Richard Marx, Labels, etc
You know, Richard Marx must have a LOT of interesting relationship problems. I’ve been listening to his music lately, and he seems to face – and stare in the face of – a lot of the classics. Cheating, distance seperating, being accused of killing your lover ;-)..
Actually, I’ve noticed that musicians as a class seem to have more problems in their love and lust lives than most. I wonder why this is – and which is teh chicken and which is the egg. Is it that pain produces art, or art produces pain? Or somewhere in between? I don’t know – I find life entirely too complex, especially at the moment. I am, however, going to cite a Richard Marx song, just to illustrate my point.
[This is just another example of my 80s tastes gone rampant – I imagihne pretty much all my friends – and perhaps everyone in the world – thinks of RM as utter schlock]
Anyway – ‘Hold On To The Night’
Just when I beleived I couldn’t ever want for more
This ever changing world pushes me through another door
I saw you smile – and my mind could not erase the beauty of your face
Just for a while, won’t you let me shelter you
Hold on to the night
Hold on to the memory
I wish that I could give you something more
that I could be yours
How do we explain something that took us by suprise
Promises in vain, love that is real but in disguise
What happens now – do we break another rule,
let our lovers play the fool
I don’t know how to stop feeling this way
[chorus repeats]
[into bridge:]
Well I think that I’ve been true to everybody else but me
And the way I feel about you makes my heart long to be free
Every time I look into your eyes I’m helplessly aware
That the someone I’ve been searching for is right there
Okay, this is pushing the shlock-o-meter even for my notouriously shlocky tastes
[into chorus]
—-
Anyway, see my point? Happy people in well ajusted relationships do not generally write music like this. Or do they? Or does RM even write his own songs? Increasingly, I’ve noticed that people don’t – write their own songs, that is – and it seems like you seldom get the attributtes of a good songwriter and a good singer in the same person. I think that’s cool – teamwork and all – but occasionally I’m tempted to psychoanalyze performers by the work they do, and that makes it a bit more difficult. Still, one presumes that they at least choose which songs to do, and what inflection to put into them.
Again, maybe not. The corperate label machine probebly just chooses which songs they think will appeal to a band’s demographic and then forces that band to perform those songs.
In a way, this is what I find so ironic about Metallica’s suing of napster – here is a band that actually complained that the label was stifling them, and then when they saw a oppertunity for not only them but every single musician in america to get free, they sued it. Yes, that makes a whole lot of sense, now doesn’t it?