Marketing Magic

I don't know if it's just me getting old or if the world is really going to the pack. As I write this the European music awards are on the television. There are no European performers. They are all American. Fair enough. What I can't believe is that these top selling artists have no talent when performing live. They can't sing! They sound like crap! They sound like me when I sing in the shower. It's the power of marketing, a great recording studio and clothing that only has enough fabric to cover their most intimate body parts. Take Madonna for instance. She was raunchy and sexy way before raunchy and sexy became the norm. She was outrageous in her raunchiness and sexiness. Now she just looks plain sad. Sad because she feels she has to dress in a minuscule amount of clothing and gyrate the parts of her body normally reserved for bearing children in front of a camera in order to compete with the talentless, just out of diapers, female performers of today's generation. She is over 40! She just looks desperate. She looks like mutton dressed as lamb! She sang live and for that I applaud her but she sounded as though she just thought it might be fun to annoy an audience of thousands (millions if we include TV) by deliberately not staying in tune. Not quite as bad Avril Lavigne live but only marginally. Now I realise that some people believe that age should be no barrier to sexiness but this is not sexy. It's downright horrifying. Sure she looks fantastic and I would kill for a body like hers at any age, especially after 40 but come on. She had a demure period a few years back and she should have kept it. It seems its no longer about art and talent, it's about marketing and anyone can be marketed. It just takes money and desperation to get and keep your face on TV.