Strange then to see the Mirror having a bit of a go at her – http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/07/10/is-kylie-a-loser-in-fame-game-115875-22402190.  - through non other than ex GMTVer Fiona Phillips. The article is packed with lots of ‘oooo but I really do like Kylie’ statements and has tried to soften its criticisms by patronisingly wrapping up its sentiment in an overall ‘we’re just looking out for her tone’  - no doubt a hangover from her breakfast television days where this sort of insipid thing is encouraged.

Fiona declares Kylie’s kising of Scissor Sisters’ Matronic at Glastonbury was simply a Madonna inspired ploy and a “42-year-old star is coming across as an attention seeking 20-yearold”. What is ironic is that Miss Phillips writes this article just before completing her next one on Colleen Rooney bathing in the sea with her kid, accompanied by a clearly staged snapshot. Fiona though is never one to hype a 20 something seeking attention as being newsworthy content.

The Madonna allusion is particularly unfair. While Madonna is known for her fame tactics (and we always quite like them), Kylie has never really tried to hog the limelight in quite the same way. In fact the way she gracefully bowed out when she was ill has been conveniently forgotten by Fiona Phillips.

Fiona ends with the warning “…when the music and the looks and the career have gone, and all that’s left is fame, it’s really not much to look forward to.”. I have no idea why it is assumed Kylie’s music will fail as she heads towards 50 but Miss Phillips knows better. And she is right to point out it must be terrible to be famous and then lose your talent – best to become famous without any talent eh Fiona.

Picture Courtesy of Dave_79

Another release from her upcoming album, Commander, raised eyebrows for genre hopping – but she was quick to defend herself.

I did not forget about my urban roots, nor will I ever…That is one of the reasons I am here period…I thank everyone for being so wonderful and so open to me trying something new. I won’t let you down this record, I promise you.

What is most interesting though is the wider context. With the success of Lady Gaga, all the american divas seem to be shifting towards a more electronic sound. Releases from Christina, Kelly and Kelis have all gone this way so far, and it looks set to become a trend.

Picture courtesy of alexander.mussard

The man we often look to in these situations, Simon Cowell, was absent, which seemed something of an innovation in televised competition. There were the same earnest youths of course, although the classicists are a little more melodramatic than their X-factor rivals. In between the awkward talking heads there was time for a good deal of music and plenty of talent to rank.

Perhaps I missed Cowell more than expected though, as trying to sort the night’s performers into their order of merit was harder than expected. Choosing between half a dozen brilliantly gifted people was not only difficult, it asked serious questions about what, as an audience, we look for in performance, how we define greatness in art and even how we interpret music with our ears.

Such questions are not limited to music of course – pub debates on ‘the greatest’ extend to nearly every area of life. Yet the dilemma is particularly palpable when, at such an early stage in their lives, the studies are so accomplished. And therein lay the first dilemma; how do we rank skill?

Let me ask, in the great scheme of things, how important is technique, the handling of an instrument? Often enough it seems the knack of making a noise from the damn thing is a source of wonderment, and whenever we hear a piece of music proficiency is something we recognise. Reputations like Jimi Hendrix’s are built on ability foremost, his legacy as someone who could ‘play’ more reaching than his other credentials. The guitar apparently lends itself to braggadocio because it has produced a string of instrumentalists lauded for their dexterity. In the ‘80s many of its players seemed intent on playing as quickly and precisely as possible.

In the Young Musician of the Year competition there was a more tempered kind of flair in abundance. These were young people who had dedicated hours and hours a day to practising and refining their muscle memory. Embouchures had been perfected and fingers strengthened through endless rehearsal, and all done around the business of going to school, making friends etc. If we were to go on skill alone, however, we would measure accuracy in a mathematical way, with a stop watch and metronome. The fact is that aptitude, a feature of learning an instrument, becomes less of a consideration once a certain standard is reached. “Forget everything you’ve learnt,” the be-boppers once implored, “and just play what’s on your mind.”

