--- "m.pallorina" <spunkyspud@couchpotatoes.ph> wrote:
<snipped>
> why
> the heck do these kinds of commercial stuff pop up out of
> nowhere and take hold of the audience? what does the
> audience want anyway, and how come the "classics" as
> defined by the good people in this list don't quite make
> it commercially?
Paraphrasing as a culturally-aware prof of mine used to
say, people don't know what they want, they want what they
know. As such, to achieve commercial success usually means
digging deep into marketing budgets to completely saturate
the airwaves with your product (by paying off radio
stations, huge cross-media promotions, etc.).
Take dido's "No Angel" as an example, an album which I
quite liked when it came out (what, like two and half years
ago now?). This was a great album, but when released, it
was pretty much commercially ignored. To acheive
recognition, Dido's music had to appear as the theme to a
TV show, then have a song appear on a popular movie
soundtrack. To finally blip on the commercial radio radar,
she had a song sampled by Eminem, which was then played ad
nauseum. Total market saturation, now she's a somewhat big
star, sitting at the top of the charts.
As for the question of classics, they're defined by most
irregardless of commercial success. I don't beleive
commercial success is required to have a tune declared as a
classic. Nor does commercial success necessarily
automatically bestow classic status on a song. 'Classic'
would imply a certain longevity, and let's face it, most
(not all) commercial hits lack longevity in big, BIG way.
They may accurately define a moment, but it is an ephemeral
moment, and quickly forgotten (Who's gonna know who Jessica
Simpson is 10 years from now? the hamster dance? MC
Hammer?). However, many of the 'classic' artists listed
recently in the hip hop threads of this list have acheived
a significant measure of commercial success (Dr. Dre, De La
Soul, Gang Starr, Beastie Boys, or moving off hip hop, Jill
Scott, India.Arie, Sade, d'Angelo... the list goes on).
> i'm just wondering why everyone on the list is so intent
> on excluding the commercial artists/songs/albums from the
> discussion
Because we're not sheep, following blindly? OK, too
sarcastic. Because commercial artists don't need the
exposure, everyone already knows about them. It's far more
exiting to stay one step ahead of the game, listening and
learning about the tastemakers whose sound will eventually
trickle down to the mainstream (like how hip hop is now
ubiquitous, or listening to jungle in '94 and then hearing
breakbeats in just about every commercial and radio hit in
'99, or seeing how two-step is being mutated to suit a boy
band's commercial jingle needs). Well, that and dozens upon
dozens of other reasons which would easily fill hundreds of
posts.
=====
Marco Pringle, host of
the Fat Beat Diet - Thursday evenings, 10:30-Midnight
CJSW 90.9FM (Calgary) - in real audio at:
http://www.cjsw.com
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Jul 12 2001 - 03:28:57 CEST