Much of the question is in the title. I am thinking mostly about finding true singing stars but it could include any talent. Stardom isn’t always (or even usually) defined by the technical skills that shows like American Idol and its endless variants look for. It is often some unusual X factor plus the willingness to work incredibly hard during shows and also personality.
Who are some candidates that would not have made it far if they had to use a reality show as their initial introduction into the business?
One example is Bonnie Tyler - she isn’t the biggest star in the world but she was big at one time and her songs are lasting because of her distinctive style and voice. However, I think the judges would have ripped her apart for her coarse voice (that is what people like as it turns out).
What are some examples of other people that would not win a pure talent show but still resonated with the masses enough to achieve mass fame?
Good answer. Simon Cowell would tell him he had no talent and then Johnny would tell Simon to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine. Most people see it completely differently especially in retrospect where it really counts.
You can probably add Bruce Springsteen and and Bob Dylan to the same list.
I just thought of a great example - Jimmy Buffet. He sounds like a crazy uncle doing karaoke at a cousin’s wedding but he is one of the most successful singer/songwriters of all time. He turned a single catchy song, Margaretville into his own personal business empire.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not making fun of the man. I respect him a great deal and listen to his dedicated XM radio station daily and I have been to his restaurants. Judging by technical skill alone, he probably could not have won a high school talent show with it but he somehow spun the whole thing into a personal fortune worth over $400 million (higher than almost any other entertainer in the world and almost exactly the same as Tom Cruise) and has dedicated Parrothead fans all over the world.
I just noticed that he is so well recognized that all of his proprietary terms that I used in this post were not flagged by spell-check even though other common words sometimes are. He is big even with the computers.
That is extremely impressive. Explain that one to the judges.
You don’t know much about Jimmy Buffett then. He’s not a one trick pony. He has a lot of really good songs. Watch this little live jam. You don’t see talent in this singing and songwriting?
I do know a lot about Jimmy Buffet and I certainly wasn’t making fun of him. He is personal hero of mine for many reasons and I listen to him daily. I have been to his concerts, own his recordings, eaten at a couple of his restaurants and even read one of his books.
However, he isn’t an especially good singer, he isn’t very attractive and doesn’t seem to have any easily definable star quality even in that video yet it all comes together somehow and he does as proven by the end result. He is literally one of the richest entertainers in the world bar none. Name 10 singers, songwriters or actors that your think has more earned more money than he has and you would be wrong on almost all of them.
Guess what place he is in and who is ahead:
Jimmy Buffet is #3 only behind Paul McCartney and Bono. He is ahead of Elton John, Mick Jagger and Sting.
Could you have predicted that if you were in the audience for the performance that you linked? That is what this thread is all about. It isn’t about criticizing anyone or anything except pointing out the limitations that judging everything like a purely technical talent show presents.
Sometimes you get breakout stars that aren’t unusually good in any given skill but still have extreme mass appeal for whatever reason. Those are the examples I am trying to identify.
Most of them, I would think. Most of these talent shows paint an extremely unrealistic view of the music industry, and seem to concentrate on superficial things that don’t really matter all that much for achieving a successful career.
AI is really trying to replicate the 50s and earlier, where singers did other people’s songs. Songs were sometimes written with a specific singer in mind. The singers were expected to be able to handle the tune, to reach all the octaves. that was their job.
There were two jobs-songwriter, and singer. Never the twain shall meet.
And then rock came along, and the era of the singer/songwriters. Almost no rock musicians would make the cut, except for a few that would be the 60s equivalent of William Hung. People who just can’t sing-Dylan, Neil Young, Springsteen etc etc. But they could write songs, good songs that were more or less in their range. Does anyone care that a typical Neil singing sounds like someone is strangling a cat, if it is a great song? I don’t. Ask Young or Dylan to sing a “standard” and it would be horrible. But their own stuff fits their singing abilities, and it works.
AI is a job application process for a job that doesn’t need to be filled. We don’t need a fleet of singers to sing that huge backlog of songs that simply must be sung.
I’m so burnt out on “Margaritaville” and have been since maybe three weeks after it was released, but “Come Monday” is in my top 10 of all time favorites. He paints a picture with that song. Sigh.