Which brings about the second dilemma, and how we quantify the “playing of the mind”. An expression that comes not from practice or technique, this nameless quality has become the basis on which most popular music is made today. The lack of skill in today’s young musicians is another discussion entirely, but one can’t fault the punks or the bedroom musicians for pandering to our respect of the ‘x factor’. A lack of surety can produce remarkable results on an instrument – John Lee Hooker’s strangely compelling meter, John Cale’s atonal violin on The Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan’s singing…. All of these are a triumph of ineptitude, a celebration of incompetence. They are also some of the most important musicians we have heard.

The candidates for Young Musician of the Year gave a reminder of the importance in balancing these two opposing considerations, precision and emotion. As an audience we rate our connection to musicians and our opinion on their skills almost subconsciously, but for these young professionals a conscious effort has to be made to mould the two into a performance. It’s a lot to ask of people with such little life experience to draw on.

CLR James, author of Beyond a Boundary, is oft quoted for his famous line “What do they of cricket know, they who only cricket know?” It came to mind watching these young talents who have honed their ability and aspire to be the best. They are virtuosos for sure. But what can they know about the music they are playing when life revolves around homework and practice? What can they know of the strange love Chopin felt for George Sand, or the pain Beethoven suffered at losing his hearing? I had always assumed that the intangible aspects of performance, of connecting to and drawing emotion from an audience, relied a certain amount on firsthand experience. Can you really convey the emotion of love if you haven’t loved? How to make an audience believe in heartache if you don’t know how it feels yourself?

Very rarely, it seems, it is possible – a young Stevie Wonder for instance or an even younger Mozart. Could they have been guessing at emotions, or did they have a strange understanding of things they’d yet to face? Who knows, but more often than not it seems true that with age comes the ability to connect with people, the primary goal of the performer. The BBC’s young musicians were brilliant but age is not on their side, experience is yet to shape them as performers and there was too often something missing from their offerings.

So, how to decide a winner on Sunday evening? Will it be the most skilful or will it be the most emotional? No doubt the panel will find their winner but one thing is for certain, that for the disappointed there is still plenty of time. Because in the end it is the experience of life itself that will make them great.

Picture Courtesy of ninafrazier

Unfortunately, Robert Waller’s character never did write his essay on the virtues of amateurism. But it’s a good title, even if we occasionally struggle to empathise with the premise. How, we may wonder, can a professional musician with an endless supply of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll have anything to admire of his amateur second-flute-playing counterpart sitting amongst the old ladies of the local big band? Like Kincaid, I believe he can.

The core of Kincaid’s philosophy is that, “Profit dominates art. We’re all getting lashed to the great wheel of uniformity.” It’s a common gripe isn’t it, as old as art itself I suspect; the artistic soul who longs to be more creative if only the audience could keep up. Yet despite the protestation, never have I seen anyone write a piece of music and later remove passages, lyrics or codas that the intended audience might struggle to comprehend. Quite the opposite in fact, the more general objection being too obvious rather than too high-brow as musicians and writers try to get away from their natural imitative tendencies and come up with something more expressive, more personal and less learnt. So the idea that composers are capable of producing works far artier than they do is, to my mind, a fallacy. Yet Kincaid is right, we are all getting lashed to the great wheel of uniformity. But it’s not the consumers or the marketers who are doing it – it’s the artists.

To elaborate further we must begin at the beginning of a process that unites amateurs and professionals as musicians and artists – creating. Inspiration is the light bulb moment, a moment we all know whether solving the problems of quantum physics or deciding what to have for dinner. For anyone struck by such a moment of clarity the focus is then to accurately interpret the idea, to realise the faint hum sounding somewhere in the right cerebral cortex. The word create comes from the Latin for make, and no matter how much the end product may alter as it is prepared it must essentially retain an accurate measure of that initial desire, must be made well for inspiration to have been realised successfully.

The next part of the process is to set the parameters within which your idea will be assembled. These decisions will shape the end product and define the type of artist you are. A crowd pleaser perhaps or a boundary pusher? A challenger or confronter? Do you want to shock the world like The Rolling Stones, or give it melody like Abba?

