KT Tunstall<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0 Click on "Album".\u00c2\u00a0 Then go down to number 4.\u00c2\u00a0 Click on the SECOND version of "Black Horse & The Cherry Tree".\u00c2\u00a0 The LIVE one.<\/p>\nUnfortunately, the video is in the dreaded Windows Media format.\u00c2\u00a0 And there’s not enough bandwidth, the frame keeps freezing.\u00c2\u00a0 But watch this.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ll experience magic.\u00c2\u00a0 A U.S. label wouldn’t even sign this pixie in dire need of a stylist.\u00c2\u00a0 With a form-less haircut and the uniform of a college freshman.\u00c2\u00a0 U.S. execs believe people want someone ABOVE THEM!\u00c2\u00a0 Someone not only coiffed, but altered surgically, like the aforementioned Mariah Carey and Jessica Simpson and now her sister Ashlee.<\/p>\n
But those days are through.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody knows who’s had plastic surgery.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody wants somebody real, whom they can RESPECT!\u00c2\u00a0 People don’t respect the "artists" on today’s hit parade.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is why the business is in the dumper.\u00c2\u00a0 The business doesn’t want anybody real, just somebody who’ll play the game.\u00c2\u00a0 Who’ll say how hard they’re working going from interview to television show and won’t go on record about anything controversial.<\/p>\n
Sure, part of KT’s performance here is canned.\u00c2\u00a0 But she’s not HIDING IT!\u00c2\u00a0 She’s employing new technology to deliver her message.\u00c2\u00a0 You assemble the pieces to FREE yourself from the burden of others, you can be YOUR OWN BAND!\u00c2\u00a0 Which KT is.<\/p>\n
Oh, the way she holds the pick in her teeth.\u00c2\u00a0 THAT’S the kind of girl I want.\u00c2\u00a0 Someone who isn’t doing what she’s SUPPOSED to, but what’s expedient, what’s NATURAL!\u00c2\u00a0 You can hear not only Tommy Mottola but Clive telling this girl that’s crude, and that she can stick the pick on the mic stand.\u00c2\u00a0 But that’s not how she does it at home.\u00c2\u00a0 And the way KT claps and sings…SHE’S GOT THE MUSIC IN HER!\u00c2\u00a0 She’s POSSESSED!\u00c2\u00a0 You believe she’d be just this into it if she were in her BEDROOM and NOBODY was watching!<\/p>\n
This is not my favorite song on the album.\u00c2\u00a0 But its performance makes me fall in love with KT.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s what we used to do.\u00c2\u00a0 Fall in love with the artists.\u00c2\u00a0 Even if we were both male.\u00c2\u00a0 They exuded a coolness.\u00c2\u00a0 They were outsiders.\u00c2\u00a0 Playing by their own rules.<\/p>\n
Then again, that’s no longer the American way.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re not even ENCOURAGING our youth to be challenging outsiders.\u00c2\u00a0 The FUCKS who run the companies think THEY’RE the artists and break the will of those they sign, if these no-talents are not complicit to begin with.\u00c2\u00a0 Shit, a true artist would tell the label head to FUCK OFF!<\/p>\n
But if you tell the label head to fuck off today, that you want to do it YOUR way, then they put you in purgatory, to teach you and the OTHER upstarts a lesson.\u00c2\u00a0 They won’t put out your music, and they won’t release you, just to fuck with you.<\/p>\n
And then there are KT’s boots.\u00c2\u00a0 Straight out of Ziggy Stardust.\u00c2\u00a0 This little fillip sells you.\u00c2\u00a0 It shows, that KT’s a believer in the myth too.<\/p>\n
What sold me was hearing "Suddenly I See" on XM’s Cafe.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s got the energy of "Meet The Beatles".\u00c2\u00a0 With a break that makes you want to listen to the record again and again.\u00c2\u00a0 (Get to the two minute mark and check it out.)<\/p>\n
It’s Chrissie Hynde without the poise.\u00c2\u00a0 Not the coolest girl in the room, but someone fighting for NOTICE!\u00c2\u00a0 And her pure desire hooks us.\u00c2\u00a0 We can feel what she says in her bio: "I’ve never had a back-up plan.\u00c2\u00a0 I was never going to do anything else."<\/p>\n
We’ve got to nurture artistry.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve got to turn the power over to the artists.\u00c2\u00a0 We have to encourage people to explore, to test the limits.\u00c2\u00a0 Shit, if the execs were creative THEY’D be the artists.\u00c2\u00a0 But they’re not.\u00c2\u00a0 Artists don’t come from the mainstream.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re different.\u00c2\u00a0 Loners.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s why we pay attention.\u00c2\u00a0 Being outside of us they can reflect and deliver the truth about our world back to us.<\/p>\n
Listening to KT Tunstall one can see why the U.K. business is still healthy.\u00c2\u00a0 Because they still believe in the myth.\u00c2\u00a0 That an artist is the highest player in the hierarchy.\u00c2\u00a0 That he can come from nowhere and instruct the populace on life.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s so EXCITING!\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no excitement in the U.S. business.\u00c2\u00a0 Only statistics and lawsuits.<\/p>\n
More like this please.<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How come we can’t break acts like this in the U.S? Sure, the U.K. gave us "American Idol".\u00c2\u00a0 But it also seems to give us the only acts focused on music, not fame. Now it’s not impossible for a musical act to be good-looking.\u00c2\u00a0 Talk to the truly beautiful.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re crippled by their looks.\u00c2\u00a0 They […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-5j","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}