Thursday, February 9, 2006

HOW LONG TO SING THIS SONG? Two thoughts from last night's Grammy thread that I wanted to carry forward to today:
  1. Was I correct, or suffering from sleep deprivation when I wrote last night, "If you needed confirmation that U2 had taken the pantheon leap from Damn Good Band to Will Be Remembered Fifty Years From Now On The Same Level As The Beatles And Stones, well, there you have it, I think . . . . You know how in baseball analysis when they do Similarity Scores, and for someone like a Pat Burrell you can see a bunch of comparable players and chart out what you expect the rest of his career to be like? You can't do that for Bono. It's like predicting out Felix Hernandez's career based on 2005. Rock music hasn't seen someone quite like this before, and the career trajectory could still go in a lot of unprecedented places." Is "One" the "Yesterday" for our generation? Or is Adam C right that as good as they are live, and as great as many of their songs are, they just don't have the influence on other artists that would place them on the Beatles level?

  2. Did Kelly Clarkson's Grammy wins and the Fantasia appearance legitimize American Idol as a real discoverer of talent and not just a very popular tv show where the winner gets to release an album? (Even if Kelly didn't seem to thank the show, 19Entertainment or anyone named Nigel in her two speeches.) Beyond Kelly and Fantasia, we've seen Carrie Underwood emerge with a country album that debuted at #1 and is still in the top ten, Clay Aiken's immense popularity, and now Jennifer Hudson's got the Effie part in the Dreamgirls movie that's coming out in December starring Eddie Murphy, Beyonce and Jamie Foxx. Or was this still a fluke, and do we have to wait to see the next releases from all these performers before declaring it a non-fad?

Finally, I realized that the Luke Appling reference was arcane even by the standards of this blog. Here's an explanation. Sly Stone, you're no Luke Appling. But welcome back.

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