Everybody Hates Kelly: Why The “Tusk” Era Is Officially Over
One of the oddest aspects of the whole My December saga was the sight of critics from across the spectrum siding with the head of a major record label, especially against a young singer trying to follow her artistic vision away from singles-focused commercial music. Whether the critic seemed like the kind who doesn’t get these kids and their American Idol or the kind who happens to like singles-focused commercial music, they came to the same conclusion: The record company exec was right. Part of that reaction could be because Clive Davis has more cred than Kelly Clarkson (or, to be unfair, that what’s good for the gander isn’t good for the goose). But what if, instead, My December represents a landmark in the decline and fall of the record industry?
A common argument for why critics should beat up on mainstream pop music was the fact that it didn’t need the help. Pop music had achieved such omnipresent dominance that championing it would be as individually insignificant an act as voting for a major-party Presidential candidate. But nowadays mainstream acts do seem to need the help, as major labels lack the funds to make them ubiquitous and the public cares more about voting for them than listening to them. Music’s cultural importance has perhaps never been lower in America: while a TV show with a million viewers is considered a failure, you get a platinum plaque for selling a million albums. Sure, it costs more money and time to buy a CD than to watch a TV show–but that fact is precisely why we find ourselves in the present state of affairs.
And so as the record industry floats gently toward rock bottom, maybe critics are realizing that it’s not just that things are changing, but that something has been lost, that a creative method is slowly ceasing to exist. Sure, the means were and are deplorable. But check out those ends! Without the supposedly artistically bankrupt major-label system of songwriters and producers for hire creating an artist’s sound and style for–and/or with–them, we wouldn’t have “Heartbreak Hotel,” or “Like a Prayer,” or “Since U Been Gone.” And without the products of pop’s manufacturing line, the music made by all those small, artistically respectable artists critics are supposed to champion might be very different–or might not even exist at all.
My December and Kelly Clarkson here represent the last change for the system to function at peak capacity, to match a hungry, adventurous, golden-eared young phenom with the best talent money can buy, and to produce an album like Off the Wall or a single like “Heart of Glass.” Instead, in the view of most critics, it’s just another crappy self-written rock album, and worse, one that doesn’t even do the one thing rock albums can still uniquely do: exude bland authenticity (to confused white people). With Kelly going her own way, the era has perhaps officially ended for big-budget rock albums, and for all the sins of such gilded enterprises, a method’s just a method, and this one produced some classics. In the end, its erasure means new rock bands’ possibilities are circumscribed. Nevermore will a guitar act with members younger than 30 find itself in a $30,000-a-day studio with Desmond Child and the London Philharmonic. Even if that scenario doesn’t sound too desirable to you, in a genre ossifying itself out of options, it’s understandable that critics of all inclinations might lament its passing.
