Couple of issues raised by this very thinly disguised "thought piece".
Firstly, it seems the Guardian is more gone in the tooth than I thought.* How did this piece come to be written? Is it a puff piece for an MOR recording artist or for a major record label or for the record industry itself? Whichever is true, the whole thing raises profound questions about the national media's publishing processes and its complicity with corporate PR.
Secondly, isn't this a sort of nightmare vision of how music production might pan out? There are so many reprehensible - even sinister - sentences in the piece ("when promotion time arrived again, I had acquired a few more credit cards", "I got the shot in the marketing arm that only a major label can bring"), but what I find most disturbing is the description of the "Mom and Pop label". I'm not familiar with the phrase, but it conjures images of wealthy upper-middle-class suburbanites making the incredibly bland music they've always wanted to using their privately hoarded cash, while they mix in circles where you just happen to one day get a call from the head of Universal "asking" you to record an album "for the company".
Lastly, I actually quite liked Nerina Pallot's "Everybody's Gone To War" in a perverse kind of way back in '05. It sounded like one of those nasal US country-pop hits I find somehow irresistible (see also Shania Twain's "I'm Gonna Getcha Good", Avril Lavigne's "Complicated"). However, wiki research reveals she's not in fact an alt-country singer from North America but a privately-educated lass from Jersey (channel island), which makes things a whole lot less endearing, and more weirdly prescient.
*And by the way, the fawning, lifestyle-ish coverage of the royal wedding has been truly embarrassing.
Firstly, it seems the Guardian is more gone in the tooth than I thought.* How did this piece come to be written? Is it a puff piece for an MOR recording artist or for a major record label or for the record industry itself? Whichever is true, the whole thing raises profound questions about the national media's publishing processes and its complicity with corporate PR.
Secondly, isn't this a sort of nightmare vision of how music production might pan out? There are so many reprehensible - even sinister - sentences in the piece ("when promotion time arrived again, I had acquired a few more credit cards", "I got the shot in the marketing arm that only a major label can bring"), but what I find most disturbing is the description of the "Mom and Pop label". I'm not familiar with the phrase, but it conjures images of wealthy upper-middle-class suburbanites making the incredibly bland music they've always wanted to using their privately hoarded cash, while they mix in circles where you just happen to one day get a call from the head of Universal "asking" you to record an album "for the company".
Lastly, I actually quite liked Nerina Pallot's "Everybody's Gone To War" in a perverse kind of way back in '05. It sounded like one of those nasal US country-pop hits I find somehow irresistible (see also Shania Twain's "I'm Gonna Getcha Good", Avril Lavigne's "Complicated"). However, wiki research reveals she's not in fact an alt-country singer from North America but a privately-educated lass from Jersey (channel island), which makes things a whole lot less endearing, and more weirdly prescient.
*And by the way, the fawning, lifestyle-ish coverage of the royal wedding has been truly embarrassing.
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