Here's a random fil-related rant. Recently watched 2 films about pop music phenomena, Taylor Swift and Milli Vanilli. Bear with me, I've always found pop music culturally very interesting, some I hate, some I like, some I love, but its all interesting culturally. Huge selling pop music has often been dismissed as disposable, lacking depth and sung by artists with limited talent, and sometimes that is true, usually it isn't. The Monkees for example, a marketing-driven creation, but they actually became good. The Bay City Rollers I would say are in the no talent category, then there are the uber-talented like MJ and Beyonce.
So Taylor Swift, if you haven't heard of her you have been living under a rock, Swiftmania for tickets, made a $ billion in 23, a $billion in a calander year! She is obviously a great show woman, and great business woman, but talent-wise I was amazed. She cannot dance, at all, nothing. All she does is strut to the beat, and she makes that look hard. Song-wise, I got bored and skipped every half hour, I wanted to understand, I know its an old-man cliche but it all sounded like the same song, for 3 hours. Every single thing, every facial expression, every movement, every eye-gaze, every apparent impromptu joke is rehearsed within an inch, millimetre, of its life, and stiff as a board. I fully understand I am not the market, but I'm a fan of pop artists who I am not the market for, and usually I can appreciate it on some level even if I don't like it, but I'm at a loss here. I still found the film interesting because I think we are looking at the widest chasm ever, by far, in the money to talent ratio,
Milli Vanilli, good film. Those poor kids, who just wanted to be pop stars, were chewed-up and spat out by an evil German record producer who made most of the money and got-off scott free while they became a pariah to the point of suicide. Amazing and tragic story, recommended.
