Hot Take/ Musical Confession Thread!

TenderLovingKiller® said:
I tried to avoid bringing him up but it was really FJM that had me initially think about the idea of rock star personas. When I first heard of what he was doing it turned me off, but after hearing the music and reflecting on the nature of rock stars as performance artist, I realized what he was doing was no different than Dylan, Bowie, Many rappers, Kiss, Etc... Its all part of the performance FJM just overtly acknowledged that it was all a facade up front instead of being coy about it.
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Bowie was never really coy about it. Prince and Bowie both, from all accounts absolutely loved to screw with people’s heads.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
Right, and I think Bowie's success at doing those kinds of things is exactly why the industry pushes artists in the direction of deliberately drawing up comprehensive marketing strategies for it. But as it turns out, most artists aren't Bowie. There's a lot of art in marketing, but the Venn Diagram for those two things isn't a single circle.

Sia's thing with the wig was about concealing the symptoms of Graves Disease, wasn't it?
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No earthly idea… I don’t know that much about her music. I do know that it was more popular and less exciting after the wig though.
 
I’m just saying there is a difference between conceptualizing an album cycle, re: say Taylor Swift and being a different character.

Bowie did this because as Davey Jones he got nowhere. Then he did this very narrative and character driven song (Space Oddity) and then there was Ziggy and he got reactions to all of that so he just kept doing it.

With him, I think it was as much a subconscious defense mechanism as it was a marketing thing. Be different from his art to protect himself.

Like Jack White gives himself parameters for a project but he isn’t a different person.

Doom was clearly doing that but was it for commercial reasons? I don’t think so, sure he was a huge underground figure but he wasn’t super rich either.

People want to identify with their artist and if they are constantly actively being someone else it doesn’t work.

I’m sure Doom or Kool Keith could have been much bigger than they were/are but it’s not what their art was/is about.

St Vincent portrayed a different everything with Daddy’s Home and it made people bristle.

I don’t see marketing the same as putting on an entirely different facade.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
Right, and I think Bowie's success at doing those kinds of things is exactly why the industry pushes artists in the direction of deliberately drawing up comprehensive marketing strategies for it. But as it turns out, most artists aren't Bowie. There's a lot of art in marketing, but the Venn Diagram for those two things isn't a single circle.

Sia's thing with the wig was about concealing the symptoms of Graves Disease, wasn't it?
ETA: would Orville Peck be a more relevant example of what you're describing here?
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If Orville does something different later, yes?

I brought FJM because of the post I quoted. I don’t see him as what @Bull Shannon was talking about.
 
Lee Newman said:
Bowie was never really coy about it. Prince and Bowie both, from all accounts absolutely loved to screw with people’s heads.
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Yeah, not all are coy about it mainly because they are much less nuanced. Bowie wasn’t really an Alien and Gene Simmons wasn’t really a demon. Robert Zimmerman wasn’t a train hopping hobo either but that was the yarn he spun as Bob Dylan.
 
Bull Shannon said:
Maybe I'm letting specific examples stick in my craw (Bono and St. Vincent, for two), but I think the whole "I'm putting on a costume and adding a layer of abstraction onto my extant, inherent persona" schtick is in conversation with "authenticity;" instead of chasing it, you're running in the exact opposite direction.

Every album cycle comes with its own aesthetic; colors, costumes, backdrops. The trouble comes when you're putting on a gas mask and bunny ears and calling yourself Trait.
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I don’t think Bono is a performance. I think that’s just him and he’s using his childhood nickname… whether that makes it better or worse I’ll leave to you!
 
