Wow. I'm willing to bet my left nut that none of this makes sense.
Actually I feel I have to reply to your thoughts. That should prove your former notion false! So you can keep your nuts.
Your reply generated some thought within me when I reflected it upon what I said earlier. You are completely right when commenting upon Britney and the like that they are but crafted for the need of having new starlets. I personally do think the world would be better should music be given a different value, but as that is utopia I will give my idealism a rest and contemplate the subject from a more realistic point of view.
Britney Spears must enjoy singing and dancing, or so I should suppose based on what she actually does, and having great loads of cash. She probably has no desire to write prog-rock anthems with incredibly insightful lyrics. Max Martin, the songwriter, probably likes to write pop songs and challenge himself with making better and more catchy songs all the time. Meanwhile there are loads of people who adhere to the basic rule of pop music as listeners: stars come and go, music changes superficially all the time, and stars like Britney are necessitated by this demand that gives a variable to the everyday life of these people. Are we who do not adapt to this rule then entitled to disrespect those who make and listen to the music? I do not think so. It comes down to being a matter of taste, and that is something different. The pop music industry is rarely about artistic integrity or stunning ingeniosity, and therefore I do not hold it within the realm of 'serious' art. This leads to me not having it within my conception of respect
for art as the whole business transcends to providing goods for consumers. (As of today music does not have the status it is worthy of, but that is a topic that deserves a separate thread for further debate. I will just say that if there is something that operates by means of art on a different field of respect there is an inevitable clash.) I do respect Britney for taking hold of her dreams and singing and dancing and making a living with it, and Max Martin for being economically smart enough for using his talent to generate a huge income. If they would, however, attempt at doing 'art' I would expect them to fail miserably and not have one bit of my respect for what they do since they would operate on a different level of respect. (I should also point out that some artists who sell well are also artistically respectable, however.)
As for copycat bands, I want to hold a border between those who copy bands for the sheer cause of getting chicks and selling more and those who loved the music enough to pay tribute by incorporating influences from the original band. Dimmu Borgir and Cradle of Filth certainly made a significant impact with their albums post-1996 and subsequently gave birth to a load of carbon copies. The division, as I see it, goes so that there are the ones who wanted to get on Nuclear Blast and get to pose with naked, bloodied goth girls with corpsepaint on their faces proclaiming the fall of Christ and the rise of Satan. And get well paid on the side. They lose the aspect of serious (interchangeable with honest) art when valuing something else. Then there are the ones who wanted to play like Dimmu for the plain cause that they went nuts over "Enthrone.." and see influences as a means of bettering their performance of their art. They do not necessarily lose the honesty in their music. This always happens to me when I hear a band that has great ideas in their music, but while I may wish to take influences from their music into mine, I do not do so to get their fans to buy my music but to make my music better than it was before.
So, in the end, it's about the artist's values, and while many musicians have values I would not like to see among the purveyors of an unfortunately deformed artform, that is what matters in the end. We just have to pick the ones that have values that we can relate to, as everyone on this board has done. We hold artistical honesty valuable. Those who like, for example, Britney Spears, much more likely hold music valuable only as products that facilitate their being from day to day. And reading backwards through my message, I think the same division exists among musical artists as well.
Wow. I'm willing to bet my left nut that none of this makes sense. I'm so glad I'm out of school and never have to write another essay. I'm far too scatterbrained these days to have any cohesion to anything I write.
You took the words right out of my mouth...except that I like writing essays.
