how to do an acoustic cover of a rock or pop song

The institution of the "acoustic" (solo vocal and acoustic guitar) has been exalted by YouTube, because that's the easiest thing approaching a music video a fourteen-year-old can make, so let me say this.

When you pick a non-acoustic song of which to play an acoustic cover, the point is to pick a song that has a nice melody or poignant lyrics--elements that might be obscured by production values or a more uptempo rendition. If you cover a rock or pop song that is musically repetitive and/or monotonous, that defeats the point, because in that case, what you're stripping away--energy, production, &c.--is the essence of the song, and you are left with a really boring three and a half minutes. A song whose lyrics sound like they were written by a junior high school kid, when stripped down by an acoustic cover to its essential elements, will be revealed as, well, a song whose lyrics sound like they were written by a junior high school kid.

That's why AC/DC never did an MTV Unplugged.

(Of course, I"m sure some hipster idiot has posted to YouTube an ironic cover of Pitbull's Krazy (Orchard).)

Also, you can't just sing the song and play a random sequence of I and V chords--unless that was what was in the original song.

This entry was inspired by my accidentally seeing a video clip of a girl badly cover I Belong to You (Virgin).

Do you think Lenny Kravitz and his drummer ever, as a practical joke, secretly switch places with one another?

random thoughts

• Given enough time, wouldn't every album eventually go platinum? Or is it asymptotic? (Can something measured in discrete units be asymptotic?)


• Rebbie, La Toya, Randy and Janet should have formed a band called "The Jackson Other 4."
  
  Actually, what would have been awesome is if they kept kicking out and replacing members of The Jackson 5 (à la Menudo), either with an endless succession of Jackson children, or little Puerto Rican boys.


• All the bands that say that their music defies categorization, that it can't be labeled by a genre, they are all generic rock bands.


• The Bee Gees had two distinct periods of exceptional success: doing soft rock in the '60s and disco in the '70s. They're the Rickey Henderson of music.


• There are certain songs--like Kelis's Milkshake (Arista), you have to think even Kelis and the Neptunes were surprise that that became a hit.
  
  I was listening to various hipster, &c. covers of it, and they are all insufferable. Look, it's actually a pretty musically interesting (or, at least, unconventional) song, so it's totally disingenuous to mock it as stupid when your version strips out all of the interestingness. I mean, you can strip down any song to a melody and power chords, if you want to. So fuck people in Brooklyn with acoustic guitars.


• I am coming more and more to the conclusion that Kelly Clarkson has shitty taste in music. I'd probably dislike her less if someone else picked her songs for her.

I find that my new music consumption tends to decrease during the summer (baseball season). Also, I'm on a stand-up comedy kick right now.

michael-veli

Michael Jackson wrote lots of songs--as many as forty or fifty--for each of his albums, and included only the twelve or so best on the final version. So expect lots of posthumous releases from him, and since these will generally be culled from the material he deemed inferior to his official output, they will dilute the quality of his œuvre.

Personally, I'm excited for the posthumous Michael Jackson, Tupac Shakur and Notorious BIG mash-ups.

(The weird thing about being a celebrity is how lucrative passing away can be.)

• Queen Latifah has a suprising combination of mainstream appeal and street credibility. She's like if people still feared Will Smith.


• Smokey Robinson looks like he's mixed race with something.


• They probably had to dig pretty deep to unearth Trey Lorenz for this.


• You know how other musicians are paying tribute to Michael Jackson by performing songs? Kobe Bryant and Magic Johnson should, on stage, play one-on-one or HORSE or something.
  
  How come Michael Jordan isn't here? Actually--Ron Artest should be here too, since he apparently picked jersey #37 in honor of Thriller (Epic).


• I don't really see how Kobe Bryant fits in to any of this? Is he the designated Staples Center chaperone?


• You Are Not Alone (Epic) is musically one of the least interesting songs Michael Jackson--or R Kelly-- did.


• It's a little bit unfortunate for young people that John Mayer counts as a guitar hero these days.


• I don't think Brooke Shields's assertions that she never experienced sexual tension between herself and Michael Jackson when they were children really helps his case.


• They should devote a section of the memorial to the fact that Pete King (R-NY) is a dick. You'd think that, if anyone, elected officials should be careful about repeated accusations that were rejected by our criminal justice system.