This is the first stage where the amateurs can consider themselves virtuous, because we are all multi- personas, all complex characters with unique expressions. Some days even Karen Carpenter might have wanted to stick a huge safety pin through her t-shirt and scream obscenities at the public, but there is a level of expectation for professional musicians that the amateur does well without. As a general public our expectations can be constraining – remember George Michael’s attempt at political satire back in 2004 with Shoot The Dog. If not in sync with our wishes, expression of a hither-to unaired personality trait can turn adoration into casual unconcern or even complete aversion in no time at all.

Yet, despite the strain a demanding public command there is another form of expectation that weighs even heavier for artists – that from within. Physiologists call it proactive role schemata, essentially working towards a self-devised image of your occupation. In short, if you see yourself as a rock star you will tend to rule out releasing an album of nursery rhymes because it doesn’t fit your vision of that profession. On top of that, there are perceived responsibilities that earning a living from something assumes; that somehow it must represent more than a plaything or hobby. These are levels of anticipation without which the amateur can move freer, expressing and exploring all the different sides of their personality with greater ease. For them, role schemata become instead self schemata which allow greater licence to express the complex self.

So, we have had a moment of inspiration and we have set the boundaries for the build. Our amateur and professional musicians are feeling different weights of expectation from both their audience and from within, but that is nothing compared to next stage of creating and the introduction of what I call ‘the great unknowable’. The great unknowable is what people will think of your creation, and it is a killer for artistic expression because to nullify it requires self belief that many musicians simply cannot have. In most cases there will be concession to the great unknowable, out of fear of rejection and loss of financial support, and the process of lashing us all to the great wheel of uniformity has begun.

The rate at which ‘popular’ music has gone through its genres in the past fifty years hints at our appetite for fresh sounds and styles. Yet, either we are not sending out the message clear enough or our musicians are not getting it. Whatever the cause, too many people who create carry a certain level of paranoia about the reception their work will receive.

Which brings us neatly to the final stage of the creative process, and that reaction for real. If she has been fortunate enough to get the response she had hoped for, perhaps congratulations as a maestro or maybe disgust as a punk, there is a sense of validation for the professional musician that the amateur cannot experience. She has invested more and the reward in the end is greater. Yet far more often, even when perceived as a success, there will be a sense of despondency at the public’s interpretation of a personal work; a lower ebb that the professional must suffer.

After the success of The Bends, Radiohead decided to adjust their musical direction. Realising that Top of the Pops was not the forum they craved, the band retired to make an album that would both extricate them from the popular Britpop movement and express their true musical values. OK Computer proved that audiences are not mindless cravers of mediocrity, for this slightly different offering went down a treat not only with their current fans but a new audience too. Where they had expected confusion Radiohead found reverence, and singer Thom Yorke was not a happy man. “All the sounds you made, that made you happy, have been sucked of everything they meant,” he said of the album’s subsequent success and regular airplay.

I suspect he partly blamed himself for submitting to the great unknowable. Unsure how far they could go the album was not a full tilt at the band’s original inspiration, it still contained concessions. Radiohead have not made the same mistake again, and from Kid A onwards they refused to pander to expectation. In part they have tried to amateurise themselves, supporting their work with ‘donations’ for records rather relying on album sales and the accompanying record label pressures.

Radiohead are fortunate enough to be able to sustain such creative ideals, however, for most professionals trying to express artistic principles without influence of market forces is a challenge too far. Instead we often get something that fulfils both their personal desires and earns a living – a compromise in other words.

Robert Kincaid is right, profit does dominate art, specifically dominates professional art. When all is said and done the definition of amateurism comes down to that one simple detail – money. But unlike Kincaid, I believe it is the brains of the makers rather than the ears of the listeners that profit lashes to the wheel of mediocrity. Without bills to pay, without role schemata or the expectations and reactions of large audiences, artistic expression can be more flexible and varied. For that reason alone, amateurism is surely virtuous.

Picture Courtesy of David Boyle

“They are looking at ballads and more musical style stuff, but this time around they want to try to make her a recording artist – original material, and giving Susan a chance to show what she’s really all about.

She’s got an opportunity to find herself and she loves all sorts of music – including rap.

Her management know that she’s a huge success around the globe and if she were to work with one of the big stars of the rap world they know they’d probably have an instant hit on their hands if it was done correctly.”

