Curatorialist

Sometimes you can hit a bullseye and still miss.

The We Are The World remake for Haiti, 25 years after Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie rocked the world for USA for Africa, is sort of its own disaster in and of itself. My emotional preference would be to just go down the list of artists then and now and discuss the vast difference in artistic quality. Not that there aren’t some real deals in this video: Jennifer Hudson, Barbara Streisand, Celine Dion, Tony Bennet, Beyonce, Wyclef Jean, Usher, even Pink. There were some heavy hitters in there, to be sure. But the lows were so much lower as to bring down the overall quality quotient too dramatically. Popularity was never the casting spec in the ‘85 version. Jonas Brothers? Justin Bieber? Will i Am? Enrique Iglesias? Josh Groban? Miley Cyrus? I don’t need to discuss the differences between those artists and Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Tina Turner, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Kenny Rogers or any single person who was invited into that studio in 1985. This isn’t an old guy’s “times were better when” speech, either. It’s a pure, one-to-one look at artistic integrity. Not about album sales, but about having undeniable expressive art in your soul. The kind that lasts. If you play the ‘85 video right this second (I just did), every one of those artists is undeniable. One look at the Haiti video and you just know that 25 years from now, nobody is going to want to open that time capsule. That’s a miss. Should have been part of the consideration process for something important, like disaster relief. It detracts from the integrity of the message and this message deserves it. The Jonas Brothers should have bowed out. T-Pain should have said, you know what, I’m honored to have been asked but the message is too important to make this about the trend I represent. Same with Miley Cyrus. But that’s not what goes through their minds. Not that they don’t care about the cause, I’m certain they do, but it’s the lack of soul-searching about the true meaning of something, obscured by the false rationale that popularity, in and of itself, is also a contribution to the cause, that disappoints. And nothing could sum that up better than the difference between Lionel Ritchie introducing the video in ‘85 and Jamie Foxx introducing the video in’10.

But there’s deeper issues at play here. On the surface, 2010 WATW seems to have the same premise as 1985 WATW – bring artists together for a cause. Did artists come together in 2010? In the 1985 WATW, disparate musicians stood shoulder to shoulder and finished each others’ sentences. You could barely tell where Lionel became Lionel and Stevie. Where Paul became Kenny. Where Warwick became Willie. And wasn’t that sort of the point? Quincy’s magic was in the pairings and the way the individual gave way to the duet, the duet gave way to the song and the song gave way to the message. Can we say the same about 2010 WATW? I hear the overlaps in the mix, but from the video, it appears that all of them were recorded separately. We open on Justin Bieber, HEAR Jennifer Hudson and Nicole Scherzinger come in and then hard cut to them by themselves. Where’s the sharing of the mic? Where’s two artists working it out? Where’s the “Check your ego at the door” sign? Seems to me, this is one big ego enabler: separate recordings, close-ups and a who’s who of most-Tweeted-about flavors of the month. What, Jennifer and Nicole don’t want to bend down to Justin’s height? Too good for that, are we? What a missed opportunity. And if you think that none of that matters as long as it gets people to watch and donate to Haiti, I’d beg to differ. I’d like to ask how much more money might be raised, how many more relief workers might be enlisted, how many more concerned and helpful people might come out of the woodwork with a better product? If you set out to make something of value, make it great – or you underachieved. This version drafts off the success of a predecessor, lazily substitutes artistic effort with buzz metrics and propels an already suffering industry of music into further chaos by continuing to confuse popularity for genius. Haiti and Music deserved better.

And I can applaud the intention of the people who put this together while still disliking how they went about it.

Group rapping is terrible. It should have just been Snoop, Wyclef, Kanye or maybe Lil Wayne. Diverging into a group rap segment belittles rap and misses the point of the whole get together. Let’s mix it up. It’s okay to blend Mary J. Blige in with Tony Bennet (sort of) but rappers need their own interlude? So much for creativity. Speaking of which, auto tune? Why why why would you employ a technique like this to a song with such a heartfelt message? Auto tune corrects tone at the expense of humanity, that’s why the more it’s used, the more robotic it sounds. Conceptually, where does that help in a situation where you’re asking people to have empathy for a cause?

