thread). I think in the case of Mann, Willis, the aforementioned Neko Case, and others, the determining factor is marketability and, unfortunately, their music is perceived by TPTB in the record companies and radio as being too far from the “mainstream” to be marketable to a mass audience.
That William Shatner album was the best album of 2004, no lie. Seriously fun, with great production and musicianship by Ben Folds and a host of guest artists ranging from Mann to Henry Rollins to Joe Jackson (on one of the finest covers of all time, Shatner and Jackson’s rendition of Pulp’s “Common People”).
That’s what I’ve heard from people who were living and playing in Seattle before the “grunge” scene exploded. (Too bad only grunge got the attention in Seattle, as there was some great melodic pop coming out of there, too, a la The Fastbacks, The Young Fresh Fellows, Flop, etc…)
My favorite story regarding the media frenzy surrounding the Seattle music scene is the New York Times interview with Megan Jasper, who worked for Sub Pop, about “grunge-speak,” the supposed slang of the Seattle underground. Megan proceeds to completely fabricate words and phrases to the the reporter, who takes it at face value and publishes it in a New York Times article. I particularly like “cob nobbler” and “swingin’ on the flippety flop.”
There’s a certain amount of truth to the looks thing, but I don’t think it’s because of looks alone.
It used to be that famous acts were made because people heard someone singing on a demo tape, or because they had access to studio equipment (or a radio station, which amounts to much the same thing), and that access was limited or expensive. Some recording artists were sound geeks who built or cobbled together their own equipment; some were just recruited because… well, hey, we needed a drummer, and he was the only one we could find.
Today there’s tens of thousands of hopefuls. Look at “American Idol.” Go to any music store — my local store has enough guitars and amplifiers and keyboards and cables and microphones and assorted band instruments to provide all the equipment for all the bands at Woodstock. It’s all pre-fabricated. Studio recording equipment starts around three hundred bucks.
Any yahoo with about ten grand to spend can cobble together enough recording equipment to really give it a whirl — hence all the indie labels.
Any fool with a few bucks can advertise in the local musician rag, “Need black female drummer, please send photo” and actually have a selection to choose from.
All things being equal, there’s a lot more musicians out there trying to make it Big, and the major labels have their choice of the ones they think will make the next million bucks for Sony or RCA or whomever — and they’re gonna hand-pick the ones that they think will be easy to sell, and who will be stupid and pliable enough to manage.
I seriously doubt most major labels want to do anything with the smart, crafty, do-it-yourself, go-it-alone type of music pioneer who’s going to read every subclause of the contract and hire an entertainment attorney, who’s got an independent streak a mile wide. The major labels want the dumb ones — dumb, but they have at least one hit album in 'em — who will sign their life away for 2 years, after which the label can drop them. Sometimes that means the label springs for the pretty-but-dumb ones, because they’ll be easier to sell; occasionally a pretty-and-smart one slips through. Ugly and dumb is hard to sell but easy to manage; ugly and smart doesn’t do the label any favors.
Just my opinion on it.
Tom Waits would have never gone as far as he did if he werent’ such a pretty boy.
Same with Lyle Lovett. The chick dig him.
I think that when the music reaches a certain quality level, looks don’t matter at all. Bob Dylan is one homely dude.
But the video age has certainly made looks more important, and no doubt it helps lower the barriers of entry into the mainstream market. And I think it matters far more for women than for men. There are a lot of great female singers who are heavyset, and as a result no one pays attention to them.
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