Phoning It In

I normally don't do this, but I have to comment on this video.



While Jonas Akerlund is an amazing director ( he was the man that was attacked for the "Smack My Bitch Up video for Prodigy and the man that brought us the cult classic Spun ) I'm really disappointed that this is his latest vehicle for visual consumption. He's more suited to bring us a controversial story rather than the latest Top 40 dribblings of a gimmicky singer that can't function unless they have outlandish costuming and auto-tuning.

And while some will bring up the point that some claim Akerlund's previous work is more about style than substance, I would argue that his take on a phrase which means to do something with intensity and his vision of meth addicts is more about how society views them rather than leaving substantive storytelling on the shelf.

That being shown, it seems that Akerlund has abandoned this line of approach in order to get his foot back in the door and embrace pop princesses as a way to flex his directorial muscle.

The video itself gives voice to the very real theory that the reason people actually buy into the pop music genre is that they can't separate the visuals from the song itself. When one separates the audio from the visual, this really isn't that different from any pre-packaged, dancehall ready track stamped out by T-Pain, Kanye, or Britney Spears. It's a genre of music that is easily reproduced and uses pseudo-clever marketing to pump the end result into people's minds in order for it to be successful. The end result is the dumbing-down of our culture.

And while I will offer the caveat that proving Lady GaGa doesn't have a dick lends of air of comedic value to the video, it's really all downhill from there.

There really isn't anything within the extended song that hasn't been done by GaGa before, save the accompanying vocals of Beyonce, another staple of the "pretty women singing canned tunes" genre. So it's not surprising that the producers of the song and the video would go to such lengths to ensure that this style of music get a boost by having a short-film directed by a cutting edge director.

Maybe that's why Akerlund opted to take on this project, as a way of showing that Lady GaGa is nothing more than a proto-typical singer than can't survive within the musical realm without hats that look like phones and sunglasses made of smoldering cigarettes, a mere set prop and not really a true artist. If that be the case, then he should be lauded for his directorial honesty.

I need to address this one aspect of the film - the blatant and unblushing aping of Tarantino. I'm not entirely sure how he would view the overreaching use of "The Pussy Wagon" and the obvious parody of two characters from Pulp Fiction, but considering that Quentin has always loved for people to talk about him, I'm pretty sure that he wouldn't be too pissed. As for me, this shows two things - Akerlund knows who has created something original and how to use it to bring a wider audience to his film that is trying to make more out of a cookie-cutter song than it would normally garner.

Ultimately, the short film for "Telephone" is successful on two levels: detractors of GaGa are put in their place by knowing that she actually has digitized genitalia and not a dick and directors sometimes have to take on projects that aren't suitable to their talents in order to stay afloat.

Adventures In Gimmick Marketing

While Twitter, Facebook, and countless online message-boards and chat-rooms were taking up way too much bandwidth talking about Kanye West and Taylor Swift, it was the reactions of some that have proved the catalyst for this particular piece.

Here is what is being postulated – it was all staged.

As highly contrived, nearly complete preposterousness, as that seems to me, let’s run with this paper-thin thesis for a moment and take stock at what this all means.

The one question to ask is this - who benefits?

Certainly all interested parties, most notably Kanye, will benefit from the ensuing press that will pour through the internet, traditional print media, and radio, but that’s pretty much where it ends. People will talk about it for a few news cycles and then something else will happen and folks move on.

While it is being argued by some of the more rabid fans of the pop-music genre that this will have a direct effect on sales of not only West’s catalog of music, but Beyonce and Swifts as well, one has to question the overall effect of this sales bump. Are we talking about such a boost in sales of tracks ( both online and in standard retail outlets ) that it will rocket all three of the artists involved simultaneously upward on the Soundscan charts that the likelihood of one of them reaching #1 exponentially increases? Hardly. Although events like this do have a direct effect on sales of portions of the artist’s catalog, it’s likely to be nothing more than a modest gain at best.

And as it’s being argued this was all a set-up, who was actually in on it? If it was all three, then Taylor Swift and Beyonce would had to had known that they were going to win their respective awards. Does this violate some unwritten rule regarding the sealing of the ballots? Likely not, as this is a far cry from the Academy Awards. Furthermore, the ability for anyone in the pop-music field to keep their mouth shut about a gimmick like this is somewhat suspect. Had this actually been a preplanned stunt, it surely would have leaked just hours before the program.

But what if it was just Kanye, then what does that say about how much MTV cares for Taylor Swift? Even though she comes from the country genre, they are walking a pretty thin line. As country music begins to sound more and more like pop, and more artists like Taylor Swift are crossing over to such an extent that MTV is willing to recognize them, how will this play out for MTV. It’s no secret that MTV is a towering giant in the music industry, and can pretty much do whatever they want, so long as it doesn’t hurt their bottom line. But alienating an entire cross-section of the consumer market just so you can make fun of Taylor Swift on live TV doesn’t sound like a good business plan to me.

The only way to look at this is from the standpoint that MTV benefits more than any of the parties involved.

But what are the repercussions?

Kanye isn’t expanding his fanbase by any means by acting like a spoiled child. He already has a solid following that will defend him against virtually any and everything. But even those fans won’t be around for long. Consumers are quite fickle. Once they see something that is a little bit brighter or shinier or bigger and louder, they will slowly start to push Kanye West away.

And this is the point that some fans of pop music don’t seem to realize. Legacy is what matters to people like Kanye West.

While he is, at this particular moment in time, safe in the arms of the MTV machine, it won’t be long until even they grow weary of him. If we continue to operate under the assumption that Kanye West’s behavior on the VMAs was staged, we have to ask the question – how much of the rest of his appearances are staged? Are all the blog postings, interviews, tirades during live performances, and temper-tantrums caught on tape staged as well? And if so, to what extent is this affecting him mentally? Has Kanye West lost the ability to discern between his real self and his corporately funded self? Have consumers lost that ability to tell the real Kanye from the bizarro world Kanye? Did they ever, and do they even care?

In Which I Teach You The Perils Of The Board Feed Track

Board feed is the soundtrack that is produced prior to the mixed, final product. It's untouched by the sound-tech's skills.

And, I think we all know what Beyonce sounds like in a post-production setting.

Check out the board feed that Howard Stern featured on his Sirus program of her.

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