December 19, 2011 Adele Is The Top Artist And Musics Execs Aren't Listening

If you are not into music, meaning you never turn on a radio, then you have not heard of Adele. The wonderful lyricist with a hauntingly beautiful voice has dominated the charts across the world and that has put her as the Top Artist for 2011. Every single letter of that distinction is deserved. Like everything around music, the music executives, companies, and radio stations are not focusing on the art but the money. If you think I am wrong picture these in your mind as you would see them in a magazine, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Adele. Can you see Adele or did you immediately hear Adele?


The Top artist of the year is not just music play but it's also sales. Since the sales are done by the consumers that makes it pretty clear that real artists that are about the music and not the glamour, meat suits, hair color, political messages, how many kids they adopted from alien planets do sell. People listen to music for the music, for the talent, for the song writing. You can't see all that visual crap on your stereo and an album cover is not going to keep you listening to 12 tracks if the artist sucks.

This is my problem with music today, the great musical talents are not getting out there. It's all synthesizer, computer enhanced vocals to a backtrack beat and marketed to death. I remember a time when I spent hours a week flipping through CDs in the college record store, finding great music of people I never heard of and going back and consuming the whole album. This was also at a time long before Internet radio and when a full music album was how you got fame. Now its the time of a pop single, 4 minutes is all you have to make your mark and the iTunes sales are the measure. Case in point, Katy Perry not Adele, got MTV Top Artist of 2011. Since MTV lost all credibility and influence around anything dealing with music years ago you could get upset about this, but I am not really. MTV is about the single seller, red carpet, shock moments, and Bessed Dressed Lists, not the about artist. They used to be, but those days are slipping into Legend and from Legend into Myth.

You take these Billboard Top 40 artists, put them in front a mic and a piano and guitar and have them sing through an album. Then they will be a musical artist. If they can't they are a music performer, nothing more.

It really should be broken down like the World Wrestling Federation was. They rebranded years ago, stopped pretending, and called themselves Sports Entertainment. If you are in the music industry and are focused more on your red carpet presence, lip synced dancing routines and controversy then you should be called Muscial Entertainment. The rest can call them Musical Artists.

Adele is a rare jewel of a mainstream artist that is a fantastic singer, has a set of albums that I can listen to the all the tracks and cares more about the music than the talk show appearance. Maybe that's why I have gotten into country so much lately, there is no BS over there. Country music is the last realms of true musicians. The people's interest in it are also testament that that's what they want as well, music.

As I was researching for this post I saw a funny trend in the videos and articles out there in the last 3 months.  Since Adele exploded she made a comment that it might be a few years for her next album. What I saw was that Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and other top artists were doing more acoustic performances at shows. There are articles all over about finding the next Adele. A scramble to find a real artist that can write and sing without remixing the voice to death. The music pool doesn't have many of those, I see why they are having a hard time.

End of Line.

Posted in: Music