All of those people have good musicians. Talent? I don't know what that is and I don't think that matters. Work ethic is what's most important to me. I've seen many who had questionable talent but worked hard, hard and harder still. You'd never dream that they perhaps didn't have a lot of great, god given talent. Madonna works her ass off. It's not a music I particularly favor, but so what? I'd take the gig if offered.
+1
I agree about
Madonna too...It's not my preferred style, nor do I think she's a very good singer, but NO ONE works harder, and as an overall entertainer, she's very formidable. Her self-promotion skills and business-savvy are "through-the-roof legendary!" I've heard that her business-model/promotional-strategies/etc. are studied/analyzed at
Harvard Business School! That doesn't surprise me at all.
Also, I would agree that those "hired-guns/sidemen" are usually really good-players AND also usually look-good onstage. Good examples would be
Justin Derrico who is
Pink's guitarist. He isn't called upon to do too much in terms of lead-guitar stuff, but he needs to have killer-groove with her music which IMO, is VERY important anyways! That said, when you hear/see him doing his own thing or an online-tutorial or something, he can rip (leads/solos) with the best-of-them! Another example would be
Taylor Hawkins who has been
Dave Grohl's/Foo Fighter's Drummer for about thriteen (13) years, BUT before that
he played drums for Alanis Morrisette! Again, very talented guy, excellent rock/pop drummer, AND he has the "looks" too. No one hires completely talentless musicians who can't play, but look great, because THEY DON'T HAVE TO! There are plenty of musicians out there (usually young, hungry, and ambitious!) who have worked hard at their craft AND happen to look good onstage! Seriously, if you were Pink, or Madonna, or whomever as the leader of your image-conscious pop-band, and you need to hire a guitarist, and all other things were considered about equal in terms of playing ability
as it pertained to what was required for the gig!:
Would you hire Justin Derrico or some guy who looked like (me...or) Shawn Lane (R.I.P?) Just sayin...
Other genres
(besides pop/dance-music) are much less image-based/image-driven.
Singer Chris Cornell (Soundgarden; Audioslave, Chris Cornell Band) once said in a
Heart - Behind The Music episode (re: the cruel criticism that Ann Wilson - Heart's (excellent) singer endured for getting fat in the mid-80's - Oh...forgive me if I paraphrase this a bit, as I saw/heard it about ten (10) years ago!):
"Two of my favorite female singers of all-time are Ann Wilson and Aretha Franklin, but I never remember the "R & B community" giving Aretha crap about her weight."
Some would argue that
Aretha had achieved legendary/icon status, and thus was more
"un-touchable," but that's not even the point.
Chris Cornell was right, and without spelling it out directly, he was essentially saying that in pop-music in particular (
especially the post-MTV version of pop-music)
image/looks are held to a different set of standards than some other genres. As wrong as that might seem, "it-is-what-it-is," and if pop-musicians/singers want to play-that-game and participate in that genre of music then they should expect image & looks to be a "job pre-requisite," NOT a "bonus.".... Sad, but true!
Bill
