How Is This Different From A Motley Crue Show?
Tuesday, August 27, 2013 at 12:01AM Apparently the world is imploding because Miley Cyrus was suggestive on the MTV Video Music Awards Sunday night. I didn't even watch the awards show because I don't really listen to pop music and metal never gets covered on the VMAs.
Anyway, everyone at work was talking about Miley so I watched a clip on YouTube. Granted, you'd never see me prancing around on stage like she did Sunday night... I'm also not a famous singer trying to make the jump from teen star to adult icon. Quite frankly, she looked like a Motley Crue backup dancer to me. Anyone who owns the Carnival of Sins DVD knows what I'm talking about. What Miley did wasn't original in my book. It always seems like when a woman acts suggestive on stage, media types go bonkers. When a man does it, the world yawns. Discuss.
Reader Comments (34)
I think it is luck and timing and dedication in no particular order. While talent helps, and Ms. Germanotta inspires debate on that count, she also managed to jump into the musical world at a point where a lack needed a filler. And if it wasn't for a few chance meetings, who knows? No Interscope, then what? She could be one of countless others who were going to be something and stayed that way.
Slagging the others is easy (I do it). But people smell desperation in an attempt to rebrand oneself, even if the stink isn't there. So the talentless and the talented have to figure a way to thread the needle: from tween to teen, from punk to pop, from indie to mainstream. Cyrus is attempting that right now. And it must be difficult going from an object of girls'/pervs' obsessions to a boy toy without affectation (or, to be more precise, with the type that isn't so cloying as to be a turn-off to the dudes who are leering and the teens who are still cheering). Consider: how many boy bands successfully transitioned? How many New Editions fractured into Browns and BelBivs and regrouped at state fairs and fractured again?
That pressure is multiplied when you are supple young thing trying to develop an edge. Germanotta? At least she has been somewhat consistent . . . for less than a decade. And that counts too. Like I said, people smell a fraud when a Del Ray or a Bolton try to shift to what "we" want. And still, some people don't mind. The heart wants what the heart wants. Like I said, talent isn't always an issue. Some hearts want pre-packaged crap shot out the zoom-hole of a fabrication plant called Live Nation or what have you.
Those odd twerks? That isn't a cry for help. It is an attempt to get attention. It could become the former if it stops garnering the latter. Spears, anyone?
And the whole male vs. female thing? Sexism exists, Allyson. Double standards are a standard. But they are also somewhat chimerical. We keep them going by hating them and see them where they don't exist. Squire should serve as a warning to any artist willing to just do what comes naturally. Halford serves as a counter-point that suggests, even in the macho world of music (and the pouty world of glam . . . a place hoisted on a paradox, rolled in a contradiction, and then smothered in men's and women's desires), there is more tolerance than the media lets on.
The sniff test is crowd-sourcing at its oldest. And, like any crowd, it can get rowdy--or disperse, or clap--before you know it.
One of the best (and funniest) lines that I've read in a long time. I litterally laughed out loud...and it felt good.
And as far as your comparison of Cyrus to Spears, it's no coincidence... Though Spears' heyday act was vanilla compared to Cyrus'... Spears longtime manager, Larry Rudolph, is also the manager of none other than, you guessed it, the lovely Miss Miley Cyrus. When ya don't have much to work with, call in the expert with the proven track record to package it up for ya.
On another note, as you bring up some interesting Rock & Roll footnotes to your topic, HIM, you did conjure up for me another act that suffered from over packaging and misguided career missteps...
CHEAP TRICK
They started out as pure comic geniuses with 3 Classic albums and a killer live album -- in fact, one that's lauded as one of THE Greatest Live Rock & Roll Albums of All Time. And then they lost it and never really got it back.
Yet, I, like many fans, managed to stay in denial, clinging to the occasional pseudo hit, desperately wanting to believe they were somehow still with us. Sure, they are phenomenal live but it seems they seem as cursed as the New York Jets in their pursuit to somehow get that old magic back.
p.s. And for all you people who don't know what HIM is referring to when it comes to Bolton, here he is when he was Rock & Roll:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga_reUSlasQ
At times they aped Journey, then tragically, they became Journey. When they tried to make it back, they never could quite pull it off.
The Bolton link didn't work for me, but I sure hope it was to "Fool's Game." I find myself singing along in spite of the glucose spike that song induces.
Cheap Trick, they just sorta' devolved into, well, a "That 70s Show" version of who they were in the 70s. The mess they have going on with Carlos/Carlson right now is just sad.
I suppose the Spears/Cyrus point is apt. And history is littered with Svengalis who unleashed a few pearls and a whole lot of hooey on the masses ear-holes. Taste is such a fickle thing . . . especially when someone else's isn't to your liking.
You don't have to like something to know whether it's good or not.
p.s. Apparently, Bun E. Carlos can't play anymore because of a chronic illness. Prayers to him.
another difference is your hypothesis about cheap trick and the new york jets. correct me if I am wrong, but you profess that in order for them to fly high again, they must bring it back. I disagree (as HIM sorta points out in his assessment), that instead of bringing it back, you gotta bring it forward and if/when you do, you might fly high again.
Perhaps this is why I enjoy "The Way Life Goes" so much. Tom Keifer wasn't singing/Screeching, "SHAKE ME" or drowning in sorrow in "Don't know what you got..."
Tom, instead, took his experiences and made it into a beautiful, brilliant masterpiece of work...plain and simple. I wish I had (half) the talent that Tom does.
He wasn't apologizing. He wasn't trying to recapture 1986. He wasn't waging a personal war. He was telling a story- his story, because so many people can (and do) relate to it...warts and all. It takes a true artist (like Tom) to expose himself like that. But also to me, he was singing to the LCD, not the general masses who scream in orgasmic tyranny when bret michaels shakes his ass on stage. In other words, singing to the LCD (to me) is not always a bad thing.
The New York Jets might be trying to recapture the limelight year after year, but to me, that's what Axl (and on some level) david lee roth, were trying to do with their most recent albums. David Lee Roth succeeeded so much more than Axl because simply, he "is" david lee roth and eddie van halen "is" eddie van halen. Whereas, Tom Keifer showed us what he has in him and what he has to offer us and he saved many of us from a bitter end. He showed me. check out that song!
now there's a mood elavator! check out that song, too.
Cheap Trick? They suffer their own wounds. They have so much talent and so much of it went to nothing.
Fletch is offering some wisdom too. Some singers and bands capture a mood and go with it. Others find a mood and strangle it. I still have no idea what it is that sets Fletch alight (occasionally), or what transpired in dark halls long since past, but I give Fletch credit: honesty and emotion count even if talent and/or erudition aren't there (and when they are there, well, it is a double dose of truth). DLR sells us a package of croaking goods and most of us accept them for what they are. Others sound like heaven and we would rather pay the devil to tell.
A great sequence of posts. Thanks.
ask me yesterday.
check out THAT! song. thanks tom! see you in atlantic city...and I'm bringing a buddy of mine. he's a virgin and wants to gamble...and possibly see halestorm. I'm trying to get him to come to your show.
check out that song!
kinda reminds me of logging onto bringbackglam.com
but we're here for each other...through thick and thin. Who else sings bonjovi's, "I'll be there for you."