Chris Molanphy has an interesting post up on Idolator about Atlantic Records' bizarre decision to pull Estelle's album, Shine, off of iTunes just as "American Boy" was about to crack the top ten. The idea, obviously enough, is to try and pull off the same trick that Kid Rock has managed with his album Rock and Roll Jesus and the hit single "All Summer Long": forcing people who want the single to buy the album by refusing to make the single available any other way.
Chris hits all the important points, and his history of the decline of the single through the 90s is fascinating, but there's also a note of paranoia that I don't think is justified. It isn't that I don't believe the major labels would love to kill the single, and iTunes in the process, if they could manage it, it's that the ship has already sailed, and they have no chance now of stopping it. Kid Rock's success with "All Summer Long" is a fluke: an established artist playing to the nostalgia of his core audience in as obvious and abject a manner as he can manage, while at the same time striking a hypocritical no-downloading stance that he tries to make sound like a way of standing up for the little guy when what he's really doing is fleecing him.
Meanwhile, the market as a whole moves more and more toward downloading, and even if Apple continues to refuse to sell LPs as complete units instead of individual tracks, stories like Kid Rock's are going to be rare. You can't blame Atlantic for trying the same tactic with Estelle, but the fact is she's a totally different case: a British hip-hop singer with no US fan base, who's single has been slowly building for over three months now and was finally poised to make the top ten (she wouldn't have made it this week, though, not with T.I. and P!nk leaping in ahead of her). But, thanks to Atlantic, she's now barely in the top forty, her album sales have dropped, and her radio airplay has stalled.
Atlantic claims that they're doing this based on their reading of the audience, but treating Estelle's audience exactly the same way as Kid Rock's shows how little they know about either. They're also disregarding the fact that the audience's buying habits are rapidly mutating. A year ago, when Billboard changed the formula they used to calculate the Hot 100, it seemed as if they'd created a bulwark against digital sales making the singles chart look like a free-for-all. Since then, though, digital has grown so much that records are once again bouncing up and down like ping-pong balls (the Ting Tings "Shut Up and Let Me Go" has dropped out and re-entered the Hot 100 so many times I've lost count). Kid Rock and Atlantic can brag as much as they want about his CD selling a hundred thousand copies a week, but the fact is that three or four years ago, a hit like this would have had him selling twice that number, and airplay alone would have put his single in the top ten.
Record company machinations, especially such bald money grabs as this, are always to be deplored, but it's obvious, for now at least, that history is not on the major label's side. Instead of adapting themselves to the new environment, they're trying to rig the game. The odd thing is that they're doing it right out in the open, where everybody can see them cheating. If they're that desperate, you know they've already lost.
A very cool graphic, analyzing 10,000 songs in different genres and adding up the references to body parts. No real surprises--the eyes, a pop staple from the beginning, top almost every genre--though it's cool to see that hands receive the most references in gospel, and also in blues. No surprise that ass is number one in the hip-hop list, either, or that dick and pussy are in the top ten. What is intriguing about the hip-hop list is how many different body parts are named--almost twice as many as any other genre except folk. Is that a result of the level of detail in so many rap lyrics, or just an obsession with sex? Both, I imagine.
The only thing wrong with this chart is that there isn't a list of all genres combined. It would be interesting to see where ass stands amongst all those eyes. Also, why do they list different names for the same thing as separate parts? Were there problems of definition? I can see how booty might not be considered the same thing as ass, but the semantic difference between dick and cock or balls and nuts escapes me.
I can't even imagine watching the video, but the headline alone (oh my god their influence is spreading like moss) sums up everything I dislike about Fleet Foxes.
Is it just me, or is there the smell of revolution in the air? For the second week in a row, a song featuring that word, and using it in its strictly political sense, has appeared in the top ten. Last week it was the surprising (in pop terms) appearance of M.I.A., from whom a political emphasis is expected; this week it's the unsurprising appearance of Taylor Swift, from whom a political emphasis isn't expected at all. Of course, after the Dixie Chicks, and even Toby Keith's announcement that he's a lifelong democrat, a bit of politics (aside from the usual flag-waving) isn't that hard to imagine coming from modern country singers, but Swift has been country's teen sweetheart for the last two years, and her speaking up in this way (even if she's not explicit about exactly who she supports) is something of a surprise. With the speed in which records can now be made and released, this could turn into a very interesting fall. I await an answer record.
There are precious few producers or record executives who are as important as the artists they work with, but Jerry Wexler, who died today at 91, was one of them. Besides helping turn Atlantic into one of the greatest independent labels ever, shepherding the careers of Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, and countless others, his first great contribution to American music came during his stint as a Billboard editor in the late 40s, when he coined the term "rhythm and blues". Before Wexler, R&B had been called "race" music, a term as ghettoizing in its way as any Jim Crow law. It may seem a minor thing, but that change in terminology in pop music's leading trade magazine served as a major step in the removal of racism from the American music industry.
