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Saturday, Sept. 20, 2003 - 5:35 a.m. |
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In desperate need of hard drive space, Sandra is trying to clear off all her old recordings. Yup, from last summer, when she was transcribing songs to piano and singing them badly and recording these miserable attempts.
I'd always thought they were horrible, because Grant and Sewell told me so--in fact, pretty much after they told me so, I stopped recording. Their honesty is not at fault, I just don't take criticism well. And as a result, I always believed my recordings had been horrible, and I'm listening to them now, and I. . .actually don't sound that bad. Besides which, I think that a lot of musicians today that sing--even ones that have achieved some amount of fame and popularity--don't have great voices. They just have great songs, and great skill. Both of which are things I could work at. I thought I was doomed because I didn't have a beautiful voice, but neither does--I don't know. Madonna. Or, well, Ben Folds, and he kicks ass. Well, I don't know, his voice fits the kind of punk-ish style, so maybe he's a bad example too. Anyway, none of these people could be opera singers, most likely. So there. I think it's the songs, the attitude, the sort of trademark little things you do, etc. that make a star. In the same line with the whole "it's the song more than the voice" theme, I recently bought the t.A.T.u album 200km/h in the Wrong Lane--the US version, unfortunately. It was all iTunes had, and I didn't feel like buying another import because I'm trying to save money. The thing about euro pop is that it's unabashedly mass produced. In the US, artists are always trying to assert their writing credits, trying to make us believe their songs are musical masterpieces. Art. Bands--especially those sort of bubble gum pop vocal groups--are always telling us: we got together on our own! We weren't put together in some corporate office! We met . . . singing pickup a capella on a street corner! Really! And we write our own songs! Really! In Europe, they were put together, they know it, and people still love them for it. I don't believe it. I look at their official websites and can't believe they have the gall to say, "The group TATU was formed in 2000 by the script writer and director Ivan Shapovalov who is now producer of the group" (http://www.tatu.ru/eng/about.shtml). What?? "The day the young Corsican [Alizee, our shining starlet heroine] met the Myl�ne Farmer - Laurent Boutonnat duo [the people who actually wrote, and I think produced, the songs] marked a real turning point in her life and the result of this meeting was "Gourmandises", her first album" (http://www.moi-alizee.com/). What? Where's all the stuff about how they struggled from gig to seedy gig, peddling their handwritten songs, trying to remain true to their craft and out of the influence of the Big Bad Recording Industry Corporations? Euro pop songs also MEAN absolutely nothing--they're something to dance to, or whatever--and their singers are cute and fluffy. I'm actually amazed European audiences aren't up in arms. They don't seem to mind at all, which is mind-boggling to my American sensibilities. Americans scorn anything that seems noticeably produced, and demand their entertainment to be "real"--from music to reality TV---and so American pop stars try to pretend their songs are significant works of arts, and that they are artists. I don't know whether to give in to my gut-reaction to scorn these euro-fluff singers, or to chastise the Americans for being so uptight and hypocritical.
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