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AmericanGigolo
ClayBoard Newbie
Posts: 144
(2/3/04 4:32 am)
Reply The New Hope for the Music Industry
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Let's talk a bit about expectations, about molds, and about the established 'image' of the music industry.
By and large the music industry favors the image of the young, on the edge, manufactured-looks singer as the superstars of their pop world. You can look all around you with the Britney Spears, Christina Aguileras, and Justin Timberlakes of the world, rolled out like clones in a factory. In genres such as hip-hop and rap there are molds too, that of the street gangsta, thug-types. But both types seem to sing more about the bling bling and libidos than anything else these days.
It is hurting the music industry, it has been for a long time, even the winner of he first American Idol seemed to fit into this mold of the Christina-Clone soon after she was crowned, which is a squandering of her gift in my opinion (and possibly mine only.)
But then there is a new hope, a new generation that started with a show called American Idol 2.
Let's look at the winner first: Ruben is hardly what i'd call someone who fit the physical image of today's pop star, voice or not his physical looks simply do not match.
The World Idol, Kurt Nilsen, is also one who defeats the mold, the most plain looking man in the WI field, with a gap-toothed smile this father who was accused of looking like a hobbit, defeated the rest of the world, including the original American Idol: Kelly Clarkson.
Kimberly Locke & Frenchie: Showing that the larger women can still enrapture an audience even when the norm is for stick-thin waif girls in singing.
Josh Gracin: Who made no bones about his country leanings in the middle of a pop contest, and stuck to his guns throughout them, i'm not necessarily sure if that is mold-breaker material... but it seems to have paid off, and paid off well for him.
And last but certainly not least: Clay Aiken, the man at the forefront of a revolution, and in a way the above and more are also at the infancy of a possible revolution in the image and sound of today's music.
Clay, however, is in the limelight of it all, he took a sledgehammer to the walls and broke them down with his decidedly different looks, his witty charm, unshakable principles, dedication, phenomenal singing ability, and it paid off with record-shattering sales and a legion of fans who see a revolution coming and were ready to embrace a change.
DJs, talk show hosts, magazines, and others can't stop talking about him, even when they're making an effort to deride him somehow for not conforming to the accepted mold. He is truly everywhere, on magazines, on tv shows, at events, at parties among the movers and shakers, on the television, and of course on the airwaves and CD players of millions across America.
Here is a man who has never forgot where he came from, and worked to found a charitable organization that was his dream, as he promised he would.
And yet some in the music industry would label him a 'fad' or worse, never quite grasping what stands before them.
A turning point in the music industry.
And now, in the current season of American Idol, the mold broken by Clay and the others has inspired those who may have thought it not possible for them to compete. As I listen to auditions I hear vocal styles that remind me of what good singing should really be, voices of old souls and times past, smoky southern voices, smooth r&b voices, voices that may have belonged to the famed 'Rat Pack' of times past.
Quite simply, it's nothing I had ever heard before, to say it was completely started by one man would be a fallacy, but to say that one man by actions and example leads the coming revolution would be the utter truth.
He is their standard bearer.
He is their general.
He is Clay Aiken.
And for me? I have only this to say.
God Bless the Revolution.
-Gigs
Keeper of Clay's Reincarnation of Frank Sinatra | |
