BonsaiK said:
What you also have to remember, and what critics of pop music consistently forget, is that for every Ke$ha, there were 1,000 wannabe Ke$has who didn't make it. Now if it was really simply a case of people not knowing better as long as the marketing was okay, the companies involved would throw the correct amount of dollars at all of it and ALL of those 1,000 Ke$has would have made a career out of it too. Obviously, only one did, so then you've got to ask yourself, what set that particular Ke$ha apart from all the others? Well...
2. ...people actually liked the songs more.
Trying to find a new Ke$ha or an artist with a "talent" as "unique" as her would prove difficult, and even if they did, they know that they would be a violent backlash from the public for trying to push a Ke$ha-esque artist, even if the artist has had a career longer than her.
Take Uffie, for example. You might know her best for Justice's "Tthhee Ppaarrttyy" from 2007 ot 2006's "Pop the Glock", which was released again in 2009. Sleezy lyrics, insufferable voice, very mixed professional reviews, and autotuned up the asshole. She was doing EXACTLY what Ke$ha does and had a modestly sized following years before Ke$ha was known by the public (she wouldn't release a single until 2009). Now we have to ask: Why is Ke$ha the multi-million seller while Uffie is ignored? There are several reasons:
1. Location, location, location
America's music industry is able to hype up and artist and give them their rise to fame faster than any other country in the world. We have time and time again turned nobodies into big stars almost overnight. Obviously, American record labels are not going to look for their next big money maker anywhere outside the U.S., so they were never going to find Uffie, who lives in Paris and associates herself with underground acts. There was NO WAY in hell she would tour America and leave her guest work and solo career behind for a country where she has little to no name recognition.
Luckily for the RCA record label, there was a girl named Kesha Rose Sebert, a Nashville girl who did the exactly same thing as her: Dirty pop music and a perverse fashion sense.
2. Beating them to the punch
Even if record labels did search out in other countries and continents for new talent and uncovered Uffie, they would bee too late to sign her up. Uffie has already been apart of the esteemed dance music label, Ed Banger Records, since 2006. Elektra Records has only just now got the rights to release her material over in the States, probably to cash in on what Ke$ha already popularized in the U.S. for over a year now.
Seriously, it doesn't matter how heavily you market something, if people like it they will buy it and if they don't, they won't. Sure, clever marketing will sell a few copies at the beginning but as soon as word spreads the sales will die fast if the product isn't something people want. So in other words, every single song that stays on the charts for a reasonable amount of time is something that people actually genuinely like.
But that's completely wrong, because her rise to fame came from...
3. Getting your name out
Kesha was performing guest spots on albums and performing back-up on live shows for Paris Hilton, The Veronica's, Flo Rida, and Britney Spears, and also appeared in Katy Perry's music video for "I Kissed a Girl". Meanwhile, as I said earlier, Uffie worked in the underground scene, but still gained media exposure for Pop the Glock, Tthhee Ppaarrttyy, and ADD SUV.
Whereas Ke$ha was immediately paired up with high-profile artists, Uffie got her rise to fame through working with people in the niche-oriented label and started a buzz through word of mouth and many singles, whereas Kesha was signed onto a multi-album contract because of the success of ONE single made by ANOTHER artist. This really says a lot as to how the music industry in the states view artists. The moment that one reaches even brushes up with success, they get their contracts out and sign them up at Godspeed.
If all it took was word of mouth, we would have been bombarded with Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear, Tegan and Sara, Neutral Milk Hotel, James Blake, and Wavves. In a perfect world, it would take more than being the flavor of the month or a major contract to get radio play. Most people are completely sheltered and have limited commercial exposure to bands that are not being played in rotation on the air, or get a single at most (Fleet Foxes' "White Winter Hymnal" and Warpaint's "Undertoe" come to mind immediately).
People cannot love something it has never heard. The general public is sheltered and clueless, and is only embracing EDM just now when it has been everywhere in Europe for almost two decades. They're more excited about the types of music they are getting a taste of rather than the artists, who, for the most part, are complete crap by genre standards. If it's poppy enough, then labels will clamor over each other to be the ones to put them on label.
4. The music industry: Musical progression vs. Taking chances
Big labels no longer treat artists as artists, but instead as bets. They find someone who is creating a small buzz, sign them on a multi-million dollar contract, and then PRAY for their impulsiveness to pay off and drown them in a sea of money.
This isn't business. It's
fucking gambling, and only a very small number of labels can take the risk, and they are, of course, the big name labels who can turn any ordinary joe into a pop superstar. Instead of searching out artists with legitimate talent and musical integrity, they dumpster dive looking for something of value. If they can't find anything, they can always muscle in on desirable artists on smaller labels and pressure them to cancel their contracts and join their label with promises of wealth and fame, and the moment they get too "non-commercial", they hack them off.
Speaking of cutting off artists who were thought to be not commercially viable, remember when Wilco was dropped by Reprise Records because of how they thought Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was going to bomb, and then ended up selling millions of copies? That was mighty embarrassing for them.
Or how about when Dick Rowe of Decca Records rejecting The Beatles back in the 1960s and opting to sign on Brian Poole and the Tremoloes because he believed Rock wasn't the future?
For a more recent example of labels making stupid choices, let's talk about Kanye West. It's hard to imagine that anyone would have turned down a producer who helped saved Jay-Z's career from going in the pits and helped make The Blueprint a hallmark of the genre. But there were many labels who did, such as Capitol Record, because some guy came in as he was about to sign on and said "He'll never sell" and left it at that. Meanwhile, other labels wouldn't sign him on because he didn't do gangsta rap, which was still the "big thing".
These screw-ups are very telling of the state of pop music: Shun anything that can be considered even remotely challenging or different, and keep shoveling out the same shit people have been tired of for years or hop on trends (see Brittany Spear's new Wubstep single).
Auto-tune is not the problem. The Loudness War is not the problem. The labels and the way they view artists as a bag of money with a dollar sign is what it plaguing music today. They are much more content and comfortable at force-feeding trends instead of trying to spark new ones, which is why most of the recent year-end lists are made mostly out of independent or small-label releases. Nobody who takes music seriously would put on My World, Recovery, or Teenage Dream at the year-end's list, but instead they'll hail records like My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, The Archandroid, Innerspeaker, Cosmogramma, This Is Happening, and Have One on Me for their left-field thinking polished sound, and musical flexibility. While the first two records have very wide public exposure, that will not be enough to save the image of mainstream music in the 10s. For every Kanye West, we have three deplorable artists or bands, such as the castrated Eminem, the girly-sounding Justin Bieber, and Best Coast, which is Vivian Girls if Vivian Girls was shit.
Get a good pair of loudspeakers (not a surround system or computer speakers), play a current top20 song, then play a top20 song from the 80ies.... and go "holy shit! what the hell happened?".