It's either a moment of great historical import or a random blip in the chaotic vagaries of modern marketing, but whatever the case, it's cause for celebration: "Paper Planes" is in the top five. For roughly the same reason that Coldplay has been in the top ten for over two months, or that Sara Barielles had a hit at all, M.I.A. finds herself in a place where not even her most ardent supporters would expect to find her. The difference is that "Paper Planes" isn't just OK, or catchy--it's a great song, the only truly great song to make the top ten all year (and yes, my estimation of "Forever" has dropped, and not just because it turned out to be a gum commercial).
If only "Paper Planes" arrival in the top ten weren't such a fluke. It's not as if there's a sudden groundswell of third world influenced dance music storming the charts (though the exoticism of some recent hits has certainly made a moment like this more of a possibility), and radio is guaranteed to shy away from anything so explicitly about drug dealing and decorated with shotgun wielding ten year olds. This is a hit on sales generated solely by the song's presence in the trailer for Pineapple Express. I fear that in many ways the audience sees "Paper Planes" as a novelty record, its politics included. As much as I would love to see "Jimmy" or "Boyz" (just to name the two most likely candidates) in the top ten, I won't hold my breath.
Though "Paper Planes"' rapid climb to the top ten is something of a shock, it's hardly the most bizarre thing on the Hot 100 this week. For that you need to listen to The Game's "My Life", featuring Lil' Wayne. It's no surprise that Wayne can sing (and that all the New Orleans in him comes out when he does--he phrases like the horns in a funeral parade), or that The Game can't rap, but combine the two and you have the most schizophrenic record of the year. Wayne's choruses are full of doubt and pain and wonder, The Games' verses of the usual name-dropping and mixed-up sentiment. Although it's hard to understand how The Game has maintained a career, it's even harder to figure out whether he's evil or just plain stupid. Halfway through "My Life", as a thank you for boosting his career, he offers to share his mother with Kanye. This is either so naive and heartfelt as to defy emotional analysis, or so shameless in its sentimental exploitation that it beggars belief. Since he's already named-checked Kurt Cobain and John Lennon in the first verse, I lean toward exploitation, and perhaps any hesitation on my part to condemn him has more to do with Wayne's influence over the track than anything else. I have a feeling that if Wayne wasn't there The Game's callous emotional calculation would be much more evident. But in this setting he sounds more confused than anything else. You can't help but laugh at him, but you also wonder how close to the poor clod's feelings this gets.
While I was in the Southwest over the weekend for some family get-togethers, I met a guy (who I'll call Guy) who is almost a walking definition of an itinerant musician. He plays four or five different instruments (at least that's how many he mentioned; there may be more), gives lessons, picks up work in everything from church groups to psychobilly bands, and makes a killing busking outside sports events.
About a dozen nights a month Guy also works with a local covers band, doing something that he calls, with joking disgust, a kind of karaoke. The way he describes it, though, it sounds more like miming or lip-syncing. What Guy does on these nights is bring his bass to the club, get up on stage, plug in, and play his parts, just the way any other musician would. The difference is that his amp is turned so far down that no one actually hears what he plays. In this band, all the parts, except for the vocals and the lead guitar, are pre-recorded midi files.
It's not fraud, exactly, more like misrepresentation. It isn't as if the band orders the files from some catalog. The guitarist, who Guy describes as a control freak, puts all the midi parts together himself, and plays his own parts live. At the same time, though, the files are designed to approximate the original hit recordings as much as possible, and don't leave room for improvisation or, I assume, much show of personality.
According to Guy, this isn't the only band pulling this trick. He knows of two or three others in the area doing the same thing. Club audiences, and managers, want full bands and a big show, not some lone guitarist or keyboardist playing to a bunch of pre-recorded tapes. At the same time, bands that are note perfect command more respect (and, it must be admitted, are easier to listen to), and the more closely they approximate the original records, the happier the crowd will be. Besides, in the midst of that drinking and dancing throng, who's going to notice that the bass player's fingering doesn't always match the notes, or that the drummer can create a cymbal crash with nothing but the power of his mind?
For this, Guy gets paid $100 a night for bar shows, and over $400 for opening slots with touring national acts (and not small-time acts, either). Not that he doesn't work hard for his money. To make things look right he needs to learn the parts of some forty odd songs, and even if nobody hears him, he still has to play (especially if the midi controller breaks down and the band needs to keep things going). He does feel a certain amount of guilt, however. Not so much for what he's doing but for other musicians, especially jazz people, whose playing is heard, but who even on a good night make half of what he does.
I may be late to the party on this, and since the equipment is so cheap now it shouldn't be a surprise, but I always assumed this sort of thing was limited to big name pop acts. Now it's only a matter of time before every bar band in the country is as note perfect and soulless as a Jessica Simpson record--no, not Ashlee; despite her past, she does at least try. The vocals are still live, at least for this band, but given Ashlee's example, that may not last long, either. How boring it all will be.
Today I got a hit from someone searching for "backmasking Miley Cyrus", and though I was really hoping to keep this a secret a while longer, who am I to say no to those who demand the truth? The sad fact is that if you play "7 Things" backwards, what you get is this. How can we ever trust her again?
