Nope. I'd argue that he is symptomatic of a larger change in the music industry that I find disheartening. He's not an artist. He's a product.
1. I will just say straight out that I MUCH prefer singer songwriters to people who have great talent, but who sing the songs of others. Bob Dylan and Neil Young are not gifted vocally, but they WRITE THEIR OWN SONGS and I think that is awesome. The music is coming from their hearts and souls, not from some paid songwriter. Somehow I don't feel that Bieber is writing many of his own songs at this point, and even if he did, the things he would write about would probably not speak to me. They might speak to your average teenager, but I doubt they are songs that will live in pop consciousness for too long.
2. This kind of goes back to reason one, but you can be gifted vocally and maybe even be a great dancer, but if your singing doesn't tell me something about your experience, or connect to a greater humanity, then I'm just not as enthusiastic about you. Take, for example, Christina Aguilera. She has a tremendous voice. However, I don't think that any of her albums have given me a glimpse into her soul. She's a songbird. I don't get any sense of who she is. With each music release, she changes style with whatever producer she has chosen. Adele, or Amy Winehouse, or Neko Case, however, are singers AND songwriters who, though they work with producers, put out music that is embedded with their souls, their stories, their heartache and their triumph. When they sing, you feel it. The downside with this, is of course sometimes those demons overcome the artist (hello Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse), but not always. The best music, is universal because it speaks to the human experience. Of course, not all music need to save the world. We can't all be Midnight Oil. There is room in life for silly pop songs that make you want to dance (hello Katy Perry!). But can't there be great pop music that is catchy, well-written AND musically relevant?
3. Pop music has always been susceptible to it (as has most dance music), but I rue the rise of the super producer over the last few years. This tends to go in cycles, of course, as producer-dominated disco once ruled the charts for a time. The new Katy Perry is an example of a hugely catchy CD (and yes, she co-writes her songs), but it's also put together by some of the best producers/songwriters in the business. The fact that I know the names of Dr. Luke, the Smeezingtons and RedOne, is disappointing because really, the names of the artist should be more predominant! There for awhile, when the Neptunes duo were hot, you could hear their songs on the radio in an instant. They all had a similar style, and the vocalists were essentially interchangeable. That bothers me. The vocalists, the artists should not be interchangeable!! Shouldn't they be singing their songs, shaping their stories? Perhaps with an assist with a producer or songwriter (Adele wrote her song Turning Tables with a great songwriter who is also an evangelical Christian, but that's another story), but their own vision should be first and foremost! Otherwise they are not really artists, they are product. They are Christina Aguilera. Or Demi Lovato.
4. Finally, Bieber is symptomatic of a music industry that needs to permeate all corners of pop culture with their product. It's not enough to have a song on the radio. You have to have your own iPhone app, movie, soda, clothing line, perfume etc. Now that people aren't buying music anymore, it's understandable that the music industry would move in this direction. However, when a gigantic multinational corporation is putting together these lines (look! It's the new Selena Gomez perfume!), it just strikes me as so artificial. When the Disney juggernaut decides to put its corporate weight behind a music group (The Jonas Brothers), all of a sudden they become ubiquitous. All of a sudden it's not so much about the music as it is about the product and product diversification. Ironically, the Jonas Brothers are actually pretty good musicians and I don't hate them. Have you noticed, however, how little we've been hearing about them lately? Has the Disney Corporate juggernaut passed them by??
Maybe, ultimately, that's what bothers me about Bieber and his ilk; music as product rather than expression. In today's quickly changing landscape, I realize that musicians can't rely on music sales to make their living. They need to diversify, license their songs to be played in Carl's Jr.s and Mc Donald's and sell lots of t-shirts. I guess I just prefer it when an artist's expression is their own, and not that of a corporate board that is trying to extract maximum profit from a product (Bieber) that has a limited shelf life.
yes, I know. I think way too much about music. This is what happens when you have WAY too much post-graduate education and suffer from a life-long obsession with music.
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