| pointPi |
So yeah, a Swedish music critic and journalist wrote an article about commercial house DJ's, which I think could be interesting for me to share.
Original version (On Swedish)
My translation:
| quote: | Last summer I met Tiësto on Ibiza. He was a nice person. We talked about the singer Anna von Hausswolff, who he enjoys. The only annoying thing about it all was that I didn't recognize him, despite the fact that he's the world's #1 DJ.
He certainly looked familiar. Reaching out his hand to greet me, I thought he would say "Hi, I'm your personal bank accountant. Nordea will gladly help you find solutions to your personal economy." Tiësto looked exactly like those trustworthy portraits of estate brokers you find at the bottom of housing ads.
Commercial house may be a blank slate musical genre, but it's nothing against the artists' totally identity-less look. The more DJ's are being acclaimed as "the new rockstars", the more I find their lack of charisma problematic. Within EDM ("electronic dance music", American description of 10's house and techno), most producers emit about as much as the usb memory sticks they dj with. There are exceptions, though; Skrillex with his Buddy Holly-glasses, Albin Meyers with his Mohawk or Deadmau5 with his mouse helmet. Still though, they're eccentric grains of sand in a beige desert. It's understandable why so many of the artists carry their backstage passes while performing. Otherwise no one would believe they belong inthe spotlight.
Diplo, the guy behind dancehall electro band Major Lazer, said recently that the stars of the EDM scene were "a bunch of Dutchmen with the same hairdo" and replaceable between eachother. Diplo's haircut isn't that exciting either, but he has a point in that Armin van Buuren and Sander van Doorn could switch places without their girlfriends noticing anything.
The only super DJ who actually looks like a rockstar is Calvin Harris, who looks like Chris Martin from Coldplay, who looks like someone who hands out blue shoe covers during apartment showcases. Swedish House Mafia at least partied hard enough to seem like a rock band. And Avicii's innocence is so examined that he no longer seems boring, but rather like a DJ'ing Skorpan Lionheart. The copyright holders of the new dance music is otherwise just a bunch pretty, but lifeless blank slates. They certainly use a lot of pyrotechnics to compensate for their visual lackings, but not even a re-staging of the Dresden bombings on Summerburst would make Tiësto look like a rock star.
"The looks don't matter. It's all about the music", you may say. "Good pop music looks cool", I say. On the other hand, I as a 40 year old may no longer be able to detect what's cool or not. I can relate to Gene Simmons from Kiss, who in the early 90's dismissed the grunge because the new musicians looked like his pool cleaning guy. To me it is as incomprehensible that artists, who are supposed to represent hedonistic lifestyles, choose to look like hedge fund managers celebrating Casual Friday.
Interestingly enough, it has gone the opposite direction for the female stars: they're more charismatic than ever before. Lady Gaga, Rihanna, MIA, Lana del Ray and Miley Cyrus doesn't only put forward elegant pop, but are also style icons and scandal makers. I can read extensive biographies about all of them. I can't even make it to read a sentence about Calvin Harris.
Even Ke$ha, whose standardized teen pop can't even barely be described as interesting, starts a beard fetish blog, has sex with ghosts and indulge in occult Illuminati symbols. She's a bigger rockstar than any DJ who has ever performed at Summerburst; fittingly enough sponsored by Nordea.
- Fredrik Strage |
|
|
|
