I just saw a performance on Entertainment Tonight by all the American Idol contestants at UCLA. Oh, my, GOD, that was horrid. Doing "Footloose" as a group like some bad beauty pagent opening number complete with unison dance moves. Could this crap be ANY MORE made up than it is? It reminds me of the 60's when everyone was afraid of the rowdyness of rock music and the gyrations of Elvis, so they "invented" Frankie Avalon, Fabian and others as a warm and fuzzy family-friendly version of pop. So pathetic. It's like they are running out of money to promote original bands, so they just make them up. Making the Band, American Idol...ugh. Unlistenable.
That is exactly what is happening. As a musician you should know that the music scene runs in cycles. We are now in the Fabian/Frankie Avalon phase. There will be a rockin band that will come along like the Beatles did and this crap will go away.
Some of these bands have already come, Bob, but they are from England and are not "photogenic" like the crap that is popular here, i.e. NSuck and Backstreet Girls, etc. Bands like Blur, Oasis (yea, they were good at one time), Travis, Coldplay, and of course, Radiohead are all great British bands that do the following: 1) They write their own songs 2) They play their own instruments 3) They are, for the most part, unknown and unappreciated in the United States It's a shame, but one good thing is that these bands have stayed true to themselves and have not sold out due to the pressures of becoming "popular".
No Doubt, where once they had well written and (somewhat)meaningful songs, now spew pop filth as they say... it's all about the benjamins
Manny: This isn't really just about England. At the same time of the British Invasion, the US was bringing up Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys, Jefferson Airplane, the Greatful Dead, etc. As for the comparison using Blur, Oasis, Travis, Coldplay, Radiohead, et al, none of them have been able to really capture the attention of the masses while wowing the critics. The last band to do that was most likely Dave Matthews at least when it comes to pop/rock. Before that, it was Nirvana and Pearl Jam. The problem is that the music biz is shrinking. More and more formerly-signed artists are out on the streets working day jobs because they were chewed up and spit out by the industry. They have to survive as indies or move on to other things. What used to be an industry that nurtured creativity and fostered artistic growth for the REWARD of lots of money AND landmark work is now one that is dominated strictly by the bottom line. There was a tremendous article in the now defunct Musician Magazine a few years back about the trend to get younger and younger with new signees to record labels. One of the people interviewed was a former A&R guy (the people who discover talent) and said that, on Monday's, they'd have their A&R Department Staff meeting to discuss new artists, etc. He said that he would go see a band on the weekend and come in Monday fired up about how great they were live, how talented they were musically and how great their songs were. He'd start to mention "this killer band I saw over the weekend" and the only concerns from the rest of the group were: 1. How old are they? 2. What does the singer look like? They could care less how good they were. They only wanted marketable product. That is a result of a business that drives their A&R people and bands to produce hit records and only hit records. Most of the greatest bands out there had pretty bad first records. Most took several attempts before they got it right. If labels had not allowed that to happen, we may never have heard The Wall, Physical Graffitti, Aja, Hotel California, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, 52nd Street, Born to Run, Ghost in the Machine, Unforgettable Fire...the list goes on and on. Groundbreaking work from monumentally talented artists could absolutely be going down the drain because labels are simply not patient enough to nourish its growth. It is a loss for everyone.
With that computer adied singing program (I can't remember the name but remember reading a few things about it ) I guess it doesn't matter anymore, since voices can be manipulated so much. How soon before the main "music industry" is all owned by one company - Disney? Manny, What the hell are you talking about? Oasis? They were pre-fabbed to be like the Beatles...only they sucked.
There are no hard and fast rules to the pop game, in my opinion. The Monkees were completely prefabricated and the Dave Matthews Band have all the organic integrity to suit a FM radio convention in the '70's. I know I am going to get disemboweled for saying this (ouch!), but I bet more people will listen to the Monkees in 50 years. Going back further, (with an always important Neil Diamond connection), I bet the music factories of the Brill Building (Phil Spector, Coffin and King, The Diamond) and Motown have as long a staying power as all the singer-songwriters that emerged later. Motown molded pop stars down to their posture, dress and elocution, didn't they? I am not saying that pop music isn't seriously messed up right now, but that is a function of the recording industry and the media. The Fabians, Donny Osmonds, Rick Springfields, Tiffanys, Christina Agulerias and "American Idols" of the world have always existed, as Bobfinn pointed out. The problem is that there are no Ahmet Erteguns (founder of Atlantic Records), or Berry Gordys (Motown) out there to mold art and commerce to work together in pop music, unfortunately. Nothing wrong with music, generally, though.
You're talking about Antares' program called AutoTune. It is a digitial pitch manipulation program that works with recording software packages like Pro Tools and Digital Performer. It tunes itself to the pitch of the song and then "corrects" the pitch of any instrument or voice based on the relative pitch of the surrounding instruments. It's really an amazing piece of software because it can be adjusted to "soft tune" vocals so that it just fixes the really glaring errors but leaves stuff that is close. It can also "hard tune" and force the pitch into other keys automatically. That song by Dirty Vegas, the Cher Song and that Kid Rock ballad all use AutoTune to get that wierd effect that hard shifts the pitch of the voice when they sing at a certain dynamic. Personally, I don't mind the technology. That isn't my issue. Great musicians use technology to their advantage and can create some pretty amazing work. No matter how much technology you have, you cannot hide a lack of talent and that's what bugs me.
