It seems the only way to get ahead in the music business
this year is to be named Sam Smith or to feature on someone else’s very-poppy,
dance-crossover Euro-smash. Better still to be called Sam Smith and also appear
on a couple of poppy-dancing-smash
hits. Smith, it seems, can do no
wrong.
Smith recently topped the BBC’s Sound of Poll for this year as well as being the Brit
Award winner for act most likely to – or whatever it’s called. Previous
recipients of either award have tended to do quite well for themselves, the
dice being heavily loaded in their favour. To win both is just greedy though
and it seems as though that problem I have about distinguishing Smith from Newman
is unique to me and certainly not holding Sam back. If you can be bothered to
read most of this piece
about ‘collaborations’ you’ll see that Newman doesn’t seem too impressed by the
comparison though.
The media have their claws into Smith, clinging to his coat-tails for the ride. They’ve even cottoned onto the minor
detail that these ‘collaborative’ songs are a pretty clever route to success
for all the parties concerned. If you’ve got a song that needs a decent singer
then it seems there are plenty out there in the queue. The return of TV’s The
Voice this weekend also seems to back-up this reasoning. Lots of artists,
precious few songs – a point I’ve covered many times before.
If you can’t be Sam Smith then finding a collaborator seems
the best way forward. The music industry loves a trend and since half of the
top ten and more than half of the top
40 biggest-selling singles in the UK
last year featured guest vocalists you can safely assume that they’ve found
one. It’s a fantastic route to market for fledgling artists and one that
greatly benefits pop/dance acts and producers who may be without a recognised
(or talented) vocalist of their own.
Can it work for
non-pop acts? There’s no good reason why it shouldn’t – collaborations often
stir the creative juices and take you in different artistic directions. I’m
inclined to think that in the current market you need to produce as much music
as you can and throw it all out there to see what gets a response. It may
require a conduit or an unlikely spark, such as Michael Jackson getting Eddie
Van Halen to play on ‘Beat It’. A spark of this nature could be the thing that
re-ignites rock music; it’s hard to see what else will do. Failing all of that
of course you just need to get introduced to Sam Smith, I hear he’s going to be
quite big.
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