• Of the thousands of children around Michael Jackson during his lifetime, only two accused him of sexual abuse. Even if those allegations were true, that's still a pretty good percentage. In baseball, you win a Gold Glove for that.


• Whatever skin diseases, plastic surgeries, &c. Michael Jackson had, La Toya was apparently having them in parallel.


• Black people are following the coverage of Michael Jackson's untimely passing more than are white people, but who's following this even more closely than black people are people who are the same race as Michael Jackson--or, at least, they would be if there were any.


• The conventional wisdom was that the Jacksons were a fucked up showbusiness family, but it doesn't seem that way anymore. Partly, moments like this are when families seem the most together, but mostly I think, since them, a lot of other showbusiness families have proven themselves far more dysfunctional.


• Is that Glen Rice?


• It's weird to hear Larry King speak so fondly about Usher.


• Michael Jackson talked over the ends of some of his songs, which shows how talented he is. Other groups--e.g., Boyz II Men--required a full whole member dedicated just to doing that.


• Where has Elton John been during all of this? Shouldn't he have repurposed a song about someone else into a tribute to Michael Jackson by now?

What's interesting to me is that I don't think anyone else--even Elvis Presley or John Lennon--has ever had or will ever have the same level of worldwide impact in his own lifetime. Most people who have a more profound impact (e.g., intellectual) don't see their influence fully manifest in their lifetimes; anyone who is going to reach as many people as Michael Jackson did is going to have to be a pop cultural idol. Michael Jackson was immensely talented, but also came at a time when mass media allowed him to showcase that talent to as many people as it did, but before mass media started to become as fragmented--geographically, demographically, &c.--as it has. It's cliché, I know, but it's hard to imagine the confluence of circumstances that could create another superstar on the same level.

The only person alive that I think can even come close (and it's a pretty distant second)--and this might sound weird at first, but think about it--is Tiger Woods.

thoughts about the michael jackson thing (and news coverage thereof)

The coverage for this is heavier then 9/11 coverage.

• That's totally respectful that CNN is paying homage to Michael Jackson by doing a bunch of condescending armchair psychoanalysis of his life.


• Members of Michael Jackson's family who were excluded from the will are apparently suing for part of the estate, which completely defeats the purpose of general concept of will.


• Is there much of an estate over which to fight? I thought he was in massive debt, and that's why he was doing the string of shows in London and then, possibly, a Las Vegas run.


• Jermaine Jackson looks kind of like Isiah Thomas.


• I don't see how anyone who was actually close to Michael Jackson can be speaking to the media at a time like this.


• Is vitiligo fundamentally different from being calico? (Also, maybe this explains the one glove thing, and Flea's one sock.


• Who had a more masculine speaking voice: Michael Jackson or Mike Tyson?


• I think it's interesting--and probably pretty telling--that all of the so-called scandals of Michael Jackson's life went more or less completely ignored in all countries except for the United States.


• As much as I joke about it, I think there is a very real possibility that Michael Jackson didn't actually molest any children and, even if he did, Americans are--in the words of Chris Rock--willing to let it slide. The problem, though, is that because the American tabloid media is so aggressive and scandal-mongering, a district attorney cannot let it slide, because these are serious enough allegations that they really have to be addressed, even if totally spurious--because the media doesn't report that last part. (And, if the allegations were true, I don't understand why Michael Jackson didn't just move to a country Cambodia or Thailand, where pedophilia is not only tolerated, but in fact encouraged.)


• Doesn't Martin Bashir just strike you as a huge asshole?

another one?

First Michael Jackson, and now Billy Mays?

This has been a rough few days.

après mois le déluge

I think that pretty much sums up popular music.

Taylor Swift(f T-Pain)'s Thug Story (Big Machine) makes me want to put my fist through the television, and I don't own a television. It makes me want to buy a television just to destroy it.

Stuff like this always reminds me of Bill Hicks's quote:

"Oh come on, Bill, they're the New Kids, don't pick on them, they're so good and they're so clean cut and they're such a good image for the children." Fuck that! When did mediocrity and banality become a good image for your children? I want my children to listen to people who fucking rocked! I don't care if they died in puddles of their own vomit! I want someone who plays from his fucking heart!”

