Queried Album: Roy Orbison - Greatest Hits
Gracenote Genre: Early Rock & Roll
Wikipedia Genre: Rock, pop, pop-rock
My Genre: Rockabilly, blue-eyed soul
This one isn't actually all that bad, it's just a good illustration of a particular pet-peeve of mine: genres based on time periods. Early rock & roll is about as helpful a label as classic rock in my mind, and completely fails to suggest what the sound of the artist actually is. And if its doesn't do that, then what, pray tell, is the exact point of genres in the first place?
I'm being a bit harsh on the term here, and a lot of that is due to the 'early' bit. The phrase 'rock & roll' has taken on a colloquial meaning of early rock music anyway, so we might as well run with it and use that term alone. If you want to get prissy about it then what we understand as rock & roll today would be better termed as rockabilly, but this is simply splitting hairs. Genres are not an exact science; hell it isn't even a decent taxonomy. It's subjective as hell, based more on impression then actual elements of the songs (with a few exceptions, such as singer-songwriter and folk).
Oddly enough, Wikipedia's take is the one I most disagree with. Rock/pop isn't inaccurate, but it is frustratingly vague. I'm not saying it's inaccurate, I just think it shows laziness on the part of the article editors. Roy Orbison has a reasonably distinct sound that can be more directly addressed than writing it off as 'pop-rock'.
I may have mentioned blue-eyed soul before; the term was coined to describe singers who could be considered as a part of the soul genre were it not for their race. White folks, in other words, hence the 'blue-eyed' disclaimer. If "Yesterday" was the seed for twee/pop-folk, then "Unchained Melody" by the Righteous Brothers or Orbison's own "Crying" could be considered the start of blue-eyed soul. Such songs are all about the singer, presaging the singer-songwriter genre and distinguished from it by powerful voices as opposed to the reedy, often close-miced singing of Leonard Cohen, Carole King, and Tim Buckley. Orbison's other, more rhythm based songs are pure rockabilly.
Showing posts with label roy orbison. Show all posts
Showing posts with label roy orbison. Show all posts
6.22.2010
4.20.2010
Modern Rock Canon - Smash Mouth
As much as I like to play up the whole 'music snob' angle (both on this blog and in my day-to-day life) certain bands bring me back down to Earth and make me realize that I am also susceptible to canny pop styles and nostalgia. "Drops Of Jupiter" still brings a smile to my face, "One Week" makes me grin like a loon, and "Walkin' On The Sun" is still one of my favorite songs. My hipster cred is officially gone. Thank god for that; I feel lighter already.
Smash Mouth was one of the 'alternative pop-rock' bands that sprouted up in the post-Nirvana mainstream. They were never challenging and their music never breached a comfortable decibel ceiling. The most subversive thing about them was some minor ska influences, much like the similarly successful No Doubt. They also demonstrate one of the more important aspects of pop music, that often gets overlooked; advertisement.
Advertising music is not a concept that comes easily to most bands. The last ad for a CD I saw on TV was for one of those NOW Music compilations; the last one for a band I saw was one for Nickelback during the early-00s. No band that claims to be 'alternative' or 'independent' will buy direct ad space on television (they will on radio though; that's what a single is, after all) but bands that are labeled 'alternative' or 'indie' will often be featured quite prominently in all kinds of mediums. The most significant? Film.
I've mentioned this before in the context of Roy Orbison's woefully brief comeback during the late-80s and it holds just as true for many other groups. Smash Mouth is a wonderfully textbook example; what's the first song by them that pops into your head? Was it "All Star" or "I'm A Believer"? The key feature of both of those isn't hooks or brilliant lyrics, it's the fact that they were both prominently featured in the blockbuster movie Shrek. At least, that's what I believe.
