Carly Hennessy in The Guardian
This was in yesterday's Guardian newspaper (UK). Doesn't say anything we didn't already know but thought I'd share it anyway.

Well like they say the Times they are a changin'..well they've already changed. Its not enough anymore just to be a talented performer....actually its not about talent all that much anymore anyway. When I read things like this, I think about Christoper Cross. As a few of us older folks remember, 25 years ago, Chris was all the rage, his songs (Sailing, Ride Like the Wind, Never Be the Same, The Best that You Can Do, Think of Laura, Its Alright...) were all over the radio. Warner Records promoted the heck out of Cross, who was and still is an incredibly talented songwriter with a voice of an angel. Warner put all of their resources in Cross' basket and every top performer in their repertoire wanted to work with him. The industry thought Cross was the next musical god and he was rewarded with 7 Grammies for his first self titled album. Cross was a great example that it was all about the music, because it wasn't about Cross himself. Chris was a shy, not handsome and over 300 lb squareheaded fellow who wore mostly flannel shirts and jeans, not comfortable in interviews and didn't offer much in the way of any other kind of appeal except for the songs themselves. Then MTV went national and Cross began to fade from sight as he became less and less marketable as time went on. There was no way that Cross could survive musically in what was becoming an eye candy world. The evolution dictated that popular music had to be more than a popular song, there has to be something for people to take with them when the song is over. Songs have to be catchy, but not necessarily good, performers have to be sexy and if you're not you better be a rocker. I think a microcosm of this has been the American Idol cheesefests. 4 people from AI have had any success at all and they weren't all winners. Kelly, Carrie, Bo and Clay. They offer catchy but not great songs and they offer something outside the songs themselves, especially when the AC stations add their songs. Adult Contemporary is aimed mostly at over 30 yr old females, who like Kelly's feminine songs, Carrie's country, Bo's look and knowing he's aiming his songs to them and Clay...well because women often like non threatening males. LOL Men who enjoy pop music like Kelly because they know she's pretty. If Christopher Cross were to hit the pop music scene for the first time today, he'd be a colossal failure. As for Carly, timing may have played a part in this too as their was an oversaturation of marginally pop princesses and teen scream wanna-be cross over performers all vying for radio time a few years back. I don't know if anyone had seen this article, but here's something else.. http://blog.mattgoyer.com/stories/2002/02/21/popSingerFailsToStrikeAChordDespiteTheMillionsSpentByMCA.html

Thank you for that article, she is very talented, but however there were many things that prevented her from going up, as the website link stated she got no radio play because they thought her song was too adult for teen audience & too young for the adult audience. Then you have to realize that people were downloading songs at the time in 2001 as well. Therefore that is why it flopped, not because she had no talent, but because of certain circumstances :(. Pablo

Sadly it's so true, I recently saw a TV article about a piece of software that tunes in vocals on the fly. So basically you don't even need to sing in tune anymore, it all gets cleaned up automatically. Great for people who can't sing, bad for the industry and fans.

I (and Liz of course started the thread) wrote that post you guys were discussing almost a year ago, so when I starting catching up on it, I was reading my post and didn't realize it was my post! I was like "Damn that sounds a lot like me!" Anyway, its sad to see what pop music has become. But then if a performer tries to strip down their sound and remove a lot of the techno crap then no one wants to play it. So now you have to wonder if the music taste has changed so much that people actually WANT that extra over polish to the music. This is why I like this group of people here. Its young people who still know what good music is and is supposed to sound like.