My God! Young Lady, but weren’t you ripped
off!? The Producers arranged it so that
the Popular Music Vote would be split so that the strong Minority Vote of the
Southern Block could walk off with the Win with far less than 50% of the Vote. In any Civilized Venue, you would have
deserved a runoff, no? Head to head Mr.
Steven could never have come even close to beating you.
Well, anyway, the reality of it would have been that
you would have won next to nothing. The “5
Million dollar Record Deal” would have been the X-factor Producers shoving
money from one of their pockets to another one of their pockets; from left hand
into right, but behind their back. They
would have consigned you into cutting a cheezy record with low production
values, on a tight schedule, and consisting of mostly horrible generic pop
originals. They would have you made you the
pop girl of the season, and then, disillusioned and disappointed, your adoring
fans would remember only that you had once been good.
As it stands now, you can get your Own Deal, and
under much better contractual considerations.
Oh, you are just 13 years old, and so it might be likely you would still
be thinking of High School and College… but not necessarily. You could home school your way through
knowing anything a High School student must know to do well on the SAT Tests,
and then you can enter College whenever
your career reaches some natural point of relaxation.
Now for some advice… from an old man, and so humor
me. Yes, yes, yes, you have a Once in a
Generation Voice, but what is the most important thing now, is not your Voice,
but your Taste and Discernment.
Essentially it comes down to whether or not you know what a Hit is. Some people with amazing degrees of musical
talent simply throw it all away by making horrible choices regarding what they
choose to record. For instance, Barbara
Streisand, an undeniably talented Lady, now takes up nearly all of her time
trying to impress a New York Theatrical Elite that doesn’t do good popular
music because, well, they don’t need to… they have a huge captive audience –
all those New York Gay People, God Bless them, that have nowhere else to go. They go to the same theatres to see the same
shows, however horrible they are, satisfied to just to preen like birds out in
the theatre lobbies during the intermissions.
But Barbara does this ‘Show’ music hoping to make friends or keep them
among this tired sick and wasted ‘elite’.
Meanwhile dumpsters nationwide are brim full of Streisand CD’s, or
people are warned off of buying them in the first place. Joan Osborne did a CD of some of her
favorite Blues Songs… songs that had been her inspiration. My God!, but what a yawn fest! Macy Grey did a tribute to Stevie Wonder, of mostly
songs that Stevie couldn’t even get into
the Top 40, and she tore up the few good songs so badly that, well, we are
topping off the Nation’s dumpsters again.
Oh, and there are the Generic Pop Songs. The Record Companies, who knows why, but
they blindly and stupidly demand of Artists that they provide so many original recordings
on some fixed schedule. In a World where
anybody who really does write three real honest-to-god Hits in their entire
lifetime should be recognized as something of a Mortal God, well the Record
Companies want to fill up records year
after year, but with what. It is a huge
waste of plastic! Even the Best singer
song writers are reduced to putting out CD’s full of ‘filler’… sometimes ‘filler’
from start to finish. Aimee Mann… I used
to worship her. But her most recent CD…
I listened to it and cried. Ten songs
and nothing there.
The best anecdote I have regarding this particular
problem, of record companies demanding ‘filler’ songs on the off chance that
one might somehow go against all the odds of market logic and creative judgment
to become a surprise hit, is all about a once young star, Jackie De Shannon. She had made a hit of a Burt Bacharach song, “What
the World Needs Now is Love”, and then she got a big break of being able to
open for the Beatles on their 1965 American Tour. Around about then she thought up her own ‘Hit’
song and had the good sense to know it was a ‘hit’. It was “Put a Little Love
In Your Heart”. She was excited for herself
and ran off to the Record Company offices and because her demo tape was so
sparse, she made all of the horn parts and string parts with her mouth, and
accentuated them by waving her hands all about.