It's a simple numbers game. Most of the best-selling albums worldwide top out at around 40-50 million units sold (with the exception of Thriller, which sold over double that amount). This is all very well and good, but sales like that put those few albums close to dead last when put into movie terms. Pirates Of The Caribbean: Curse Of The Black Pearl was a pretty big movie, selling an estimated 50,648,900 tickets (Box Office Mojo). This puts it at 90 out a 100 on a list of top tickets sold. Gone With The Wind sold about four times that many tickets (202,044,600) (Ibid), which is twice as many copies as Thriller did (~110 million). The difference is astronomical and very obvious; more people see movies than buy albums.
Similarly, television can achieve the same effect. You know Moby, right? The only reason you do is his impressive campaign to mass market his breakthrough album, Play. Make no mistake, it's a great album but far less people would have bought it if Moby hadn't put every song into ads, TV shows, and other mediums outside of radio. It was a brilliant marketing strategy that ensured that Moby would never have to try again.
This is how songs/artists persist in the public consciousness; exposure. This is why success is not a viable metric for musical quality; because if it was then Whitney Houston is one of the greatest musicians of all time. Even better than the Black Eyed Peas.
Smash Mouth was one of the 'alternative pop-rock' bands that sprouted up in the post-Nirvana mainstream. They were never challenging and their music never breached a comfortable decibel ceiling. The most subversive thing about them was some minor ska influences, much like the similarly successful No Doubt. They also demonstrate one of the more important aspects of pop music, that often gets overlooked; advertisement.
Advertising music is not a concept that comes easily to most bands. The last ad for a CD I saw on TV was for one of those NOW Music compilations; the last one for a band I saw was one for Nickelback during the early-00s. No band that claims to be 'alternative' or 'independent' will buy direct ad space on television (they will on radio though; that's what a single is, after all) but bands that are labeled 'alternative' or 'indie' will often be featured quite prominently in all kinds of mediums. The most significant? Film.
I've mentioned this before in the context of Roy Orbison's woefully brief comeback during the late-80s and it holds just as true for many other groups. Smash Mouth is a wonderfully textbook example; what's the first song by them that pops into your head? Was it "All Star" or "I'm A Believer"? The key feature of both of those isn't hooks or brilliant lyrics, it's the fact that they were both prominently featured in the blockbuster movie Shrek. At least, that's what I believe.
It's a simple numbers game. Most of the best-selling albums worldwide top out at around 40-50 million units sold (with the exception of Thriller, which sold over double that amount). This is all very well and good, but sales like that put those few albums close to dead last when put into movie terms. Pirates Of The Caribbean: Curse Of The Black Pearl was a pretty big movie, selling an estimated 50,648,900 tickets (Box Office Mojo). This puts it at 90 out a 100 on a list of top tickets sold. Gone With The Wind sold about four times that many tickets (202,044,600) (Ibid), which is twice as many copies as Thriller did (~110 million). The difference is astronomical and very obvious; more people see movies than buy albums.
Similarly, television can achieve the same effect. You know Moby, right? The only reason you do is his impressive campaign to mass market his breakthrough album, Play. Make no mistake, it's a great album but far less people would have bought it if Moby hadn't put every song into ads, TV shows, and other mediums outside of radio. It was a brilliant marketing strategy that ensured that Moby would never have to try again.
This is how songs/artists persist in the public consciousness; exposure. This is why success is not a viable metric for musical quality; because if it was then Whitney Houston is one of the greatest musicians of all time. Even better than the Black Eyed Peas.
4.12.2010
Classic Rock Apocrypha - Roy Orbison
Roy Orbison (briefly known as "The Big O" before that one got creepy) is one of the oddest omissions from classic rock that I know of, and was one of my main inspirations for starting this blog in the first place. The one song you're likely to know of is "Oh, Pretty Woman", but even that hardly gets touched by radio stations. My generation, along with the previous, mainly knows that tune from the Julia Roberts movie that shared its name.
