The Voice is Bullshit

Bitches don't know 'bout singing talent.

I’ve been seeing commercials for the upcoming second season of The Voice. If you haven’t heard of this TV show, then count yourself lucky. It’s one of the worst things to hit the airwaves since Hitler’s 1936 Olympic broadcast. It falls into the same vein as other “talent” shows like American Idol, X-Factor, Sing-Off, etc. All of these shows are exactly the same. The purpose they serve is for “talented” people to pat themselves on the back for being so “talented.” Unfortunately, the only “talent” that seems to get any serious consideration on TV is singing. Being a good singer is about as impressive as being a good prostitute. Both involve excessive amounts of whoring yourself out for meager amounts of cash. Incidentally, the worse the singer, the more money they make. For example, Ke$ha’s warbling sounds like she’s trying to sing while regurgitating a piece of dog shit someone slipped into her McRib (who can tell the difference?), yet she is a major music industry “star.” But I digress… So, The Voice is just like the rest of the dregs of TV music “talent” shows.

When The Voice first aired it was billed as something different from those other shows. The intent was to judge the contestants solely on their singing ability. The judges would face away from the stage, and determine if they liked the contestant based on how they sounded. Supposedly, this was because the feeble minded judges would be too dazzled by the attractive contestants and repulsed by the ugly contestants to make a fair decision. As it turns out, this was a good idea. In the first round, a variety of people sang, and a good mix of attractive and normal-looking people (i.e. the Hollywood version of ugly) made it on to the next round. At this point I was still intrigued by the format, and it seemed to be light years ahead of American Idol ad nauseum in terms of quality. Unfortunately, after this point was when the originality and judgment based on talent was jettisoned from the show. 

Rebecca Black’s Friday is Just as Good as Anything on the Radio

Gangfight.

The craze regarding Rebecca Black’s self-published music video Friday is sort of old news at this point, but since I live in a perpetual time-warp, I figured it would be OK to write about it.

When it was first published online, everyone was talking about it, and not in a good way. People were jeering at the shittiness of her singing, the ridiculously mundane lyrics, and the general ineptitude of the whole thing. I don’t disagree. I mean, she isn’t a good singer, the lyrics are terrible, and it was largely a rather lame affair. Although, the general naivete of the song itself was paradoxically refreshing.

However, I will give her this: the production quality was actually good. For a self-produced music video, the thing looked professional. It had nice film quality, good audio quality, and looked as if they had put some thought into the lighting, production, staging, special effects, etc. Plus, she managed to find a semi-legit rapper to be featured. Overall, Rebecca’s Black’s music video is 1000 times better than your own shitty YouTube audition tape featuring you crooning along with your out of tune acoustic guitar.

When people first heard her song online they said, “LOL THIS SONG SUCKS THIS GIRL IS STUPID LOL!” But if they had heard the exact same song on the radio they would have said, “LOL HOLY SHIT THIS SONG ROCKS! I NEED TO GO BUY THE SINGLE, DOWNLOAD THE ITUNES VERSION, BUY THE FULL ALBUM, AND IMPORT THE BOOTLEG VERSION FROM JAPAN! I LOVE REBECCA BLACK LOL!” When people hear independent music on the internet, they are immediately critical. But when they hear it on the radio, they automatically give it a ton of credit it may not deserve just because it’s on the radio, and therefore “popular.”