The irony of all of this is that the ‘85 WATW starts with a slate of the USA for AFRICA logo with all the artist’s signatures on it, but all you remember is their voices. The ‘10 WATW video is a lot of voices, but all you remember are their signatures.

Fame and the system killed the time-honored farming of talent. Somewhere in our lifetime, fame and talent switched positions on the time line. Guys were geniuses first, then they went mad. For real. Then, guys were genius and they wanted the image of going mad, so they wrecked hotel rooms, laced people’s drinks for fun and caroused with women, because they could, it was fun and they didn’t seem to get in trouble for it. The “bad boy” was invented. And girls loved it because, underneath, the bad boy had a genius to it – a skewed outlook. Something admirable. But Street Car Named Desire became Rebel Without a Cause. Then Rebel Rebel. Then Rebel Yell. Then Tom Petty’s Rebel Without a Clue. Then Courtney sang “Celebrity Skin” and then the whole world just started watching American Idol and Rock Star: INXS and the process reversed itself. We asked the audience to vote and to find a star that had “it.” But these boys and girls are music academy snobs with helicopter parents who’ve never really lived. We elect them based on a history of what genius is supposed to look like. Carrie Underwood? There’s no there there. There’s no genius. There was never any genius. There’s a look and there’s a voice. The rest is all manufactured.

And not to get political, but Ronald Reagan had a part in this, too. I know history has rewritten all of it, but I will die knowing that that man was a dumb actor, not a genius. And although he wasn’t the worst, he paved the way for guys like W. Bush to become POTUS. It’s a straight line from there to Carrie Underwood.

And the radio stations play them because the people know them. And we say “see, it’s successful because people buy it” or in the case of politics “look at the approval rating!” All backwards. Having made it USED to be the proof that you were talented, now I don’t assume you’re talented just because I know your name, or you’re on TV, or you won an award.  And, consequently, the predominant style of music today is not “beat” or “pop” or “rap” or “rock” or “country.” The predominant style of music today is a formula. Sure, blues is a formula, too. But genius does something with it. Blues is a raw material. There’s no raw material anymore. Manufactured cardboard cutouts just do what the computer prints out. Rick Rubin, Timbaland, will.i.am, John Shanks – they aren’t supposed to BE the talent, they’re supposed to help the talent put some shine on their raw genius. Mold the clay. That’s how it used to work. No longer. Linda Perry had one hit as a singer. She couldn’t sell an album as an artist today. Then all of the sudden she’s writing songs for Kelly Osbourne??? The un-genius daughter of one of the true geniuses? All  backwards. Ozzy was the old way, Kelly is the new way.

We can’t look for talent within the system anymore. The system develops money, not talent. And the formula, although designed to make money is also designed NOT to make genius. Shave off all the corners and call it a perfect shape. That’s not why we love music. I don’t need it perfect, I need it pure, driven, full of life. And the system is lifeless and creates the veneer of art out of a composite of lifeless elements. We’re not building out of clay anymore, we’re carving out of cardboard.

There’s something more than a little thought-provoking about this video. Be warned, it’s graphic:

RAD OMEN – “Rad Anthem” from Nicholaus Goossen on Vimeo.

This video forces you to look at the advertising business, both from a creation standpoint and a consumer standpoint. Jack, from the Jack in the Box ads, has become over the years a complex character. He, and The King in fact, have become pretty edgy. Willing to get in fist fights, blow up boardrooms, show up in people’s houses unannounced, etc. But they are still, in their fictitious bones, kid-like cartoon characters. The disintegration of innocence didn’t start with this video, it started with how advertising has evolved the characters to reflect ourselves. But how far do we take it? Advertising’s job is to connect to people, up to a point. There’s also a responsibility that comes with being a public message. So, advertising takes things right up to that line of appropriateness. It’s fascinating to see the other side of that line. Especially when that place somehow doesn’t feel so far away.