The Execs tried to bluff away her optimism but she stood firm – it was a
hit – she knew it and they knew it, and
they would have to pay for it! Well,
they did, but the small print in her contract was a B___h. She would have to follow the Single soon
with an album. She had something like a
few weeks to fill the complete album and she knew and everybody knew it was
awful… except the American Public who hadn’t been warned and were very
disappointed in her ‘rip off’ album and never forgave her for it. Remember ,this was during the Age of the
Beatles where almost every ‘good’ album had well more than three songs that
were actually up in the ‘Hit’ caliber and most of the rest fine enough to listen
too without rendering offense or absolute boredom. So the idea of a complete album with just one
good song, when everyone already owned it as a Single, well… it was all bitterness
and darkness after that. And so it is
that the way she negotiated an honest-to-god ‘hit’ came down to ruining her
career. Her friend at the time was a
young songwriter named Carole King, to whom she poured out all her various laments
and warnings. Carole took them to heart
and so when she in turn went off to the Record Companies, she had a complete
album full of nearly perfect ‘hits’, from start to finish. Of course, Carole King, except for a few good
songs in later years, was never even nearly able to equal the likes of “Tapestry”
again… well, in fact, has anybody? Most
Greatest Hits albums aren’t nearly as good as just plain “Tapestry”.
So, the point there is to be very careful in assembling
your Work, your CD’s. Now, of course you
can’t please everybody – not everybody likes every song, but we are not talking
about that. We are talking about songs that
everybody with a modicum of taste knows to be simply a ‘filler’. Remember, YOU are the talent. Remember, that when a Record company Exec
gives you advice, well, politely nod your head ‘yes, yes, sure, sure’ but then,
go off to the company archives and find out how well this particular exec’s
judgments have gone. Had he been
responsible for a series of flat and stupid CD’s, and a broken trail of used up
and abandoned artists? Yes!? Well, guess what he wants to do to you… not
out of hate or malice, but simply because he a stupid business man… probably
got the job because he’s somebody’s son-in-law, and not because he even
pretends to do anything besides go through the motions of being a Record
Company Exec. So trust your own judgment,
but that also means trusting a Producer or somebody that actually does have a
Stellar record of producing hit after hit after hit, and never leaving a
wounded or melancholy Artist behind. For
instance, Stevie Nick’s Greatest Hits record jacket is really funny, in that it
points out time and again how she moaned and complained that songs her producer
wanted her to do simply ‘sucked’ but that he wouldn’t budge and when she
finally did them that they ended up being Monster Hits for her. So, you need to have the Discernment to know
who to listen to. You need both good
Judgment of Music and Good Judgment of the people you work with.
Oh, and now a personal observation. You have focused on singing. When it comes to
dance and moving on stage, well, it is as though your slippers are made of
steel and concrete. My advice here is to
learn quickly how to Visually represent music.
The best method for that is one I have seen in the Far East – Korean Girls
come out on stage with sticks that have attached to them these very long
flowing ribbons that they twirl and bullwhip around in perfect time to the
music. High notes are whipped up into
the air, and the low notes beat along the stage floor. The audience sees a perfect Visual
Translation of the music. Dance is
supposed to do the same thing, but the Medium of arms and legs is not nearly
was Wonderful as the sticks and ribbons.
But after one ‘gets’ the idea,
then one can translate the Music visually with dance. And once you can dance, then you can control
the stage better. Oh, and as Rod Stewart
or Annie Lennox can attest, being able to toss the mike stand up into the air
and catch it like a baton, well, audiences wouldn’t be more amazed unless it
were by the 2nd coming of Christ… and if He had good sense, He would
learn to toss the mike stand too. Oh,
be careful, and use both hands.
Also, an appreciation for visual motion and dance
gives one an idea for the exuberance of some music. Right now you focus on the Sublimity of Music
– those magical moments of a culminating melodic phrase against a background of
folded together and consummated harmonies… it does carry one away. But Music also can have Exuberance and Flight…
anywhere from a tickling lightness to an absolute kind of stomp. Yes, there are thousands of examples of this
done badly. But how often is Musical
Sublimity done badly also? So, yes, you
already have the proven ability to take your audience up into the very
Stratosphere of musical rapture, but now you need to be able to whip them up
into a Frenzy. You know what they say
about Show Business, don’t you? “Make
them Laugh and make them Cry”. Well,
that phrase may apply more so to the Dramatic Arts, but you get the idea. You need more Range in your Act. Move them to tears, but also just plain move them.
Get those feet a-tappin.
Now, what do you do?
As I said before, anybody who can even write three hits in a lifetime is
a veritable God, so I can’t ask you to be a ‘singer-songwriter’, as it is,
well, an impossible trade to maintain for very long. Even Neil Diamond does covers now. You could find a good Song Writer. There is a guy in the U.K. that writes for
Amy Belle, a very talented young lady that Rod Stewart ‘discovered’ some years
back. The songwriters name is Lindop. Rod Stewart had brought her out on stage for
a concert that went to DVD, and then everyone waited years, and nothing was
heard from her, and when the world was ready to simply shrug and forget her,
out comes this precious little CD called, ironically enough, “Lost in the
Shortcut”. All of the best songs are by
this Lindop character. See if you can
steal him… well, if he still has anything left.
