my glass is empty; clearly this means we need to open another bottle

[asimplechord]

1. Bistro Provence for supper tonight. Mm, wine. And the Poire Belle Helene was amaaazing. Totally made up for spending a weekend day at work.

2. I'm not sure what it says that the song I have on repeat right now is Frank Turner's The Road.

3. Bonnaroo passes purchased. IDC about Eminem.

4. It pains me more than I can say that in an issue of Rolling Stone where independent bands like Empires get a few inches of space, Justin Bieber gets the cover plus a multi-page article. I just. Really? He sang songs that were essentially fluff before his balls dropped. I get that plenty of teenies love him. But as a long-term investment for an industry, how is that workable?


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Comments

[catchmelike.livejournal.com]

idk, at the end of the day rolling stone is running a business and in a world where no one buys print ANYTHING anymore, justin bieber is going to sell more magazines. possibly not fair but completely understandable from a business stand point. i remember all of the major pop acts from when i was 15/16 getting rs covers as well, and while we can all say they were better~~~~ we're wearing goggles. nsync was mindless pop too, and britney, and both of them got multiple rs covers. i can't remember if bsb did bc i wasn't as into them, but i'd wager they did too. now, the argument can be made that britney stood the test of time (mostly) as did justin, but we don't know now whether or not bieber will. who knows, he could be one of the good ones in the making. i bet when my 15 year old teenie self was rocking out to nysnc, some 25 year old somewhere was like GOD THIS IS SO MUCH WORSE THAN THE CRAP WHEN I WAS THAT AGE.

[catchmelike.livejournal.com]

lol i am so terrible tonight. possibly i am going on a million hours awake and i am tired and prone to word vomit. i have lots of feelings on pop music. i could probably write an essay.

[asimplechord.livejournal.com]

I totally see your point. Mostly I'm just O.o about the Bieber phenomenon (and was totally not into pop anything during the BSB/NSYNC years b/c I was such a poor grad student and thus had little to no exposure to it). Like, srsly? Mostly b/c I am not in his age demographic, but also b/c of the entire pop-culture bubble surrounding him. I mean, a biopic about a 16-yr-old? And then, when they asked him about his opinion about abortion last week? What guy his age (not even one subject to US health-care restrictions, really) has a coherent opinion on abortion? And why does the media think that he's an appropriate person to address this, even if his movie is faith-based?

[asimplechord.livejournal.com]

OK, and I just saw your tweets, so I want to respond to that:

It's not that it's popular. I like plenty of music that's popular. I like the Discos, I like PWTs, I like Linkin Park and Green Day. I'm not a fan of Arcade Fire's The Suburbs. I don't care for Lady Gaga, but I loved Madonna back in the day. Different strokes, and all that. I actually saw Justin Bieber live when he opened for Cobra Starship and AAR. I thought his songs were interchangeable and overproduced, but he did an okay job playing drums when Gabe et al. invited him out to play Nate's drums. So maybe he is musically talented in a way that will survive the overexposure of his youth, and he'll become the next JT. But nothing about this article, which I actually read before I got so annoyed, makes me want to stick around and see if that happens. I mean, from the first paragraph "half of woman-kind is in love with him"? Uh, really? Hyperbole, much? And if I did love him? I wouldn't after reading this, b/c he comes off like an asshat. Which, you know, he's 16 and lots of people are douches at 16, and he's giving an interview, so maybe that's not him it's the journalist.

[catchmelike.livejournal.com]

idk, I have a lot of opinions on rolling stone itself that i won't really get into, mostly stemming from the fact that i WAS so into pop back in the day and I remember more than one of the artists i enjoyed, after interviews, coming out saying 'they totally twisted what i said/they reinterpreted everything/they flat out made stuff up.' I think it was a poor decision on the reporters part to ask him that question because like you said, no one cares and no on needs to know. they did it because they knew he'd be unprepared and they'd get a good, nice, controversial quote and it would sell magazines. on twitter, i was mostly responding to what you said about 'will people listen to anything to radio pushes on them' comment because i *do* enjoy bieber's music. not because i think it should be winning awards or because i think it's some great piece of art. i like it because it's fun and because i like fun music. i feel the same way about ke$ha or any other number of mindless pop acts out, but i don't enjoy them because some big media tells me that i should~~ i like them because when i'm cleaning or i'm driving in the car, it's fun to just bop along to some dumb, catchy song that doesn't really mean anything. i don't honestly care what any of the people whose music i enjoy are like irl, because douches or dirty hipsters or coke addicted freaks, if i paid much attention to ANY of their opinions, i'd hate them.

I don't mean to argumentative or wanky, and I totally see your point that it's a bit disconcerting to see bieber on the cover when he doesn't really represent genuine rock artists or whatever, but I also see where the magazine is coming from. He's a little teenage phenomenon and whether you agree with or understand his popularity, it is what it is. lol it's late and I'm being wordy.

[asimplechord.livejournal.com]

No, I think it is interesting and GOOD that we're having this conversation, so don't worry about being wordy.

I didn't mean to imply that people will listen to anything that big media pushes on them, and that whatever that music is it must be bad. I am not a fan of Ke$ha or BEP, but there's an audience for everything. At the same time, I will admit that I DO have a strong bias against major radio outlets, because I think they have so much control over airwaves that should be available to everyone - no one OWNS bandwidth, FFS - and once a single Clear Channel or Comcast-owned station starts promoting one artist, the entire family will (like The Buzz in Houston and The Edge in Dallas, with their coordinated festival schedules; oh man, and don't get me started on the Buzz being Houston's "new rock alternative" - any station that plays vintage Beastie Boys every hour is not playing anything new, rock, or alternative). In an area where a media outlet has multiple radio stations, musicians with industry contracts and management with which the corporate owner has a deal have a significant edge. In short: media consolidation makes me :/

In some ways I also think that the industry has made a deliberate choice in aiming at the youngest consumers, because of the way society has changed and given young people more power as media consumers.