It seems there is nobody in pop who is not eying up a rap collaboration and is part of the overwhelming march this genre is taking towards hip hop.

When this happens it’s by no means always a bad result – when Dizzee Rascal and Shirley Bassey got together late last year they threw together a really enjoyable rendition of “Diamonds are Forever” – but this was clearly despite the arrangement of the styles and the success was due more to the two artists being great performances. Dame Shirley, who usually looks like she owns any room she is in, was wearing a nervous smile.

When Simon Cowell lines up a move like this, the worry is that it’s becoming a default option to throw about; what looks like an easy trick to make an artist more “relevant” actually takes a lot more skill than at first glance. If SuBo doerss team up with Snoop Dogg though, who hinted he can’t wait to get in the studio with her, that should pass the test. Another successful rap collab though could be another dangerous precedent, till we wake up in a world where it’s mandatory for every song to include the words  “ft lil wayne”.

Alex has just released a new video called “All Night Long” – it’s a strong pop song, but a bit derivative. The video is very similar to Lady GaGa’s Just Dance and early reactions show a few comparisons to Rhianna. This could leave her  a bit more open to being buffeted around on the fickle forces of pop. Have a listen:

What’s most bizarre is the way Alex has been packaged – anyone who watched the X Factor knows she probably wouldn’t be throwing mansion parties where frat boy and girls dress up in personality clothes and bounce about being kooky. The same sort of Americanisation happened to Leona Lewis, and it is telling that her releases accompanied by videos in which she looked most uncomfortable were the least successful.

Where Diana Vickers excels, from a commercial point of view, is that she came self-packaged with a bit of a quirky (dare I say maybe a bit affected) voice and no shoes. She was ripe for any company to market her as a bit of a mainstream Joanna Newsom without really chipping away at her. She’s also shown a knack for survival. After being turned down by Simon Cowell’s label (which is called Syco….no joke), she hibernated in the west end till an assault on the charts was possible – and built up a fair reputation as an actress in the process. This shows a rare knack for longevity which other X Factor contestants just haven’t got.

Alexandra Burke will no doubt have some success, but the fear is that she’s still much more liable to be put on the shelf and to join the ranks of Steve Brookstein, Leon Jackson and Michelle McManus.  Then again…she hasn’t served up anything like Eoghan Quigg’s attempt; a song which makes music itself cry.

Picture Courtesy of Alessio85

It wasn’t always this way of course. Electric and Musical Industries Ltd. initially launched with great success, most notably as the label that signed The Beatles. Other successes included The Sex Pistols, despite charges of capitalism on Never Mind The Bollocks…, and Kate Bush, despite the contractual wrangling for creative control. The ride has rarely seemed smooth, and perhaps because of that back-catalogue, to a newer generation it has always seemed an empire built on past glories; forever the last days of Rome.

Anthony Bourdain is a chef and documenter of life in the restaurant world. ‘When you hit the panic button and call in the consultants, or start taking austerity measures, you may as well close the doors for good,’ he says of restaurateurs. ‘It’s just good money after bad.’ I don’t suppose anyone on the board at EMI had read Kitchen Confidential when they offered the UK’s largest record deal to Robbie Williams. Entering the new millennium in ‘Loadsamoney’ style by spending £80 million for four albums from a man just past his peak and recently split from his creative spar, Guy Chambers, EMI unsurprisingly failed to stop a trend of declining profits.

Since that cash haemorrhage the company has been slowly bleeding its assets, striving to find some sort of life-support and stabilise. CEOs have come and gone, profits and shares tumbled year on year. No-one, it seems, can make the damn thing work. Last week news came in that EMI was in further financial difficulties, the antler decal nestling over investor Guy Hands’ throne now resembling more flogged horse than prized kill. He’s probably wondering whether the company’s initials stand for Eating My Investment.

Pundits would have us believe that the decline of Britain’s best known record label is symptomatic of the industry as a whole. It isn’t. Instead it’s reflective of the major labels’ failings and suggests an imminent end to what would be their comparative blip on the history of music.

