Another Star Quits Twitter

Whoa. Whoa!

Lily Allen quits Twitter. Not because she finally realized that her technologically-aided disinhibitionistic tendencies were harmful, but because she was faced with an ultimatum from her boyfriend:

"He told Lily: 'It's me or Twitter.' And she chose him."

Well, now. At that point you really don't have much of a choice, because if you choose Twitter, you're essentially saying that people don't matter to you unless they are a faceless mass only capable of short bursts of emotion.

Now, if a third prone-to-oversharing female pop artist quits Twitter, maybe we can actually say Twitter has hit its turning point...

In the most judicious use of Twitter I've seen, Rihanna created an account purely to create buzz around her new single, "Russian Roulette". The brief posts cultivate the air of anticipation that should surround a high-profile release, one that fits well with her image and subject matter.

MTV to Start Playing Music Videos

Curiously enough, they didn't publicize it themselves. I had to find *gasp* other media to tell the story!

Anyway, it was bound to happen--you can only exhaust reality shows for so long before going back to basics. The Real World: Brooklyn is old-school, early '90s edition, Unplugged will again be on the airwaves and Vh1 is bringing back Behind the Music. Now if only they can resurrect Pop Up Video...I'm telling you, it'll be gold. Gold!

The videos are early morning--starting very early, but meant to put a small dent in the GMAs of the world, perfect to wake up to or watch while you get dressed. With a 3 am start time, it's a new benchmark of insomnia.

What's more interesting is how this new video block will be exempt from ratings. Ratings for music videos as a whole are silly; it's the aggregate or the popularity of a given video/artist that's more important, similarly to this point made by Brian Stetler regarding cable news numbers. MTV plans to use the block now as an experiment in terms of advertising and marketing, possibly having one or few advertisers sponsor the whole thing, like what Hulu and other online video portals do. They'll also integrate the videos and Unplugged segments more, hoping for a greater awareness of the product (music). I hope they continue to show videos while credits run, though I can see them phasing this out now that they'll actually be able to play the whole thing.

And be on the lookout for Asher Roth. He's poised to be the Big Thing this year: a mix of Eminem and Mickey Avalon with the cheekiness of Travis McCoy.

The Merchants of Cool

In doing some “research” for my Britney Spears entry, I came across this Gawker piece, which reviewed “For the Record”. The reviewer mentioned he recently watched Frontline’s documentary on the merchants of cool, and compared the two. I came to Frontline today to watch a documentary on the US Navy I caught the end of several months ago, and when I couldn’t find it, watched “The Merchants of Cool” instead, which aired in 2001. Whoa, nostalgia!!!

One of the first people interviewed is Malcolm Gladwell (with a very short haircut), whose essay in the New Yorker on coolhunters formed the basis of the documentary. (I first discovered this concept when I read The Tipping Point, which lifts a chapter from his article).

The special reminded me very much of my “Media & Persuasion” class in college, and no wonder—one of the experts interviewed wrote a book that was a text in class (which I thought was slightly outdated and also-ran). Obviously many of the statistics are outdated and the documentary is very much a capsule of a specific moment in time, but many of its overarching themes are still present in society today, if in a different context and format.

TRL is the big thing, and there’s a lot of discussion around rap-rock music, Limp Bizkit and the Insane Clown Posse (in fact, it was that clip that made me feel déjà vu, as there’s a chance I’ve seen this documentary at some point in the last seven years.)

Here, the internet is shiny and new! Media fragmentation! AOL and Time Warner are still buddies, and Viacom rules the universe (which might still be true). There’s no talk of how the internet is killing whole industries, no mention of Napster...iPods haven’t been invented yet and the Macs used by some of the marketing companies (using what some consider unethical practices) are the old-time blocky ones. Real children’s and tween’s programming is given lipservice in the form of MTV, but there’s no acknowledgment of Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel’s grip on the youngest generation of Americans. Social networks are still years away. TRL is the epitome of cool.

But what I found most fascinating, in this clip (Chapter 3, The MTV Machine--no embed capabilities), was the synergy between advertising, marketing, and real programming, how MTV used a launch party for Sprite.com as content for one of their brand new shows at the time, Direct Effects (which aired after TRL for a few years).

