There are a lot of talented young acts struggling to make it in Nashville right now. They write songs, cut demos, do showcases, network and generally work their butts off to try to make it big as a country star. Some of them are actually worth listening to, with well-written songs, tasty licks and memorable vocals.
Unfortunately, you’re not likely to hear them on country radio unless they also look like Maxim cover girls or GQ models. The labels are too busy signing cute young things from TV reality shows.
Last week, a cut from the upcoming “country” album by Jessica Simpson was leaked on the internet. Or maybe it escaped. Either way, it’s as overproduced, vacuous and soulless as one would expect from an “artist” who has failed at practically every other genre already. Maybe she thought that because she filled out her Daisy Dukes so well in that unfortunate Dukes of Hazzard film that she could sing country music. No, Jessica, the real Daisy couldn’t sing and neither can you.
Also making her country debut last week was Julianne Hough, the perky little cutie who trained an Olympic athlete and a race car driver to paso their dobles to victory on the TV show Dancing with the Stars. What that has to do with country music, I have no idea but she seems to have lured 65,000 DWTS fans to their local WalMarts to buy her album the week it came out. Her pretty face is all over country cable channel CMT’s website, looking at first glance like a young Faith Hill.
Wait, isn’t that what country radio’s been looking for since the original turned 35? Julie Roberts was supposed to be the “young Faith Hill” but her second album tanked so it’s back to the drawing board. Julie probably has too much soul at her young age for corporate country anyway. Chips Moman, if you’re still out there, I’d love to see what you could do with this girl.
I blame it all on Shania Twain. It’s not just because the combination of her annoyingly catchy ditties and the ham-fisted overkill of Garth Brooks drove me away from country radio in the 90s. No, her most dubious legacy is making it impossible for any female wearing a size larger than two to be heard in country music. Patsy Cline had arguably the greatest voice in the history of country music, but if she had come along now, we’d never hear that voice because she couldn’t squeeze into a pair of size zero True Religion jeans.
The biggest story in the music business the last few years is that it’s dying. The new music-buying generation, isn’t. Buying that is. They don’t want cool looking album covers to contemplate while rolling a joint. They don’t want hundreds of little plastic boxes cluttering up their cribs. They just want digital music to fill up their iPods. And they don’t really care how they get it. Those dinosaurs at the labels and the RIAA can scream “piracy” and sue their customers all they want, but they blew their chance to capitalize on digital music a decade ago and anything they attempt now is likely to be as effective as polishing the deck chairs on the Titanic.
While the industry honchos love to blame those music-stealing brats in high school and college for cutting short their overpaid careers, they’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg that hit them. A lot of us grownups aren’t buying their CDs, either. Maybe if the labels started signing artists for their music rather than how they look in a video, we’d all have some music worth buying. As long as artists are promoted primarily for their looks, we aren’t even getting music worth stealing.
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