How to Create a Pop Star

Why would I hate her? I'm not even American. And as for the Black Eyed Peas song. Yeah..it's OK.

Uh...I forgot to bring up something else.  Why would you love being driven to tears by disgust?

They were marketed in the 70s and they got tempted to consolidate their success with pop, or at least more accessible music.  Or...they simply swung to the other extreme and began to pursue esoteric directions that the audience could not keep pace with.  It was the only time the music industry allowed progressive music to thrive, because it was viable.  It's not likely to happen again.   And if you know so much about how terrible the ways of the industry are, you would also know what they can do to artists....especially, you know, the horses that can't win races anymore.  Why would you actually wish that for your favourite artists?  

 

 

Ya dun goofed. dtguitarfan is backtracing you with the cyberpolice.

Insofar as music is entertainment, this is a completely sensible view of the music industry.  The point of entertainment is to put out material that people will like, and like immediately.  If the music industry finds the cheapest and most loophole-filled ways to do this as possible, who cares?  There's no real integrity to entertainment (unless you're talking about moral integrity with regard to lyrical content and such), because there's no such thing as objective value to entertainment.  The only thing objective about entertainment is the amount of people who like it, and the music industry is trying to make that objective number as large as possible with the lowest possible cost.

Insofar as music is art, however, the modern industry is the worst thing that could ever have happened.  There is an integrity to art; art takes skill and discipline and effort and pain and hard work, not merely from businessmen but from the artists themselves.  Above all, art must move the soul and influence the mind; it's not just for entertainment, it's for catharsis, not just to momentarily distract you from your troubles but to lift you out of them, to lift you out of yourself to experience the world through someone else's eyes, to identify with his emotions and to share in them.  Whether it's music, painting, drama, or sculpture, art has the power to change people, and the power to make them feel things they could never feel otherwise.

Don't misunderstand me; there's nothing intrinsically wrong or evil about the music out there that exists soley for entertainment, but there is something wrong when, as a society, that's all we see in music.  You're not hurting yourself by listening to Justin Beiber, but you could be doing so much better for yourself if you listened to Bach and Mozart as well.  That isn't to say that music meant for entertainment cannot be good art as well; Rush see themselves as entertainers as do many other prog bands, and much of the music we consider "classical" "art" music today was originally intended for mere entertainment.  There are some very good pop bands; I think that Coldplay is one of the best groups in music today, and I find real value in One Republic as well, not to mention many of the "classic" pop groups.  But I think that Geoff is correct in saying that the modern method of producing pop music is not conducive to artistic value.  If you took his original post and specified that we were talking about most (not all) of modern top 40 pop music, and specified that we were talking about artistic value, then I'd basically agree with what he said.

I'd love to know where you got all this information.  There are very many good albums that have been created by artists with little professional help.  There are great albums that have been recorded live without much alteration; that's how they had to record before today's technology was available, and that's how many of the jazz greats recorded.  Any good drummer can lay down a good drum track and only have to fix a few stray mistakes and apply some tasteful effects in the mix.  If what you are saying was true and every band sounded terrible before their music was altered in-studio, then there would be no good live bands.  

I have no problem with studio alteration, as long as it's being used to perfect the music, not to try and make it something it's not.  I don't care if they auto-tuned James Labrie's vocals because they were just a tad bit pitchy, or if Alex Lifeson patched his solo together from various takes, or if someone hit a bum note and they erased and fixed the mistake.  I don't care whether something was recorded live or laid down track by track.  We live in a day and age where the industry is obsessed with perfection, and our recording methods reflect that.  In the end, there's two things that matter; the end result of the studio record, and the band's ability to perform it live.  Though I say that it's the end result that matters, the way in which the band and producers go about recording is going to affect the end result.  If something sounds bad in-studio, you can fix it all you want and make all the notes sound perfect, but it's never going to be a great album.  All great albums have meat to them; they have talent, hard work, and musical value behind them, and the studio techniques are used to perfect and refine that.  The band's ability to perform live is the big test: after recording the album, the band has to show that there was talent and good performing and writing by reproducing live what they created and perfected in-studio.

It's not just prog musicians, either, who can record like this.  There are plenty of musicians in other genres of music who have created excellent music, recorded it in the studio, perfected and enhanced the recording with effects and mastering, and then managed to reproduce it live at a high quality.