Although the documentary itself cursory mentions Eminem, he’s a focus in a lot of extended interviews, from Jimmy Iovine to Brian Graden to Dave Sirulnick. There’s a lot of discussion focused on music, marketing, and the intersection of the two; a lot on history as well. It’s interesting to look at this piece—while still relevant—as also a unique moment in time, before the internet overtook practically everything, when the economy was good and everything was flush, when even the angry music wasn’t depressing.

As for Eminem—an artist who’s gone largely out of the spotlight the last few years—even MTV was a bit naïve when it came to promoting him:

[D]o you worry about fanning this flame?

Yes. At MTV, we are absolutely in a constant internal discussion about our role in the media. One thing that is true now that wasn't true 10 years ago is that 10 years ago, we might have been the only proprietor of a certain kind of art or a certain kind of product. Now, in this particular age, there are 20 channels playing music videos on television. There are endless channels programming for a young audience. On the computer you can get access to absolutely anything musical and otherwise. I worry less about what we're perpetrating and more about just finding the right line for ourselves. And it's a very fluid discussion; what is true today may not be true six months from now.

And as MTV, I don't feel we can ever stop having the discussion. There's a tendency to say, "Well, we found our line. Let's move on." But you can't do that, because culture is always shifting. It is a non-stop discussion, because we take the responsibility very seriously to not put dangerous things out there. At the same time, the reason the audience trusts us in the first place is because we don't censor. We present their art in the most honest way. . . . We won't cross violence lines. We won't cross certain language lines. But otherwise, we will let the art express itself as purely as possible.

Well, let's take an artist like Eminem. He may be the most popular and most controversial figure at the moment. You not only went with his videos--but you really gave him a platform. Tell me about the internal decision there. Why did you decide to go that way?

Around Eminem, what you have to remember is that his second album had a different tenor than his first album. There is definitely a through line, and you can see the progression. When we decided and planned. . . we had not heard the second album in its entirety. What we had was a very sanitized, friendly, saturated video that was very much targeted right at a young consumer, and that video was perfectly innocent. It passed all of our standards in terms of violence and language. And away we go.

It's only after we had a chance to really listen to the album and we had a chance to sit down with lots of other groups . . . that we began to have second thoughts in pulling back the promotion. And we did, in fact, pull a lot of the promotion back. And we decided we don't want to censor the artist. The video's going to play on the channel if the audience chooses to have it played on "Total Request Live." But we did feel a responsibility to express the other side of the controversy. So we did this half-hour special on hate lyrics. I think it's infinitely better for us as MTV to get out both sides. . . . That's a better role for MTV to have than to simply say, "Let's not show this and let's not talk about it," because that's disingenuous.

Is it fair to say that you may not have done the two-week thing had you known the full album?

Yes. Hindsight is always 20/20. I don't know that. That would sound like a cop-out if I just said we wouldn't of, but certainly the picture became clearer over the ensuing weeks. And like I said, since the discussion is fluid at MTV, we weren't afraid to say, "You know what? Let's pull back on promotion, and let's tell the other side of this story."

You have wonderful documentaries about the issues that are raised by the rest of your programming. You don't see yourselves as moral guardians. You can't act in that role.

I would say that MTV works on two levels. We see ourselves as champion of artists. And whether we like it or not, the themes that artists sometimes choose to embrace reflect sometimes anger, sometimes views that we would never agree with. For the most part, we aren't going to censor the artist, beyond standard television network standards. As MTV, we do believe that we have some broader role in educating consumers, in getting behind social campaigns like our campaign to vote, our campaign to stop violence. So we tried to make both coexist on the channel. Artists can express themselves, but so can we.

And doesn't this sound interesting?

And at about the same time, Roland Joffé came in and pitched the show "Undressed." And his pitch was really interesting, because he is fascinated by these small conversational moments that ultimately really say volumes about a relationship. His pitch was that you don't get honest until you get home at night and you start to get in bed. Once you . . . get undressed--which was his metaphor--that's when you start to get real.

I saw only a few eps, and was kind of squicked out but perversely fascinated--it was very much soft-core porn, just really awkward and not terribly realistic, though it was porporting to be.

Many of the extended interviews are pretty interesting, even just for skimming purposes. I recommend Dave Sirulnick on MTV, TRL, and how they influence the culture; Jimmy Iovine for the historical background with teenagers and music, and how MTV fits into that; Brian Graden for MTV as a business and many of their strategies; Robert McChesney on the state of the media and music landscape in 2001; and Todd Cunningham for how MTV conducts market research.

