The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Happy Tolkien Reading Day.

QotD: What is your feeling about music reality shows like American Idol & The Voice.

The Voice returns tonight for its 4th season and Dave Grohl recently slammed such competitions:

Speaking in the current issue of NME he said: "I think people should feel encouraged to be themselves. That's what bums me out about those shows where people are judged so harshly by fucking musicians that hardly even play an instrument on their own fucking albums. It makes me really mad."

He added: "I swear to God, if my daughter walked up onstage and sang her heart out and some fucking billionaire looked at her and said, 'No, I'm sorry you're not any good,' I'd fucking throttle that person, I swear to God. Who the fuck are you to say what's good or bad?"

Grohl also reckons the shows homogenise music so that "everyone sounds like fucking Christina Aguilera." The Foo Fighters singer added: "The next time someone says you're not a good singer say: 'Fuck You'. I interviewed Neil Young and he said in his band someone said to him: 'The band's really great, but honestly you shouldn't be the singer.' If Neil Young had listened to that person then we wouldn't have had any Neil Young."

As musicians who participate in a weekly music competition, what is your feeling on these shows?

These are shows looking for talented vocalists, not artists, not songwriters. They just want good looking people who can show emotion with their voices and connect with an audience. This is the way the music industry was pre-Beatles. Songwriters wrote songs, arrangers arranged charts. Studio musicians played the shit out of them. Vocalists sang.

QotD: I don't like reality shows and the music ones are the absolute worst of them all in my opinion. They aren't a competition for the best artist. They are scouts for the next cookie cutter pop stars that have always been the same and always will be the same. They don't want originality or freedom of expression. They want identical profitable products and brainwash the sheep into what they are supposed to like.

As far as "some" reality shows, I do like the occasional pawn shop and American pickers type shows. It's always cool seeing the things people bring in to pawn, or the stuff junk pickers find and think have value. "oh, here's a piece of tin foil, this can make a good hat for some crazy guy"

But I can't stand the bachelor/in a house together/on an island/undercover boss/model/runway type shows! Those shows are the devil's work.

Yeah, I hate so-called reality shows. I have, however, always been fond of talent show stuff and watched much of an Idol season once and much of the Voice last year, as my girlfriend was into it. The dramatic music/pause stuff bugs the crap out of me, but I like the performances. Fun to call someone out, even knowing I can't do it. But I agree with both Ken and BLT. Music industry stuff, mostly, but there is the chance for some good performances as well. I don't know that I'll be watching either show, though. Around here, the long running Community Auditions can still be found late nights. I watch if I bump into it.

I feel that reality shows are just another thing which has confused the professional landscape of the entertainment industry. But ... it's adapt or die. A few of my friends have had their managers try to put them into seasons of The Voice or on Idol. You don't always have to audition either; there's some plants within the industry.

I've never watched, and I don't want to. But apparently lots of people get a lot of enjoyment out of them. So be it. There's only one perfect music competition...Nur Ein!

Niveous wrote:Happy Tolkien Reading Day.

Was it? Darn, I just started re-reading The Hobbit today, two days late. If I had known... I love the audiobooks narrated by Rob Inglis. They are awesome.

As for these shows, I too feel like they promote homogenous music. Seems kind of boring.
We found out that an a capella group from my wife's grad school (Dartmouth) was on a contest show for a capella groups, so we watched a bit of that. I felt like that one promoted more interesting music. Ah, NBC "The Sing-Off".
-bill

I really enjoyed MTVs "band on the run" but it only lasted one season. The contest was dumb but it was really cool to see 4 bands touring around trying to sell merch and playing crappy clubs. This was circa 1999.

I like Project Runway and Top Chef . Pretty much any show about the creative process I find interesting. I'd love to see the song fight / nur ein reality show. To watch BGM , Tuners Union, FBF, etc go through their writing and recording process would be awesome.

Maybe one of the challenges this year should be "show your work" where you are responsible for submitting multiple Mp3s showing the progress of your songs from demo to completion.

I only watched a couple of seasons of Idol. I stopped watching when Blake Lewis lost the finals due to a VERY unfair and obviously-rigged finals song. He was by far way more talented and interesting, but the song they gave for the finals was clearly written for what's-her-name, and the judges mostly criticized him based on how bad a fit the song was for him. Like he had any fucking choice in the matter.

I've ended up buying both of his albums that came out since then, and enjoyed them a lot.

Non-music-wise, currently I'm watching (and mostly hating) Penny Arcade's Strip Search, which is trying way too hard to be Hell's Kitchen. I also still occasionally watch the Gordon Ramsay trio of "reality" shows on Fox, although Hell's Kitchen has gotten boring. Kitchen Nightmares and Masterchef are still reasonable to watch though; Masterchef in particular is still actually about cooking, rather than Hell's Kitchen which is mostly about terrible people being shitty to each other. (Kitchen Nightmares is about terrible people being shitty to each other who then eventually re-learn how to cook, but it's on thin ice for me.)

I know Gordon Ramsay is really shouty and reduces people to tears...but he really melts my butter!

RangerDenni wrote:I know Gordon Ramsay is really shouty and reduces people to tears...but he really melts my butter!

lol, you weirdo.

Now that Rachael Ray and her 30 minutes meals. She really smokes my sausage.

I don't have a problem with these singing competition shows, personally; I find them easy enough to avoid. I just hope that the people who follow them realize that it's a very specific subset of "talented" being tested for. They're not looking for the next great American artist, not for good musicians, not for songwriters, just vocalists*. And not just good vocalists, but vocalists who are especially good at a particular type of "pop" performance that's been popular for the last two decades or so. And not just the ones who are good at that particular type of pop vocal performance, but the ones who also have great stage presence. And not just that narrow subset, but also (except for The Voice) the ones who embody all of the above-mentioned criteria and also look gorgeous even by Hollywood standards.

Dave Grohl is on the record with some polarizing statements about the state of the music industry in general. He worries that Rock is dying, and that makes him sad. I personally think that it's not a bad thing that rock isn't the dominant force it once was. No, those of us who enjoy Rock music still know where to go when we want to get it, and I don't think that's liable to change in our lifetimes. I don't think we should feel threatened about the presence or dominance of other genres, and I especially find it inappropriate to complain so aggressively about how other genres have different standards from what he's used to.

In other words, if Simon Cowell yells at you, it doesn't mean you're not cut out for the music industry, or that you shouldn't be singing; it just means that you're not cut out for The X Factor. Nothing more, nothing less.

*Sorry, that verbiage makes it look like I don't consider vocalists "musicians." They definitely are musicians; but my point is that singing is the only skill being judged, out of a broad range of musical skills.