Counterpoint: On American Idol, Mainstream Music
I am putting forth a continuation of what I believe to be a very interesting debate, and one that I find myself in the middle of more often than almost any other.
Regarding the Idol point, mainly, I feel it is necessary to point out that I find it hard to believe that this series in particular has been especially detrimental to the music industry, if only because the concept of the show is not new to television or music – less focused iterations of the same concept such as The Gong Show and Star Search have produced honest-to-God hitmakers in the past, if their products were not necessarily so enduring as a Kelly Clarkson (anyone else remember “Don’t Leave Me This Way?”). And furthermore, we can’t pretend that the idea of record labels pushing formulaic pop music is anything new to the Idol era or even the new century – the ’90’s had their Bushes, their Silverchairs, their Verve Pipes; the 80’s had their Mr. Bigs, their Teslas, their White Lions; the 70’s had their endless streams of disco one-hit-wonders, and the ’60’s had the entire British invasion. New developments in media have been able to attach a lot more flash to new trends, and the emergence of the internet means virtual immortality for the most fleeting and artificial music, but the idea has basically been the same since pop music became industrialized.
It’s A Hit by Rilo Kiley
And let’s not forget, for every inundation of pop music effluvia there are the major labels that take risks on the music bubbling beneath the surface, oftentimes becoming the catalysts for still newer trends that become just as processed and overdone as the ones they were trying to dethrone. Let’s not forget that the Sex Pistols signed two hugely-paying major label record deals during their short career, and that before 1991 it seemed completely impossible that any band like Nirvana could become worldwide superstars, much less a cultural institution. It’s always been a dance that the major labels play, building themselves up with manufactured chart-toppers to tear themselves down by playing into the hands of the rebellious and making the underground their own.
The Man Who Sold The World by Nirvana
The thing is, since the emergence of the internet as a vehicle for distributing music, the old models of the pop music business (the ones that are still the foundations for shows like American Idol) are beginning to show their age. Sales are declining and profits are tanking, and the industry by and large has been struggling with swallowing its pride and embracing the possibilities of the new age of music appreciation.
Rage In The Plague Age by Les Savy Fav
