Re: The never-ending Kate/Tori debate

[Dongerous! <fastslow@idt.net>]

At 5:16 PM -0000 5-30-97, Raven Tompkins wrote:

>Since when does whether or not a song goes to the top of the charts
>have anything to do with with whether or not it's a "good" song? I can
>only think of a handful of songs that made anyone charts in the last
>few years that I tbought were any good.

By the same token, NOT making the charts doesn't make a song good. And
every song that makes the charts is not, by definition, bad. A song's a
song. Sometimes good things happen to good songs.

>I don't agree at all that marketing is everything. I'm sure if Kate
>Bush were marketed exactly the same way that Alanis Morisette was the
>results would be different.

Of course they would. Millions, and I mean millions, of women relate
directly to the thoughts and emotions displayed on AM's hit album. I got
the record long before it was a hit and played it for many people who
usually hate "charttoppers," but felt a great bond with that record.
Interestingly, KB was the first person I thought of when I first heard AM's
album. I thought of her as a post-punk KB.

> For the most part, mass marketed chart
>topping songs have a sort of lowest common denominator appeal. They
>sound alot like most everything else on the radio, they're lyrically
>simplistic and they don't challenge the listener. It's music for
>the masses. Kinda like the way that McDonalds has undoubtably
>sold more coffee than your favorite neightborhood coffee shop, but
>very few of would say that McDonalds coffee is better. It's simply
>more accessible.

Right. But many people claim McDonald's makes the best fries on the planet,
no matter how many they sell.

>I'd bet a bunch of money that no matter how you wanted to market
>Ani DiFranco, she'll never make a top 40 chart.

If you had heard AM's record before it was a hit, you probably would have
made the same bet. If you had heard Nirvana's "Nevermind" before it was a
hit, you probably would have made the same bet. ADiF clicks with enough
people (not me), that a hit record from her is certainly possible. If the
next KB record tops the Billboard chart and sells a few million, will you
disown it. Personally, I judge a record on its merit, and I don't care if
it sells 10 or 10 million copies.

- Don