Just a passing comment: I think Sun Yanzi is pretty critical. Or you can say cynical. She thinks Angels and Demons by Dan Brown is trashy (though entertaining), The Five People You Meet In Heaven tries too hard to make you feel good and Confessions of a Shopaholic – crap. Wow. That’s like, “Wow! You’re cynical!”
And no, I don’t think that it’s opinionated, it’s cynical. *nods all round from the people in the Zen Project*
To clarify and reinforce what I think from a discussion we had last night, I still feel that a singer is not a profession you can work at, unless it’s in the classical field. Things are too much of a fluke in pop singing and the perimeters too blur (singer-actor-songwriter???) too transient to have a standard, ‘proper’ definition of a good singer from a celebrity or otherwise.
A century ago, if you were born poor in China and had a good voice (or possibly just potentially good), your parents may sell you to a Chinese opera troupe. Day after day, without a choice, you assiduously practice singing and other stage moves. It’s hard work, it’s painful and it’s forced. If you’re good, perhaps you are born nimble, you improve faster than everyone else but it doesn’t mean that you have an easier time because training is still mandatory. Everybody puts in blood sweat and tears. Rebellion and sloth leads to caning or possibly tortures much worse but you manage to hone your craft and for better or worse, you acquire a skill, an art. In our modern terms, we’d call you an artist. (In the olden days, I’m afraid you may still be very much ostracized.)
In pop singing now, there’s editing when you record a CD, lip-synching if you can’t manage live and singers who do both shamelessly, get credit for being good. Now isn’t that atrocious! It’s an irony! It’s almost as if you sing well just to achieve a sort of self satisfaction because neither merit nor credit comes through vocal prowess. Skilful vocals don't seem to matter anymore. It has become the world of marketing and good looks. Not solely but predominantly.
Seriously, if F4 were born in the olden days with nary a skill on hand, they would not join a troupe and become leading celebrities of that time. They would be sold to brothels.
Besides good-lookers who pass off as singers, there’s the singer-songwriter who is, now more than ever, considered much more credible than just plainly a singer. Why should it be this way? If one writes good songs, then one writes them and let singers sing them. But they do a good job too you say! (Editing!!!) You say they emote simply, plainly and it appeals. It’s very elusive. Ahh yes, it must be the X-factor at work again. The X-factor is so overrated. X-factor cannot sing! X-factor can only make your heart palpitate 100x faster!
Love the singer-songwriters anyway, because take a good look around, not many singers who can sing. At least they can write! That’s where their warped credibility as singers comes from.
What is pop music? Pop music is music that appeals to the masses. It’s what the people like.
What is a good pop singer then? It should be someone whose singing can effectively appeal to most people.
Seems now it’s more likely to be someone who can appeal to people, and sings too by the way! I dread to think it that way.
You see, that’s the thing with pop. Good singing does not equate to appealing singing. Yet bad singing by a charismatic character can appeal to the layman.
It’s all a mater of how you pitch someone into the limelight and make them a celebrity. This of course is not new; everyone knows it and buys it, which is why I say you cannot work hard to become a singer as a profession. (You can work hard to be good at singing pop, that you can.) Because the hard work required is no longer singing, it’s preening your self, or cultivating the X-factor (and God knows how we do that?) Better yet, you pay a good team to market you! Pop singing is no longer an art for the singers but only for the producers, music engineers working behind the scenes. (So love those people instead.)
I guess there has always been an element of fluff perpetuated in pop, but it’s now more evident than ever. Sad but true.
No comments:
Post a Comment