Don't confuse celebrities with heroes. Heroes are people you look up to, who you want to emulate, celebrities are three-dimensional characters in a living cartoon cavorting for your entertainment.
Paris Hilton has no talent and isn't that good-looking. But people love reading about her. This uneducated twit who lives to fuck and party is an endless situation comedy far eclipsing anything on Must See TV. She tapes herself fucking and leaks it to the Internet. She cracks up her Bentley and gets arrested for driving while intoxicated at IN-N-OUT BURGER!
Then there's Firecrotch. Getting boob implants before she's twenty and then missing out on her REAL job, acting in movies, because she's too busy living the celebrity life.
Not to mention Brandon Davis, who outed her. Taped walking down the sidewalk ranting and raving about her pudenda.
Those who remember the sixties, never mind the EIGHTIES, just don't get it. How can these no-talents get all this press for doing NOTHING! But they've got it upside down, all wrong, that's EXACTLY THE POINT! Their celebrityhood is not based on their work, their talent, but their everyday EXPLOITS! The work is IRRELEVANT!
How stupid is Warner Brothers, making a record with Paris Hilton. Almost as stupid as Tommy Mottola. Tommy Mottola lost his job because of the Internet. In a limited media world Tommy could create fabrications out of thin air, and then hype them to high hell. We had suspicions Mariah Carey was a twit, but it was only when we got online and found out everybody else felt the same way that perception changed. Believing that it's about him, not the talent, Tommy decided to make the aforementioned Lindsay Lohan into a music star. He just didn't realize she WASN'T a star. She was a CELEBRITY! Oh, for a moment there, she was a nascent film star. But then everybody got broadband, blogs blossomed, and she changed from next door nice to party slut. And everybody wants to fuck the slut, but nobody wants to marry her.
Yes, the hoi polloi want to frolic with the celebrities. They want to get in on the press action. Doubt me? Then what are all the online rating sites about? Never mind Tia Tequila and her zillion MySpace friends. It's about working your way into the celebrity sphere. But it's got nothing to do with movies or music, never mind conventional TV. That's not what these celebrities' talent IS! Their talent is getting fucked up and bedding each other while they leave a stream of broken automobiles behind.
No one's interested in a Paris Hilton PRODUCT! SHE'S the product. You might like to meet her, touch her, but you don't want her record. Why would you? She's got NO TALENT!
But it gets worse. Seeing the reams of publicity the celebrities accumulate, record companies believe this is the way to break MUSICIANS! To have them endorse any product that'll feature them in an advertising spread. Not realizing that rather than having this publicity burnish their career, it eviscerates their credibility! A true artist would never compromise, never sacrifice, never PROSTITUTE himself to such a degree. All Paris Hilton HAS are her wits. Which she employs quite well. Hell, she's a household name. She's a train-wreck that will garner attention to such a degree that associated brands, whether they be bars or bikes, can get noticed. Whereas musicians supposedly have talent. Something god-given the rest of us don't. Which separates them from us. Which makes us look up to them. We don't look up to the celebrities, we MAKE FUN OF THEM! And for their ability to sell ads on TMZ and PerezHilton and "Entertainment Tonight" and VH1, they get paid and endure the ridicule. You think they don't know the more outrageous their behavior the higher their price? For they deliver more EYEBALLS! Whereas musicians don't touch your eyes, but your soul. And it doesn't matter how you look, what you're wearing, just what you sound like, what you have to say. And how can we believe in what you say if you're dressed up in designer duds in "Blender"?
And then there are the big sellers. People like Justin Timberlake. The press is in on the game, since they get eyeballs/readers from featuring him. Let's call the new album what it is, not Justin Timberlake's second record, but TIMBALAND'S NEW ONE! Which is why nobody's got a career anymore. Because everybody knows they've got no talent. The true talent is producers. Dr. Dre will have a longer career than any rapper out there. For he's the one who creates the beats.
And the beats fit the lifestyle. The CELEBRITY lifestyle. And that's why they sell. You can't play rock in a club, never mind ballads/torch songs. And it being easy to fit into this participatory culture, record companies don't focus on what's real, but the avenue of least resistance. You wonder why sales keep declining? Because all there is is buzz, and NO TALENT!
Then you've got the wannabes. The MySpace musicians. Who complain the focus isn't on them. When all they've got is ambition, their talent being nonexistent. Really. Go listen to these bands.
And the infrastructure is calcified. Touring is big business. It's not the sixties and seventies anymore. LiveNation wants spectacle. Because that delivers the big bucks. Even though next year you need a new spectacle. Hell, take Madonna. She's ONLY spectacle. What next, TRULY NAILING HERSELF TO A CROSS?
"Ridin' down the highway
Goin' to a show
Stop in all the byways
Playin' rock 'n' roll
Gettin' robbed
Gettin' stoned
Gettin' beat up
Broken boned"
It didn't used to be so easy. But MTV changed the paradigm. Took about four years for someone to understand the image/marketing game completely, but by time Michael Jackson and Madonna hit it big, it was all over for the usual suspects. People who practiced their instruments in basements, toured shitholes just trying to get traction, getting good along the way, figuring out what worked with the public, never mind learning how to play better.
"Gettin' had
Gettin' took
I tell you folks
It's harder than it looks"
Used to be. A ten year overnight sensation. Even Billy Joel signed a bad deal and was relegated to the piano bar circuit. Where's Vanessa Carlton today? Where are the Spice Girls? Where are all the one hit wonders? Without seasoning, without a cadre of devoted fans keeping them alive on the road in between successes, they've faded out, left the boards, it's just not economically feasible to keep doing it.
Hate to tell you, it's still just as hard. The way we're going, we'll have BABY superstars soon. An engineer will record an infant's cooing and crying and Dallas Austin will craft a hit single. The kid will tour and be on drugs before kindergarten.
Don't blame the celebrities. They're just doing their job. Blame yourself. For not seeing and understanding the game.
And blame the cynical purveyors. Who don't realize anything's changed even though everybody in cyberspace has. After all, on a day when Steve Jobs is talking about streaming films wirelessly through houses the labels are focusing on selling CDs! Do you think they'd want to go back to signing acts based on their talent, their ability to write songs and perform, irrelevant of genre? Hell, what's the first thing you hear when you're rejected? WE DON'T KNOW HOW TO MARKET YOU!
They know how to market no-talents. They think they're pulling the wool over the public's eyes. But the public is laughing. They know what's real. They've got Led Zeppelin. They've got the Doors. Doing no endorsements, just standing on their music. Music with HISTORY! Hell, how many records did Jimmy Page play on BEFORE he formed Led Zeppelin?
"It's a long way to the top if you wanna rock 'n' roll
It's a long way to the top if you wanna rock 'n' roll
If you think it's easy doin' one night stands
Try playin' in a rock roll band
It's a long way to the top if you wanna rock 'n' roll"
Give a fifteen year old the choice. He can spend the evening hanging with Paris Hilton and the usual suspects at the club du jour or hang backstage with Angus Young. It's no contest. He'll want to hang with Angus.
The tiny Angus hits that Gibson and this AMAZING sound comes out. It fills rooms. It speaks to one's elation, one's FRUSTRATION! He wears the same outfit every night. He doesn't advertise deodorant, never mind watches. He's never given a coherent interview, he speaks through his axe. And out of that axe comes religion.
There's no religion in celebrity culture, but AC/DC is TEEMING with it. "Back In Black" is gonna sell when we're dead. Because captured therein is the essence. Not something salable, but something that RESONATES
Subscribe to Feed