P.S. A guy named Barack directed “The Merchants of Cool.” Ha!

All You Need is the Right Person, and Poof! You're a Star

I originally didn't even want to blog about Leona Lewis, because there's no need to feed the machine, but after reading this article I'm again reminded why she's doing well: it's all the media push. Look at all the key words here:

Although other winners of "The X-Factor" haven't been given a strong U.S. push...

Simon Cowell believes that Lewis' "television connection was being overblown in the media. 'I've never signed anyone from Star Search, he said."


Yet Davis and Cowell designated Lewis as a star-to-be and lined up A-list producers such as Akon and Stargate for her "Spirit."

As for the criticism that "Idol" and its ilk put technique over artistry, Cowell has heard it. "I worry about this," he said. "I'm interested in the person as well as the talent. . . . I'm not interested in singing robots."

First of all, why is she given a push and not any others? There are Idol clones in 40 countries, including India, South Korea, and a regional version in the Middle East. "Bleeding Love" was even reshot and remixed to fit an American audience, so clearly we're not even ready for the real thing. (I heard this on VH1's "Top 20 Countdown", in case you're wondering.) To add insult to injury, the song and the video are boring and aren't worth the extra effort.

Second, it's her television connection that's selling her. She is a media creation--at least in the U.S., her claim to fame is she won a British talent contest and the guy who runs that show also runs the American version, and he and one of the world's top music producers love her. It's the same as any other American Idols--at first they're sold as a product of the show. If they're lucky, they transcend that.

Third, because she was anointed she gets top producers to replicate a sound that will connect with American audiences, because they're familiar with similar work.

Fourth, the only thing setting Lewis apart right now is that she's shy, making her the polar opposite of the exhibitionistic pop stars that seem to be synonymous with America right now. That could be a major selling point if it's played well and if Lewis was actually interesting, but she's not and no one focuses on that because there's nothing much to say and she would be drowned out. For all we know, she is a robot stylistically. Granted, this isn't fair, as most first albums are based out of a desire to get material out there and please producers; it's often only in follow-ups that true artistry, vision and personality can begin to see the light of day.

It's clear that for whatever reason, Lewis was handpicked and stamped for approval for Americans, and because she had big-name backers she became a star. But not really. Her numbers are inflated. How many people really like her? We don't know anything about the girl, except that she's shy. Since her album just came out, the reviews will follow soon, but the only people talking are ones connected to her. No one saying anything about the music, just that she's talented and she like certain other American stars. So? That's nothing. It's empty praise, much like her music.

And it's people like her that prevent other artists from getting a fair chance.

Ever wonder why that band you love just cannot seem to ever really get the exposure they need? It's because they usually don't have enough marketing dollars at their disposal.

Artists bitch and moan about how unfairly treated they are by the industry, how discriminated they are for whatever reason, and many listeners will just nod their heads. But it's true. Even an artist as celebrated as Kelly Clarkson complained that she wasn't given the proper push behind her last album, My December, because she and Clive Davis notoriously butted heads over the musical direction. Guess what? The album bombed. The best cut from the album, "Sober", wasn't even released as a single, which is a shame. Instead, the first (and only?) single was the very depressing "Never Again", accompanied by a dark, angry video that clashed with the effervescent Clarkson's personality, and the label barely bothered a follow-up, thinking there was no point. ("Sober" might be listed as a single in the link, but the fact that there's no video and virtually no radio play belies this fact.)

And this is the original American Idol we're talking about.

There are so many great artists out there, just as there are so many great songs out there that have a small fanbase, just because people aren't exposed to the song enough times to make it stick. This might sound like a silly argument to make now that Israeli-French chanteuses are broken on computer commercials, that an American Idol contestant can sing a version of a famous song that was featured in numerous television shows and movies, and that generally the public is exposed to more channels and has more options of finding music they are interested in than ever before. Technically, there is no need to follow mainstream music at all, and there are plenty of people who don't. But for every Colbie Calliat there are hundreds of MySpace artists that just need their Simon Cowell to blast the media with his endorsement.

Update: The LA Times actually agrees with me, calling her "unremarkable" and unfavorably reviews her music. Thank you:

At a time when major labels have trimmed their rosters and their staff, Lewis represents a carefully handled safe bet. Lewis, and the string of "Idol" artists who have come before her, are representative of an extremely risk-averse major label climate, one where artist development means winning a contract on a television show.