For a wonderful insight into that history, The Hit Men by Richard Dannon is the place to go. How a one-time artistic expression that previously eked a living for few, changed its course of thousands of years and went global from the ashes of the Second World War is a fascinating tale. The influence of the mafia, of bribery, corruption and extortion, the payola scandal and Alan Freed in America are all worthwhile anecdotes. Yet the real story is how the major labels, from rough and inequitable beginnings, managed to turn themselves into multinational concerns turning over billions a year for their shareholders. As we, the consumer’s, budgets and desires escalated so the major labels became profitable enterprises capable of squeezing out competition with takeovers and buy outs.

It seems strange then that, at only a little over fifty years old, the Big Four (EMI, Sony, Warner and Universal as they are reduced to now) have regressed from riches to rags. How, in the twelve years since PolyGram was taken over, can these leaders in business have relinquished their power so quickly and irreversibly?

The answer is technology, and in this case the hand that feedeth with the invention of the gramophone hath taken away with the MP3. Despite an auspicious beginning to their relationship with the music industry (a lawsuit with the Apple record label over naming rights) the geeks from Silicon Valley and Apple Inc. have gone on to dismantle the entire trade in a little over a decade. Common theory is that this is a bad thing, that the industry is dying through the decline of its flagship companies, but I disagree.

To think that the end is nigh, and anything other than a duopoly between Apple Inc. and free file-sharers spells trouble for the music industry, is to ignore its history prior to the last century. For, without an organised distribution service, without financing and promotion, music previously had a long and illustrious career. It is true that no-one bought young Beethoven a Cadillac, even if he complained of a lack of return on his hits, yet his music survived and was heard by many. The basic foundation of music, playing and listening, has developed now beyond just public performance, and shared broadcasts of recorded music will not suddenly disappear because the majors do. The people who finance the recording, or distribute the end result, may change. But does that matter?

In the 1980s British car manufactures were bemoaning their fate, sensing perhaps their demise. It came, and the end of manufacturing in this country caused much consternation. There were sad side-effects, job losses and recessions. Yet the car industry continued, today’s vehicles wildly improved from those early models. We live in a world where the Brits don’t make cars, but we still drive cars and they don’t cost a fortune or fall apart.

The car survived its industry shake-up, and I expect the same for music. Major labels will surely give up trying to compete with consumer desires but we should not fear life without them. Their undoing has been largely of their own making. A refusal to work with online music, around file sharing or to update their methods has left them unseated and unsteady. Unfortunately this will mean bad times for some individuals, employees of a system that is fading, but hopefully they can do what their masters have not, retrain and understand the world that the industry now operates in.

Because there will still be jobs around. The traditional cry that independent labels cannot compete is no longer true and niches are there to be found and lived in for many. Rough Trade has survived for 30 years. Ninja Tunes continues to serve an active fan base of electronic connoisseurs. Perhaps soon these companies, and more, can operate without constant fear of takeovers or mergers, to which their beliefs and ideas would become lost in the corporate offices of bigger firms.

As for Apple Inc., well they deserve everything they have. They have single-handedly made music more accessible, more affordable and more portable for the majority. They will surely have their turn of loathing and complaint from us because things change; we change them as consumers. EMI might be on the wane, but it needn’t spell disaster for England’s music industry.

Picture courtesy of Un ragazzo chiamato Bi

The move from the Conservatives is especially strange and shows just how cynical politicians have become towards the music industry.  Lily has previously gone on record as being a fan of Tony Blair, and David Cameron has previously said he wouldn’t let his daughter listen to Lily’s music. This fact did not escape Miss Allen:

Yeah, and also I thought that his favourite album that he likes listening to with his kids is the Arctic Monkeys, which if I’m not mistaken is all about one-night stands and prostitution…But never mind. I don’t think they’d have been denouncing me if I’d turned up at the Conservative party conference.

Yeah – of course it doesn’t matter Lily isn’t actually a Tory, and that our Cameron might have expressed disapproval; it’s election time so let’s just wheel her out and we’ll look cool.

And this seems to be the exact thing they have done with Gary Barlow. While he is no doubt a talented songwriter you don’t often hear political statements in Take That songs.