You know, it's not even how bad this is that gets to me--tons of music is bad and most of it is totally irrelevant--it's that you know fat Middle American women who watch CMT and go to Curves (not understanding why the thirty whole minutes of walking in place they do each week fails to burn off the fat from their daily crate of Entenmann's) are thinking this is brilliant, and some idiot studio executive is congratulating himself for being a genius, even though he really just ripped of a meme that has been circulating for about a quarter century.

(Well, the specific instance of the meme--white people trying to rap--is about that old. The more general version--white people making fun of black people, while pretending not to be racist about it--has been around for much much longer.)

That's right, I made something up and then got all mad about it.

Well, at least I'm not thinking about Michael Jackson anymo... fuck.

i'm all better now

While it's unfortunate that Michael Jackson passed away yesterday, the multitude of poor-quality cover versions of his hits that have sprung up on YouTube have made the news that much easier to take.

Also, thank you to people who took it upon themselves to make some sort of obituarial comment on very Michael Jackson-related video, article, post, &c. on the Internet.

By the way, when age fifty counts as an "untimely" passing, we're pretty lucky as a people.

random thoughts

• They probably could have found a way to work Thriller (Epic) into Phantom of the Opera.


• Black Eyed Peas are being accused of selling out for doing a Target commercial, but did they have artistic integrity in the first place?
  
  The problem with commercials--rather than radio--as a source of new music for people is that it circumvents payola laws.


• How can people take Lady Gaga seriously as a pop star, when she has a big nose?
  
  It seems like white female pop singers who try to rap in their songs were all taught to "rap" by the same person and that person does not actually know how to rap.


• Really, are Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale not divorced yet? I don't know anything about their relationship, but they just both seem like the kind of people who wouldn't make it through marriages.


• The most important quality you need to be a successful rock or pop singer is the confidence (or, rather, lack of self-awareness) to do a passionate rendering of what will inevitably be asinine lyrics.


• There's something endearing about people singing and/or writing songs in languages they don't actually speak, in the same way that there's something endearing about majoring in philosophy at a junior college.


• What does it matter what Jay-Z thinks about Auto-Tune? He's a rapper. When every pop vocal track sounds like it's been run through Propellerhead ReCycle, then I'll be slightly more interested in Jay-Z's opinion. (Actually, I'm reasonably certain that a lot of what you hear on the radio is also digitally timing-corrected.)
  
  It's actually quite disingenuous for an artist like Ben Gibbard to speak out against the use of Auto-Tune in the music industry. I don't love Auto-Tune either, but Death Cab for Cutie make a specific kind of music that serves a specific function for a specific audience; it's not really fair (and pretty arrogant) to project the æsthetic ideals of that niche onto popular music as a whole. That would be like if Ben Gibbard wore a ribbon to protest the use of not whining, machismo or testicles in popular music.
  
  Personally, I would protest the use of Taylor Swift in the music industry.


• Given that everyone uses Auto-Tune, doesn't write their own songs and has an image manufactured by a team of MBAs relying on focus group data, is it really that bad what Milli Vanilli did?


• There are services that allow you to determine, e.g., using your cellular phone and/or software, the name, title, &c. of a song. As more and more pop music sounds alike, this service is simultaneously more difficult and less useful.


• One leitmotif in "Weird Al" Yankovic's œuvre is the juxtaposition of white and nerdy, but he never sings or raps about liking Asian girls.

breaking news update

Michael Jackson is still dead.

My friend has tickets for his 18 July show, which I think now becomes sort of a Weekend at Bernie's-type deal.

I should probably leave this window open in case I think of more good jokes about this unfortunate tragedy.

he is not "invincible," as it turns out

(Dangerous (Epic) was probably my favorite album of his. Yes, that is weird; for what it's worth, my favorite U2 album is Zooropa or Pop (Island), although, in general, I quite loathe U2.)

Many instant messages, &c. have been going around about this until I realized, wait a second, I have a music 'blog--I could mention this there!

It's interesting how long it's taking the mainstream media outlets, e.g., CNN, to pick up this story--TMZ is a quality news source after all!

Celebrity deaths tend to happen in threes, they say: Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Mark Sanford's political career. (Also occurring in threes are NBA superstar trades: Richard Jefferson, Shaquille O'Neal and Vince Carter. Actually, I don't know if Jefferson counts as a "superstar"--that might be just 2½--but I hear a McGrady deal is in the works.)

Okay, there it is--CNN has picked this up, ~an hour later.

Michael Jackson is molesting young boys in heaven now.