Celtic look alikes
Add comment 7th July 2010 Tristan
Posts filed under 'sport'
Judging By Potential
I’ve almost stopped listening to radio altogether. Except for listening to Safran and Father Bob, there’s very little that I find interesting on the airwaves. Being bombarded by commercial crap evey time I go to the gym, I just feel like screaming as if it will help give way to some much needed silence. Even stations like Triple J seem like pretentious marketing schemes to buy this or subscribe to that, which is a shame given that there is some great music out there in the world. But what frustrates me most is that artists — in particlular musicians — are more and more frequently given credit for what they could do rather than what they have done.
Take recent UK pop princess Kate Nash for example. Releasing her debut (a double A-side single) in February last year and an album in August, Nash has recently acquired notoriety and airplay in the US and Australia. And how did she make it? “Lily Allen placed Nash in her top eight, attracting attention from potential fans”, according to Wikipedia. And there’s that word again, potential. We’ve already had Joss Stone, Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen, so why not Miss Nash? Never mind that her music is rubbish. I suppose, if I was a young, English female, I’d probably be milking this flavour-of-the-month for all it’s worth. I might even get to do a duet with Common. Call me opinionated and rude, but I can hear that Joss Stone and Amy Winehouse have beautiful voices, even if they are a little ‘appropriated’. I can see that Lily Allen was different at the time she emerged and had clever lyrics. But Kate Nash, well I just can’t see it. And whatever happened to the Arctic Monkeys? I thought those guys were going to be the next Beatles by what the media said.
Which brings me to the next victim, 16-year-old Gabriella Cilmi. Yes, that’s her real name, and apparently it’s pronounced ‘chill-me’ 
This teenager from Dandenong is supporting the upcoming Australian tour of James Blunt (there’s a good bit of rhyming slang for you). Cilmi also made the front page of The Age this morning, which fueled me to write this post. Now I’m not trying to cut-down Gabriella Cilmi tall poppy-style and I shouldn’t judge her based on the one song that I’ve heard. The one song that repeats the line “there’s nothing sweet about me”. The song whose film clip has young men, presumably ex-boyfriend figures tied up and on their knees. She has a lovely voice and I’m sure she has potential, but for the time being it should probably be just that.
Apparently there’s nothing sweet about Gabriella Cilmi
But it’s not just in music that this occurs. Take Michael Jordan’s view, expressed in his interview with Oprah in 2005:
The difference in our sport, in all honesty, is [now] you get paid off of potential…
When you look back in our era — Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Charles Barkley — we earned what we got. I don’t mean to demean the young kids because I think it’s something that they have to learn and hopefully they will learn, [but] when corporate America came to us, we had a game that could validate their admiration. Now, [players] get that before they play one game… I think it sets a bad work ethic. When you get something so easily, you’re not going to work as hard.
I think this is happening not just in sport and music, but in the arts in general, entertainment and business. Look at the web boom, the start-up companies, the YouTube/Myspace/Facebook entertainment phenomenon, reality TV and Hollywood. Are we so busy looking for what’s next that we forget to see what is now? I suppose you could compare this concept to a political election. It’s as if we view a snapshot of what a person/artist/athlete/brand could potentially achieve and then vote them in, based on what little we’ve seen, to be our next leader, hero, product or idol.
And to end with the quote that The Age ended its story with. Asked where her unique voice comes from, Cilmi responded “I went to an osteotherapist and he said I can sing the way I do because I don’t stand up properly”. Now there’s the voice of our generation.
3 comments 5th April 2008 Simon
“I’m not going to argue with you, Ernie. I’ll hit you in the left eye.” – Charles Barkley
Remember the days of MS Paint on the old family PC? Creating those Picasso-like masterpieces. Being unable to save them because the size of a bitmap file took up a third of the hard drive. It’s good to see some people haven’t lost the passion for this piece of software.
Another link for the weekend, this one’s in honor of Jeff Malone.
1 comment 5th May 2007 chris
