{"id":3951,"date":"2011-03-21T11:30:34","date_gmt":"2011-03-21T19:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=3951"},"modified":"2011-03-21T11:31:55","modified_gmt":"2011-03-21T19:31:55","slug":"friday-eclipses-born-this-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2011\/03\/21\/friday-eclipses-born-this-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Eclipses Born This Way"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Oh man! Rebecca Black’s "Friday" now has more YouTube views than Lady Gaga’s "Born This Way" #what?!?<\/p>\n

futurehitdna, Sun 20 Mar 19:46 via HootSuite<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And so does little Maria’s cover of Lady GaGa’s track.\u00c2\u00a0 And she didn’t even have to pay Ark Music Factory.<\/p>\n

You see Lady GaGa and the machine, from Jimmy Iovine all the way down to the lowliest music business student, have lost the plot.\u00c2\u00a0 Music is not about marketing, it’s about conception.<\/p>\n

"Satisfaction" came to Keith Richards in a dream.\u00c2\u00a0 Some of the greatest music of all time was written in fifteen minutes.\u00c2\u00a0 You see art is about inspiration, AFTER perspiration.\u00c2\u00a0 And sometimes that perspiration isn’t even practicing your instrument, but thinking.\u00c2\u00a0 What we love is new and different, not what’s come before.\u00c2\u00a0 Lady GaGa rips off a Madonna tune and makes a video extravaganza.\u00c2\u00a0 Credit Madonna herself, even she knew it was not about repetition.\u00c2\u00a0 That was Madonna’s genius, she constantly confronted us with something new and different, something unexpected.\u00c2\u00a0 The woman could barely sing, but she kept our attention.\u00c2\u00a0 Because she knew art was not about money, but the impression.\u00c2\u00a0 As in how does it hit the audience?<\/p>\n

Vevo’s got a problem.\u00c2\u00a0 They call it ads.\u00c2\u00a0 Do you really want me to sit through fifteen seconds of sell every time I want to see this rip-off GaGa track?\u00c2\u00a0 Do you think I know I’m not paying? Do you think I’m not pissed off?<\/p>\n

There is art in pissing people off.\u00c2\u00a0 If it’s intentional.<\/p>\n

But if you’re all about the profit, we don’t believe in you.<\/p>\n

Just like we’ll line up for days and overpay to get inside the building to see our heart’s desire while shows featuring production, manipulation of our wallets rather than our minds, play to empty seats.<\/p>\n

"Friday" is so bad it’s good.<\/p>\n

The concept of a barely developed thirteen year old wanting to be a pop star is an unintentional commentary on a business mining nitwits for nickels.\u00c2\u00a0 Tell me again about Willow Smith’s life experience, that allows the tyke to be a musical star?\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the industry that foisted Willow upon the masses.<\/p>\n

And T-Pain not only popularized auto-tune, they’ve auto-tuned the news to great success.\u00c2\u00a0 Once again, this takeoff, this innovative use, was not done by the "artists" controlled by the major labels, but outsiders, with tools and insight.<\/p>\n

As for inane lyrics, we keep hearing that will.i.am is a genius.<\/p>\n

No, Bob Dylan is a genius.\u00c2\u00a0 will.i.am is a lowest common denominator moneymaker.\u00c2\u00a0 Why should he have a stranglehold on this paradigm?<\/p>\n

"Friday" is an unintentional parody of modern pop music.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s why we can’t stop watching it.\u00c2\u00a0 Because it’s almost good.\u00c2\u00a0 Stay through the entire clip and the song gets stuck in your head.\u00c2\u00a0 It won’t change your life, but it’s not easy to forget.<\/p>\n

And it’s so easy to forget the market manipulations.<\/p>\n

It’s like the business has been selling soap instead of music.<\/p>\n

It’s not about excising rough edges. It’s not about lining up publicity.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s about using tools, which are now cheap and prevalent, to capture lightning in a bottle.<\/p>\n