Which brings us to the subject of Roy's popularity. Back in the early 60s, Roy was one of the biggest names in rockabilly and blue-eyed soul, maybe THE biggest. When he opened for The Beatles he enjoyed a preposterous fourteen encore show, despite being a solo performer opening for one of the biggest British groups of the time. Did I mention the show was in England? Right after Please Please Me?
Unfortunately, this popularity diminished considerably during the late 60s and 70s, due in no small part to the onset of the British Invasion. For better or worse, Orbison never really changed the style of his music throughout his career, an was thus left behind the rapidly changing pop scene. Never really hurting for money, he retired from touring, aside from a few shows in foreign countries where he maintained his monumental fanbase.
As I alluded to earlier, Orbison's comeback was largely due to the use of his songs in other forms. Linda Ronstadt had a major hit with Orbison's "Blue Bayou" in 1977 and Don McLean covered "Crying" three years later, achieving similar success. What really brought Orbison back into the spotlight was the use of his song, "In Dreams", in David Lynch's 1986 neo-noir film, Blue Velvet. The usage was... memorable to say the least (a demented lip syncing session followed by Dennis Hopper using the lyrics as a threat) and it put The Big O back in the public eye.
1988 saw Orbison capitalize on his new found popularity: he featured on the all-star supergroup The Traveling Wilburys; released a new album, Mystery Girl, featuring a song co-written by Bono himself, "She's A Mystery To Me"; and released a live album/video featuring yet another all-star band playing backup (Black And White Night). His resurgence was tragically cut short by his death the same year.
So why isn't he better known? In all likelihood, it's down to simple timing. Classic rock stations evolved out of a station type known as AOR (album-oriented rock), which developed during the late 70s, continuing on through the 80s as an alternative to the now burgeoning disco/R&B craze. Orbison, omitted from popular music over the course of the 70s, missed his chance for preservation by a few short years. Had his popularity come back during the early 80s, before Michael Jackson split the airwaves, you'd probably be hearing "In Dreams" every three hours instead of "Sunday Bloody Sunday".
Which brings us to the subject of Roy's popularity. Back in the early 60s, Roy was one of the biggest names in rockabilly and blue-eyed soul, maybe THE biggest. When he opened for The Beatles he enjoyed a preposterous fourteen encore show, despite being a solo performer opening for one of the biggest British groups of the time. Did I mention the show was in England? Right after Please Please Me?
Unfortunately, this popularity diminished considerably during the late 60s and 70s, due in no small part to the onset of the British Invasion. For better or worse, Orbison never really changed the style of his music throughout his career, an was thus left behind the rapidly changing pop scene. Never really hurting for money, he retired from touring, aside from a few shows in foreign countries where he maintained his monumental fanbase.
As I alluded to earlier, Orbison's comeback was largely due to the use of his songs in other forms. Linda Ronstadt had a major hit with Orbison's "Blue Bayou" in 1977 and Don McLean covered "Crying" three years later, achieving similar success. What really brought Orbison back into the spotlight was the use of his song, "In Dreams", in David Lynch's 1986 neo-noir film, Blue Velvet. The usage was... memorable to say the least (a demented lip syncing session followed by Dennis Hopper using the lyrics as a threat) and it put The Big O back in the public eye.
1988 saw Orbison capitalize on his new found popularity: he featured on the all-star supergroup The Traveling Wilburys; released a new album, Mystery Girl, featuring a song co-written by Bono himself, "She's A Mystery To Me"; and released a live album/video featuring yet another all-star band playing backup (Black And White Night). His resurgence was tragically cut short by his death the same year.
So why isn't he better known? In all likelihood, it's down to simple timing. Classic rock stations evolved out of a station type known as AOR (album-oriented rock), which developed during the late 70s, continuing on through the 80s as an alternative to the now burgeoning disco/R&B craze. Orbison, omitted from popular music over the course of the 70s, missed his chance for preservation by a few short years. Had his popularity come back during the early 80s, before Michael Jackson split the airwaves, you'd probably be hearing "In Dreams" every three hours instead of "Sunday Bloody Sunday".
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)