TenderLovingKiller® said:
Yeah, not all are coy about it mainly because they are much less nuanced. Bowie wasn’t really an Alien and Gene Simmons wasn’t really a demon. Robert Zimmerman wasn’t a train hopping hobo either but that was the yarn he spun as Bob Dylan.
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I think the yarn he spun was he wanted to be Woody Guthrie but that’s an entirely different conversation.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
That's exactly the thing that I think -- for me, at least -- helps to differentiate my reaction to these things when I see them. A lot of it relies on how I interpret the artistic intent. If it feels organic, or in service of the overall artistry, that carries a different feeling than if it feels like a manufactured artifact of a commercial project. Does it feel like it's in service of a larger idea, or is it a hollow means to generate publicity?

It's not a science. I can't read artists' minds, nor can I entirely separate my reactions from my preconceived notions of who these people are.

It also doesn't escape me that a lot of this is probably inextricably linked to genre, and by extension to gender politics. Women will undergo more scrutiny than men will. Is she being too sexual/not sexual enough? Is she being too edgy/chaste/intense/disaffected/gay/smart/whatever? Bowie and Prince are two great examples, but there aren't a lot of male artists doing the same thing right now.

That said, here's my "hot take." I think The National has gotten way too precious about the aesthetic choices surrounding their last few albums. The imagery for Sleep Well Beast and I Am Easy to Find felt forced and cynical, to me, almost to the point of impeding my ability to absorb the albums on their own merits.
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Sleep Well Beast was the last time I enjoyed listening to a National album. I don’t know if it’s a marketing thing or something else, but they feel spent to me at this point in time. Doesn’t mean they are, just that I’m not into what they are doing.
 
Lee Newman said:
I think the yarn he spun was he wanted to be Woody Guthrie but that’s an entirely different conversation.
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Or rather co-oped the parts of Guthrie biography to help tell the story he was looking to tell. He never hid who he was but his music was lent an air of authenticity if the fans thought of him as a woody Guthrie type as opposed to a middle class midwesterner. Fans enjoy the story and are willing to play along. It’s all pro-wrestling that way.
 
Lee Newman said:
Sleep Well Beast was the last time I enjoyed listening to a National album. I don’t know if it’s a marketing thing or something else, but they feel spent to me at this point in time. Doesn’t mean they are, just that I’m not into what they are doing.
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Yeah the last one had moments but the two before it were so dull, sleepy time lullabies for slightly sad bearded middle age dads.
 
Lee Newman said:
I think the yarn he spun was he wanted to be Woody Guthrie but that’s an entirely different conversation.
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I don’t think Dylan ever intentionally revealed more of his real self in public than he had to. Bits bled out through his music but his real persona was kept hidden. I like that separation, I don’t need to know all about an artist to love their art, in fact often I don’t want to know.

I get that there is a nuance between this and an artist purposefully creating a character, or a series of characters, as per the main convo.
 
TenderLovingKiller® said:
Or rather co-oped the parts of Guthrie biography to help tell the story he was looking to tell. He never hid who he was but his music was lent an air of authenticity if the fans thought of him as a woody Guthrie type as opposed to a middle class midwesterner. Fans enjoy the story and are willing to play along. It’s all pro-wrestling that way.
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I mean he wanted to be Guthrie and as coy as he can be, I don’t think he’s ever been less than honest about that.
 
Actually, Orville Peck is an interesting bit altogether. I don’t particularly enjoy his voice (I dig his actual thing though). He and Colter Wall (whom I enjoy very much) are odd. They don’t ring as authentic to me, like I don’t believe their performance. I know Johnny didn’t kill a man in Reno but when you’re hearing that song you believe he spent time in Folsom Prison.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
It’s really interesting when someone COMPLETELY changes up what they’re doing in a way that totally alters the course of their career. Thinking here of Dallas Green going from Alexisonfire to City & Colour, or the guy from Staind becoming a country artist (or Darius Rucker for that matter).

Not related to the original topic at all, just interesting.

In fact you know who I think belongs in that conversation? Phil Collins.
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Was there that much difference between Hootie and Rucker’s Country music? I guarantee he could pull off songs from either phase of his career in either phase of his career.

By the time Collins was making it as a solo artist, Genesis had already started making very similar music.
 
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