Would a Singer Like Ella Fitzgerald be Appreciated Today?

[LizzieMaine]

Also there are no real songwriters anymore to pluck a vocalist up and have them sing their material. Now you are expected to do it all as a performer, and thats just downright unfair to the performer and the audience.

LD

Exactly. If Cole Porter or George Gershwin or Jerome Kern had been expected and required to perform their own songs, they wouldn't have made it out of the fraternity-show circuit. Fortunately, they lived in an era where there were some awfully good vocalists around looking for material.

 

[Yeps]

Exactly. If Cole Porter or George Gershwin or Jerome Kern had been expected and required to perform their own songs, they wouldn't have made it out of the fraternity-show circuit. Fortunately, they lived in an era where there were some awfully good vocalists around looking for material.

Unless they wrote for Broadway which... oh wait, they did. I think the other issue is that stage music is now almost completely separate from pop music. You don't have widespread performance of the latest Stephen Sondheim or Adam Guettel song by pop singers, although if they did, I would be very pleased.

 

[SGT Rocket]

Appreciated Today?

Only by a sub-culture, they would get no appreciation from the main stream.

Why? Not to sound crass but video really did kill the radio star.

 

[Paisley]

As others have mentioned, a lot of popular singers today are all wrapping and no gift. To my mind, many of the singers I hear in live local bands and community theater are better--way better--than many of today's bigger acts.

Something that gives me hope is the popularity of Susan Boyle. Although she has a different style and isn't on a par with Fitzgerald (but, who is?), it shows that people still recognize and appreciate talent even if it belongs to someone who isn't a great beauty. I like that she handles songs in a mature way.

 

[Fletch]

I agree with SlyGI about the subculture. The question is what shapes that subculture, and how inclusive it is.

For most of my life, my favorite music has belonged to social out-groups, some of which I have been part of (just as far as the shared sensibility and mutual reinforcement), some of which I share nothing at all with (such as the assumptions that one is of a certain region, belief, or orientation, just because most people "into it" are thus). It makes for strange bedfellows - it makes it hard to build a community of interests.

That, in turn, makes me wonder sometimes if the whole thing hasn't just been one big sad joke - that the joy one finds isn't paid for many times over in alienation and irrelevancy.

I like to think the internet would help expose people to things they wouldn't have had the chance to know about otherwise. But is it enough to overcome the set stereotypes of society? That, I don't know.

It's interesting about Susan Boyle. You have to wonder whether the world would have so readily embraced her, singing the songs she sings, if she had not been such an obvious outcast - spinster, plain Jane, frump? And what does that say about the social misfit in all of us?

 

[Chainsaw]

She was the sumation of her era, and her enviroment. :eusa_clap

They stopped serving home cooking, and meaningful lyrics years ago.

The good thing about a drive-through is, you don't have to get off your horse to eat dinner.:cool2:

 

[Yeps]

Honestly I don't think Susan Boyle is particularly good, it was mostly just that she was surprising. Then again, I am a bit spoiled by being in music school.

Honestly, if you look at what Lady Gaga did before she was Lady Gaga,
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Could have easily gone into a more standard sound, but she knows what the public wants, so she sells it to them.

 

[Paisley]

It's interesting about Susan Boyle. You have to wonder whether the world would have so readily embraced her, singing the songs she sings, if she had not been such an obvious outcast - spinster, plain Jane, frump? And what does that say about the social misfit in all of us?

A few of the songs on her album aren't right for a middle-aged woman, and some others don't play to her strengths. Yes, there's probably a revenge-of-the-nerds aspect to her popularity, but I think she sings certain types of songs like "I Dreamed a Dream" very well. Given her age, looks, previous lack of connections, lack of charisma, and an audience that was eager to see her fall on her face, I think it's fair to say that Susan Boyle has gotten by on ability.

 

[Lady Day]

Something that gives me hope is the popularity of Susan Boyle. Although she has a different style and isn't on a par with Fitzgerald (but, who is?), it shows that people still recognize and appreciate talent even if it belongs to someone who isn't a great beauty. I like that she handles songs in a mature way.

