Don't believe the hype
Reading music press releases and seeing red.
By Sylvia W. Chan
I'M NOT A real
teacher yet, just a broke grad student who has to teach freshman
writing courses to make ends meet till those big academic bucks
start rolling in. But trade in dingy bars, platform shoes, and the
glamorous life of freelance music writing for the equally alluring
world of chalkboards, red markers, and stacks of essays on the function
of sadomasochism in The Scarlet Letter like I did a few years
ago, and something very strange happens.
You start correcting
the remnants of your former life the same way you correct those
papers. You place mental checkmarks and smiley faces by the things
you learned in that former life that continue to work well for you
in your new life – i.e., the ability to talk to strangers,
to deal with deadlines, to multitask – while you cut and correct
the behaviors that don't, such as all-night binge drinking, cursing
like a sailor, and wearing halter tops. You find that good living,
like good writing, means keeping it simple, cutting out excesses
and extremes, avoiding drama invoked for the sheer sake of drama
itself. You remember that for some reason you believe that writing
well, writing clearly, writing honestly, is important. And at the
risk of sounding like Dr. Phil, you constantly tell yourself and
your students that you should always try your very best to write
what you mean and, if at all possible, mean what you write, because,
hell, that might actually be one of those tiny little things we
can do to make this spewing-lies-so-we-can-go-to-war kind of country
a slightly better place.
Coming clean
While you're doing some
midsummer spring-cleaning one day, doing the mental check-and-slash
with all the crap you've accumulated over the years, you come across
a bulging box marked "Publicity." You open it up, riffle
around, and read ...
"Common is as deep
as the fish that govern his Zodiac."
"Now, with the release
of Part III, 112 emerges as a fully matured ensemble of passionate
young men in their early twenties whose personal and musical growth
is compellingly translated in their ripened self-penned lyrics and
sophisticated production."
"Born aware of her
old soul, yet living in New York's inner city amidst the dominance
of Biggie and Jay-Z, Alicia's natural talents blossomed into a rare
mix of hip-hop flavor and insightful, wise-beyond-her-years songwriting.
Coupling this with the singer's spine-tingling vocal power, positively
stirring live performances, and expertise as a classically-trained
pianist, Alicia Keys could be this generation's Roberta Flack."
The red marker in your
mind screams, "Weird, awkward simile!" " 'Ripened'?
Are these men or fruit?" "Avoid tired clichés (i.e.,
'old soul,' 'wise beyond her years,' 'spine-tingling')! And how,
pray tell, is one born aware of his or her old soul? Huh?"
Suddenly, you wonder
if maybe, just maybe, all that crappy living you did back then had
something to do with all the crappy writing you dealt with all the
time, the fact that each and every day, you opened up your mailbox
to find it crammed tight with music-industry press packets stuffed
with press releases cluttered with precisely the sort of writing
you now spend so much of your time warning students against. You
fear that all the unnecessary hyperbole, clunky sentence structure,
and utter absence of meaning in these documents has irrevocably
altered you, imbued you with the notion that (1) it's OK to compare
rappers to fish to convey profundity and that (2) hey, that 112
track about getting freaky really does prove how mature and compelling
their work is. With a quiet sigh, you place the entire box in the
"To Throw Out" pile accumulating by the front door.
The offenders
For those of you who
haven't had the intense pleasure of reading mainstream press releases,
here's what you need to know:
When record companies
promote a new artist or push the latest release of an established
one, they send out press packets. These packets usually contain
a copy of the artist's CD, a smattering of the press that's already
been written on him or her, a glossy 8-by-10 photograph, and an
artist bio. I always liked getting free CDs, appreciated reading
the articles by my peers, and even enjoyed the freakishly glossy
photos, but the bios always rubbed me the wrong way.
Maybe it's because their
sole purpose is to hype, to sell, to pound you over the head about
why this artist is the shiniest! The brightest! The very best, best,
best! Or maybe it's that bio and press-release writing seems to
invite folks to engage in the most hackneyed, drama-for-drama's-sake
writing there is. Or maybe – and I think this might be the
clincher – it's because music labels and/or publicists assume
you're the biggest idiot on the face of the earth, someone who needs
to be plied with clichés and catchphrases in order to appreciate
the essence of the artist at hand, or at least, what they want you
to think is the essence of the artist at hand.
For example, take these
lines about Christina Aguilera's latest: "The sixteen new tracks
that comprise Stripped showcase an unadorned, unfettered,
and fearlessly outspoken artist who has liberated herself, her soul,
and her music." Yeah, she also seems to have liberated her
ass from her clothes. And where, may I ask, does anyone get off
calling an artist who has not one, not two, but nine different producers
working on her shit "unfettered" and "unadorned"?
Or these lines on the
new Beyoncé: "It is everything you'd expect from Beyoncé
and more than you could have hoped for.... Dangerously in Love
is the sound of a grown woman clearly staking her claim in the world,
and in the process, redefining expectations of who she is."
Well, what I expected from Beyoncé (whom I love) is that
she would look hot, sing her ass off, and pump out a few banging
tracks without those other useless Destiny's Children. No more.
And finally, my favorite,
lifted from the beginning of P. Diddy's bio: "It is a rare
and significant occasion when a musical artist captures and expresses
the sentiments of a generation and expands its horizons to make
an impact on society, creating a union between music and life. Sean
P. Diddy Combs is undoubtedly among this very select, very small
group.... Sean has torn down barricades that continue to segregate
music and society." Say what? Diddy is tearing down barricades?
He's the voice of a generation? Last I checked, Señor Combs
was calling women chickenheads and telling them to shake their chicken
booties, and now he's friggin' Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, and Stevie
Wonder rolled into one? Say it with me: Give me a break.
The search for meaning
Don't get me wrong, I'm
not bashing any of these artists, just the fact that the words penned
to accompany their personae are inappropriate, overstated, and meaningless.
I say this as a writer who's penned a few press releases. Bad ones.
So I know that no matter how much I bitch, I've been as guilty as
anyone of propagating this drivel. I understand full well how easy
it is to slip into the language of insincere, formulaic vacuity,
a language that reduces words and meaning to the lowest capitalist
denominator. I know it's easier to write what you think other people
want you to mean than to figure out there's no way to say what you
really mean in certain contexts. I know it's easier to whack people
on the head with hyperbole than to sell them on subtlety. And I
know it's easier to plug in a bunch of clichés than to try
to convey what music sounds like.
And that sucks. Because,
when done well, music writing can be some of the most gorgeous stuff
there is – a literary space where writers are pushed to describe
how music, the most accessible yet inexplicable of the arts, works
for them, moves them, stills them, or transforms them. And so I
still love music, still love writing about it. I just can't handle
that sort of writing about it anymore. It's not that I have principles
or anything. It's just that teacher thing. The red marker in my
brain keeps slashing the shit out.
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