But you can always reach back and do covers. I know you listen to a lot a music… the note ‘bend’
you do at the end of “Feeling Good”, well, Nina doesn’t do that, but the
background singers on Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff”, they do a note bend just like
the one you did. So you listen a lot of
music and you don’t hesitate to use what you know. So go back and get some of these old songs
and fix them up… update them. If you
need any ideas, well, I have over 600 ‘favorite’ songs catalogued by Key. There are some really good songs… songs that
had even been ‘hits’… that no one does today. Yes, and there are probably many good songs out
there in Musical History hidden by horrible production choices – good songs
made bad. Oh, James Taylor had first
been signed by the Beatle’s Apple Records, and they made “Carolina” sound like
a march song, with trombones and tubas.
Oh, and remember how Joe Cocker was able to make the stupid Ringo Starr song “With a Little Help from my Friends”
into a true rock and roll Classic. You
know, nearly all of the ‘Hit’ songs of the Sixties, or well before about 1972
or 74, were done to some awkward time signature… I remember as a juggler having
to do everything to a 3 ball pattern, which was not very ‘dancy’, but then songs
went ‘even’ somehow and I was able to do 4 ball and the dancing got more fluid
. So I suspect one could go back to the
sixties and re-build melodic phrases to a more modern time signature.
Oh, here as an idea, considering your age. Laura Nero.
Of course you know her, but for my other readers, allow me to elaborate,
Laura Nero was, much like our very own Carly Rose, a teenage prodigy. Some of her songs are almost embarrassingly ‘young’. “Let’s go down to the River and drink my
daddy’s wine, get Blasted”… it’s about a teenager’s first drunk experience. “Wedding Bell Blues” is a 16 year old girl fantasizing
about marriage… almost a child playing ‘house’.
“Stone Soul Picnic”, well… we can guess what that is about. Barbara Streisand covered Nero. Oh, and a lady with perhaps the best popular
voice of the 20th Century, though nobody gives her the credit for
it, Marilyn Macoo, with her Fifth Dimension group, they made a fortune of
covering Laura Nero. But at your age,
Laura Nero should be yours… you should do Laura Nero and simply resonate with
all that Teenage Prodigy energy. Oh,
and rock and roll. Cover The Who… do that
song about Teenage Wasteland with the best electric violin solo in rock and
roll history.
Oh, perhaps we dismissed your writing your own
material much too soon. Do write. But don’t compose on guitar. People who compose on guitar do so with the
most predictable of chords and it all ends up sounding the same… yes, perfectly constructed songs, but one
simply can’t tell them apart. It is all
like Taylor Swift – the songs all seem okay one by one but when the CD is over,
the mind has nothing particular to remember because all the songs merge into
one big bland mass of sameness. So compose
on keyboard. Yes, yes, you already play
piano, but I recommend going to electronic keyboard so you can transpose all of
your notes down to just the white keys, like you are playing everything in the
Key of C. That way you can keep the same
key finger patterns and use the transpose key to change Key to fit your vocal
range. This allows you to put all of
your work into finding phrases and less into fighting the mechanics of the
traditional piano keyboard – two rows of keys, blacks and white, a certain
stumbling block, but we all insist on lugging it about to appease the Gods of
Holy Musical Tradition .
Oh, about musical themes and lyrics. Well, you are so young. We are all so used to your Sublimity, that we
would be rather disappointed if we only had songs of ‘puppy love’ and passing
notes in class. But if you got too
heavy, well, nobody would believe it.
Now, I do not think many people have ever done this, but you are young
enough so that we can likely suspect that the Best Literature and Poetry of the
English Language is still in front of you.
When High School curriculum requires you to read the Very Best, well,
let it ‘kill two birds with one stone, and see if it could perhaps give you
some musical or thematic ideas. And when
your interviewers ask about how a 14 year old or a 15 year old can come up with
such themes, well, you can plausibly blame it upon Literary Influences. Oh, and it would prove you are not such a dunce
as Taylor Swift. How can any ‘intelligent’
young lady be exposed to so much fine literature and come out totally unmarked
by any of it?
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