Re: tori vs kate.

[wagreiner@ucdavis.edu ()]

In article <Pine.3.89.9408261643.C323-0100000@fig> iflin@artsci.wustl.edu (Irvin Fei-Chiang Lin) writes:
>
>	i normally lurk...but this is getting a bit crazy.
>
>	i agree whole heartedly with vickie...there is room for more than 
>one talented female singer...please lets have a little open mindedness.
>
*Snip Snip*
>
>	 but i think that tori and kate are not as similar as everyone 
>professes.  i mean lets THINK a little please.  easy comparisons are 
>not hard to do.  gee tori plays a piano, kate played a piano...they 
>both are female singers with tremendous voices...wow add water and 
>there you have instant comparison.
>

Well, I agree with this post for the most part.  I think that a lot
of female artists get very bizarre comparisions made about them, just 
by virtue of being female.  For instance, any woman who played a guitar
and wrote songs in the late eighties got compared to Suzanne Vega.  I mean
I remember thinking how absurd it was that I was reading so many articles
that talked about Michelle Shocked for instance in terms of being like  
Vega when they couldn't be much farther apart musically if they tried (but
I like them both).

However, I think that in this case there is a bit more similarity than
some are willing to acknowledge.  It's not that Amos and Bush both play
the piano and have "tremendous" voices that lead to the comparisons.  I
think more than anything else it's the fact that both of them (Amos now
and Bush more in her early career but still to a certain extent) use very
high semi-shrill "girlish" voices in many of their songs.  I remember an
interview (in think in Q magazine) of Sheryl Crow in which she's talking 
about current trends and discusses (with some disgust) the popularity of
singers like Amos with "little girl" voices and themes.  I disagree with
her (although I do like her music) in her artistic condemnation (or at
least I thought it seemed like condemnation) of Amos stuff, but I think
she certainly has a point about the voice.  I think Amos' themes are a 
bit more diverse than Crow realises (she probably hasn't listened to a
lot of Amos stuff) but certainly Amos is fixated on high school kind of  
stuff a bit and the voice certainly does remind one of a very young girl
rather than a mature woman, which Bush's did in her early days as well.
Now Nanci Griffith also uses this kind of voice, but she plays a guitar
so the press doesn't pick up on that similarity as much.  The fact that
Amos and Bush both play piano and may be called a bit "unusual" adds to
the voice similarity and leads to exaggerated levels of comparisons between
the two by the press.  Add in a bit of "we must lump all women artists into
a couple of schools of influence" bias into the picture and you get the 
icing on the cake.

Of course, there is plenty of room in the world for Bush, Amos, Crow,    
Dylan, Young, Vega, and everyone else who writes and performs songs well 
to co-exist and prosper.  Nothing at all wrong with that.

Wade