There’s more humanity in little Maria’s take of "Born This Way" than Lady GaGa’s.\u00c2\u00a0 You can see right through the image inside the performer.\u00c2\u00a0 Watching GaGa’s clip you’ve got to penetrate the director’s scrim to a woman who doesn’t want to reveal her true self for fear we might not like what we see.\u00c2\u00a0 If only GaGa threw away the costumes and just sang the song sitting at a keyboard like Maria.\u00c2\u00a0 That would be innovative.\u00c2\u00a0 One take, with mistakes, then we’d be interested.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead GaGa’s video is like a failed network TV show.<\/p>\n

You don’t want to believe all this.\u00c2\u00a0 Because that means there’s no map, no rules, you’ve got to forge your own path.<\/p>\n

But if you get it right, you can succeed beyond your wildest dreams.<\/p>\n

Believe me, Rebecca Black never thought she’d become a household name.<\/p>\n

And just possibly, she’ll get a few more minutes of fame.<\/p>\n

Did you see her on "Good Morning America"?<\/p>\n

The program is frightening.\u00c2\u00a0 Asking Black about cyberbullying when they’re bullying her themselves.\u00c2\u00a0 All smiles, dashing for dollars, using this child to burnish their ratings.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s television at its worst.\u00c2\u00a0 But if you stay to the very end, you’ll be stunned.\u00c2\u00a0 Rebecca Black can actually sing.\u00c2\u00a0 Better than the aforementioned Madonna.<\/p>\n

But singing is not enough.\u00c2\u00a0 To truly last you’ve got to write.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to reach our hearts, change our world by letting us into yours.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a skill which Rebecca Black hasn’t got.<\/p>\n

But neither have the rest of the nitwits on Top Forty radio.<\/p>\n

Little Maria was built by Perez Hilton.<\/p>\n

The people lightning the fire are no longer the mainstream.<\/p>\n

Hell, the mainstream didn’t even find Rebecca Black, the Tosh.O blog did.<\/p>\n

We live in a new world.\u00c2\u00a0 Word can spread overnight.<\/p>\n

If something deserves attention.<\/p>\n

And Rebecca Black’s "Friday" does.<\/p>\n

Because it shows how hollow the mainstream music business has become.<\/p>\n

I mean where do we go from here?\u00c2\u00a0 How lowest common denominator can we get?\u00c2\u00a0 Call-out research featuring a nanosecond of music?\u00c2\u00a0 Hit songs by babies singing gobbledygook?<\/p>\n

If you do something new and different, everybody can know almost instantly.<\/p>\n

Ponder that.<\/p>\n

Dr. Luke can get you on the radio, but no one wants to see you live.<\/p>\n

But if you blow up the paradigm, people clamor to get close to you.\u00c2\u00a0 Like Charlie Sheen.\u00c2\u00a0 You want a piece of what he’s got.\u00c2\u00a0 How did he get so insane and yet still win?<\/p>\n

Credit Live Nation for seeing something none of the rest of us did.<\/p>\n

In other words, concert promoters are now more innovative than record companies.\u00c2\u00a0 Because record companies no longer know how to sell tickets.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, they’re not even that good at creating train-wrecks.<\/p>\n

Rebecca Black is the future.\u00c2\u00a0 A bolt from the sky that captures our attention.<\/p>\n

But someday soon the track won’t be tripe, but something closer to "I Want To Hold Your Hand".<\/p>\n

Get ready.<\/p>\n

\n
YouTube views:<\/p>\n

"Friday" Rebecca Black<\/a>: 29,807,978<\/p>\n

"Born This Way" Lady GaGa<\/a>: 22,651,885<\/p>\n

"Born This Way" Maria<\/a>: 24,393,140<\/p>\n

________________________<\/p>\n

Rebecca Black on "Good Morning America"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

P.S. And while I’ve got your attention, be sure to listen to this "Bob Dylan" parody of "Friday"<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 This is art, this keeps our attention, not GaGa repeating herself.<\/p>\n

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Oh man! Rebecca Black’s "Friday" now has more YouTube views than Lady Gaga’s "Born This Way" #what?!? futurehitdna, Sun 20 Mar 19:46 via HootSuite And so does little Maria’s cover of Lady GaGa’s track.\u00c2\u00a0 And she didn’t even have to pay Ark Music Factory. You see Lady GaGa and the machine, from Jimmy Iovine all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-11J","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3951","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3951"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3953,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3951\/revisions\/3953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}