- 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.