But then again there was a reason for touting Gary Barlow – David Cameron wanted to announce his School Stars Campaign. This is a sort of X Factor competition that the party would bring into schools if elected. A more transparent, cheap attempt to gain popularity is hard to find.

Keane drummer Richard Hughes was right to be horrified when their song was used for the Conservative manifesto launch. While great musicians can make genuine political statements with their music, party politics is best avoided.

Picture Courtesy of Vagueonthehow

Bob is not authentic at all. He’s a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I.

Dylan has come in for a bit of criticism for plagiarism, especially on his latest album Modern Times, so we thought we’d have a little examination of whether there was anything to the charge.

One of the major accusations is he takes words from Henry Timrod, a poet of the American civil war, for his latest album Modern Times. Here’s the offending example:

Henry Timrod:
A round of precious hours.
Oh! here, in that summer
noon I basked.
And strove; with logic frailer than
the flowers.

Dylan:
More frailer than the flowers,
these precious hours.

There were also a few lines on the album that looked like they had been taken from the roman poet Ovid:

• “Workingman’s Blues #2″- No one can ever claim/That I took up arms against you. Ovid (Tristia, Book 2, Lines 51-53) – no one can claim that I ever took up arms against you.
• “Ain’t Talkin’” – Every nook and cranny has its tears. Ovid (Tristia, Book 1, Section 3, Line 24) – every nook and corner had its tears.
• “The Levee’s Gonna Break” – Some people got barely enough skin to cover their bones. Ovid (Tristia, Book 4, Section 7, Line 51) – there’s barely enough skin to cover my bones.
• “Spirit on the Water” – Can’t believe these things would ever fade from your mind. Ovid (Black Sea Letters, Book 2, Section 4, Line 24) – I cannot believe these things could fade from your mind.

It was also reported last year that James Damiano had successfully sued Dylan over the song dignity, for while the lyrics had been attributed to Dylan for over 15 years by his record company. Whether this was Dylan’s doing though is very unclear.

Christie’s the auctioneers were also left red faced last year after they put up for auction an original handwritten version of the poem Little Christie, supposedly written by Dylan as a teenager and submitted by him to a Wisconsin paper – it was soon pointed out that most of the words actually came from a country singer who had recorded it as a song 11 years before the supposed Dylan poem was written.  Dylan would only have been 16 when this was created though.

There are a few more examples that can be given, but in the end they don’t serve to make the charges against him any stronger. Dylan’s lines do bear a resemblance to much that has gone before. However, he has admitted that his song writing method involved meditating on previous works. Dylan does mix up the words, and they do only form snippets of much larger song. Given the huge body of work he has produced, taking direct inspiration from a few sources is surely just par for the course.

Picture Courtesy of Badosa

• Edgar Bronfman (£1,640m)
• Clive Calder (£1,300m)
• Lord Lloyd-Webber (£700m)
• Sir Cameron Mackintosh (£635m)
• Sir Paul McCartney (£475m)
• Simon Fuller (£350m)
• Sir Mick Jagger (£190m)
• Sir Elton John (£185m)
• Sting (£180m)
• Keith Richards (£175m)

The top two aren’t household names. Edgar Bronfman is chief exec for Warner Music – in the past though he has written songs like “Whisper in the Dark” for Dionne Warwick. Clive Calder is the founder of Jive Records. Sir Cameron Mackintosh might be a bit obscure too – he owns seven London theaters and produced Phantom of the Opera.

The under 30 list shows the amount of money floating about in pop.

• Charlotte Church (£11 million)
• Katherine Jenkins (£11 million)
• Leona Lewis (£11 million)
• Cheryl Cole (£10 million)
• Katie Melua (£10 million)
• Joss Stone (£9 million)
• Craig David (£8 million)
• Natasha Bedingfield (£6 million)
• Lily Allen (£5 million)
• Nadine Coyle (£5 million)
• Jamie Cullum (£5 million)
• Duffy (£5 million)
• Sarah Harding (£5 million)
• James Morrison (£5 million)
• Paolo Nutini (£5 million)
• Nicola Roberts (£5 million)
• Kimberley Walsh (£5 million)
• Amy Winehouse (£5 million)

Picture Courtesy of Steve Garfield