I dont think shes as much a vocalist as she is a celebrity. I mean the venue in which she got her start essentially made it, "We dont expect her to sound they way she sounded because, well look at her." Where as with Ella, even once she got the approval from one person, she still had to work her way up. I dont think Boyle was *that* good, personally, but better than her better looking counterparts.

I think her success is novelty, and grossly singular. Seen any other pop singers who are ugly out and about today? Nope.

I also think todays pop singers are given way too much 'creative freedom' in how they sing. I cant *stand* hearing all that extra singing in a song just so they can hear their own voices. Producers! Do your jobs!


LD

 

[Fletch]

Seen any other pop singers who are ugly out and about today? Nope.

I never thought Tom Waits was any matinee idol. But at least he's hepcat ugly. Man-of-the-world ugly. Cool ugly. Susan Boyle is, and please god forgive me for saying this, wallflower ugly. Shut-in ugly. Creepy ugly.

I also think todays pop singers are given way too much 'creative freedom' in how they sing. I cant *stand* hearing all that extra singing in a song just so they can hear their own voices. Producers! Do your jobs!

Their job has changed. Oversinging no longer gets in the way of the style: it is the style.

Since AI and such shows (heck, since MTV even), singers have to be good video. That means they have to act as much as sing. It may actually take a Susan Boyle, a spectacle of creepy normal-ness, to escape that requirement.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Interesting how we've come full circle on that, in a way. Before radio, the main route for popular singers to the top was Broadway and vaudeville, and you rarely if ever had one who would just stand there on the stage and sing. If you watch early film footage of Al Jolson, for example, you'll see him gesturing and posing and wringing every drop of emotion out of every song. Then radio came along, bringing the crooners with it, and suddenly all the oldtimers were passe -- people like Jolson, Cantor, Jessel and the like were seen as old-fashioned, and had to drastically reinvent themselves to succeed in the new climate. Of those three, only Cantor was a big success in radio, and even he couldn't break totally free of the stage -- he insisted on having a live audience to watch his mugging and eye-rolling while he sang, and paved the way for the annoying whooping yahoos who infest studio audiences to this day.

Band singers like Ella, Sinatra and their breed came out of a totally different performance style -- they weren't stage artists who adapted to singing, they were singers who adapted to the stage. Nowadays, we're all the way back to 1915 -- you gotta have a visual gimmick if you want to make it big.

 

[Fletch]

Lady Gaga would've closed out of town in 1915. You did actually have to put over a song then, not just wear a crazy wardrobe and lip-sync.

And - even in vaudeville - you still evoked emotions more than embodied them. Especially sex, which there was a whole coy code for alluding to. Even Jolson spent more time singing than Mammy-it's-your-little-Sammy-ing.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Lady Gaga would've closed out of town in 1915. You did actually have to put over a song then, not just wear a crazy wardrobe and lip-sync.

And - even in vaudeville - you still evoked emotions more than embodied them. Especially sex, which there was a whole coy code for alluding to. Even Jolson spent more time singing than Mammy-it's-your-little-Sammy-ing.

If you watch Jolson's contortions on "Toot Toot Tootsie" in "The Jazz Singer," Elvis the Pelvis comes over as a rank imitation.

 

[Lady Day]

I never thought Tom Waits was any matinee idol. But at least he's hepcat ugly. Man-of-the-world ugly. Cool ugly.

I meant one starting out today. He has 30+ years of musical awesomeness to build on. And as you know, criteria for men is *completely* different than it is for women.

LD

 

[Yeps]

Lady Gaga would've closed out of town in 1915. You did actually have to put over a song then, not just wear a crazy wardrobe and lip-sync.

I really hate to be the defender of someone as frightening as Lady Gaga, but she does not lip sync, and her voice is actually better live (most of the time) then it is with all the junk that the producers do to it in the studio.

That is what is so frightening about her- she is actually really talented, and she chooses to do this strange pop music. Plus, her songs are really catchy.

As to the crazy costumes... that is just weird, and honestly, I think she knows full well how absurd it is and does it to make fun of the pop music industry. She gives people what they want.

 

[Chainsaw]

Lady Gaga?

She's the queen of the harpe's, she is. Like the sirens calling sailors to their doom. Whhooooo... whhhoooo....