There are a million signed bands/artists who live to entertain us. Or maybe they live to create. Or perhaps they live for fame. Some are ruined by success; others would make for a very different history if they didn’t become successful. It’s all in the drive, all in the motivation. It can overwhelm you with joy or it can make you a bit nauseated.
There’s a man named Rob Van Winkle who could tell you a little bit about artistic integrity. The universe remembers him as Vanilla Ice. Many know his story: white kid from suburbia moves to Miami and starts rapping. He gets picked up as the fresh white face of moneymaking rapland, dances in shiny baggy pants, has a goofy haircut, and before you know it is selling his soul to anything to churn out a dollar. Soon he’s a joke, flailing around to claim any bit of his old fame; he records an album about smoking weed, he records an album delving into metal. He winds up on a VH1 show where they try to help him create a proper image for himself, but he rejects it all. He’s wary that others will once again mold him into someone he’s not, perhaps to the point of utter paranoia.
On the other end of the sprectrum, you have Prince. Now, here’s a man who is extremely musically gifted, if not similarly talented in the art of seduction. Or maybe he’s just a pervert, whatever. From the beginning, he’s taken full control of his music. Over the years he took this to almost laughable extremes. Starting with the creation of his own Paisley Park studios/label, he segregated himself from the hands of manipulative labels. But then he went further, claiming he was a slave to his parent label, changing his name to avoid association with such, and on and on and on. Not quite Michael Jackson-level weirdness, but definitely out there. But in the end, who has the last laugh? Prince still records and undoubtedly does not create music for anyone but himself. It just also happens to be pretty darn good. While he’s been out of the immediate spotlight for a while, his diehard fans probably feel better knowing that they’re devoting themselves to an artist, not a package.
These artists are easy to pinpoint because at no time did they ever assert themselves to be anything they were not: Vanilla Ice was a media whore who did anything for a buck, and Prince was an artiste. However, the motivations of many others are more difficult to discern. While it’s not necessarily relevant in most cases, sometimes it makes a person wonder if they’re being suckered by an image and a desire for the almighty dollar or if the artist(s) at hand truly cares about creating music.
Let’s look at Christina Aguilera. Clearly, she has the voice. And also clearly, she started as a media creation on the Mickey Mouse Club. She graduated to recording pop records and shaking what the good lord gave her. It seemed pretty cut and dry that she was merely a puppet. But after her second disc of generic pop tanked, Christina (or as she christened herself, Xtina) started writing with bona fide songwriters and desired to project more of the person hiding behind the pop innocence. At least that’s what she tells us. It could just as easily be another pre-fab image, or mabye “real” Xtina is simply a skank-ho. How do we know? Do we care?
Alanis Morrissette. Out of Canada, her first couple of albums were fluffy, generic dance pop that never found its way south. Then came Jagged Little Pill, where she poured out her soul into her music. From that point on, she was Alanis the Introspective Carefree Flailing Woman; her next disc was so over-the-top from-the-soul that most didn’t bother to care. After the anger is gone, who cares about the more subtle feelings, anyway? It’s the anger that sold. But this continued, regardless of her commercial success. Hey, if nothing else, she was being true to herself, dammit. But then came the re-released acoustic Jagged Little Pill. Sold exclusively at Starbucks. AAAAARGHHHH.
Madonna: all about the fame, and she’s done it quite well without apology. She may not be an artiste, but she’s an honest entertainer (and takes the time to find fabulous collaborators). But Jewel? Can anyone tell me, after listening to her first two albums, where “Intuition” fits into her hippie songwriter style? OH NO SECOND ALBUM FLOPPED… MUST RECAPTURE FAME AND MONEY AT ALL COSTS. You have kids like Avril Lavigne and Michelle Branch who are trying to be respectable songwriters and musicians, yet neither has an original bone in their bodies and instead write directly for a marketable style. And while I have Ms. Branch on the mind… Carlos Santana. Paging Carlos Santana, you little whore you. I’m sure you’re aware that you’re not fooling anyone, slapping your name on something while you play the same licks repeatedly as generic pop stars of the day cheese all over it. Great that he’s bringing home some bank after all of these years, but at what cost? Sure, he’s not pink-suit-era Rod Stewart, but still. Remember when Aerosmith was cool? Fuck you, Armageddon).
Elton John. What the hell ever happened to good Elton John music? Is it just because he got old? Bernie Taupin? Princess Diana hack tributes? Gay marriage? I just don’t know what to say… I liked the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road days as much as I liked the Reg Strikes Back days. Now what do we get? Performing with Eminem, recording crap for Disney? What about Sting? The Police was quite the artistic venture, and Sting’s earlier solo stuff may have been poppy but it wasn’t blatantly commercial. He grew over the years into a serious adult contemporary artist, and then… hello, my name is Sting, and I will sell my songs to any product who cars to advertise. And shit, Rod Stewart. He’s gone from singer-songwriter to total money whore and back to singer-songwriter again. Now he’s just recording a bunch of old classics, f*cking Rod Stewart karaoke albums. It’s unholy.
Maybe I just don’t like being tricked. I don’t like seeing the public tricked. Of course, most of them don’t care. They eat up whatever sounds good, regardless of the motives behind the existence of the music they like. Perhaps it doesn’t matter to them that little Kelly Clarkson is being dragged around by puppet strings so long as they can shake their asses to the beat. Hey, you know what tastes good? Veal. Eat hearty.
But you know, integrity isn’t dead. We’ve got such bastions of artistry as Fiona Apple and John Mayer… almost makes you wish it was a dead horse to beat, no?
So what is this industry? What is entertainment, what is a thing of beauty? And why in the hell does money have to ruin so much of either one? You can take a look at the Rolling Stones, a band who honestly seems to be thirsty to entertain even though they’re older than my grandparents. See also Tina Turner. These people do not need money; they’re not trying to sell anything but who they are for people who still want to see them in action. And they’re not making jackasses of themselves by changing to current trends in an attempt to capture the modern young audience. This tactic has worked for one person and one person alone: Cher. And trust me, it will never work for anyone but Cher.
In summary, someone please beat the living shit out of Bon Jovi.
Eagerly awaiting another face of MC Hammer,
–gloomchen
