Adele

[howeird]

<rant> What set this off is someone tweeting or FBing that Adele is sexy, with a comment about women with curves. I find Adele not sexy at all. She just doesn't have that vibe for me. There are women of her shape who do, but not her.

And about all those Grammys. I don't get it. She is an above-average singer, but her songs are meh.

It's a cruel reversal on the usual conundrum where brilliant song writers (Yip Harburg, Bob Dylan, George Gershwin, etc.) can't sing their way out of a paper bag, so they need a talented singer to make their work sound its best. Adele should consider singing other people's tunes. And/or work with some composers and lyricists who have several hits under their belts, and hone her art.
</rant>

It could work. As far as I can tell, each of her songs is two or three songs stapled together. She seems to want to show off all her chops in every number.

Comments

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

I don't normally pride myself on ignorance, but I have no idea who this Adele is, and from your review, I gather I'm not missing much. I haven't listened to much top-40 radio since about 1971 or 1972, when I realized my musical tastes did not conform to the least common denominator of the 13 year old girl demographic.

Another reason I have a profound lack of interest in watching the grammys (I'm tempted to correct that to grammies) is that while they occasionally give awards to what I consider real music, as opposed to synthetic plastic crap, they don't actually, I've been told, give air time to "those" categories. So, I'm curious. George Kahumoku was up for an award. Air time? I'm thinking probably not. I'm thinking the producers are focused on ratings and airing the top-selling popular garbage, which is popular, likely, only because it gets too much air time and the tone-deaf non-musical idiots watching think they're supposed to like it.

As to your other argument - I don't see it. In the era of Harburg and Gershwin, a singer-songwriter was at least 4 different people. Lyricist, composer, singer and instrumentalist. Harburg was a lyricist. Gershwin was a composer, and an instrumentalist, but as I understand it, could only work in the key of C and used some sort of wacky transposing piano. Dylan framed himself as a singer-songwriter, and when he started out, actually was 5 people, since he played both guitar and harmonica. If one were to examine his 5 roles separately, one would conclude he's an overextended lyricist. Yet, not only has he had a successful career making and selling his own records and performing in public, he's made a fortune in royalties on others covering his songs. Mighty clever for a guy with limited talents. While some might consider Dylan a composer, he got most of his tunes (and even some of his better-known lyrics) from old folk songs.

[howeird]

George got no air time except for his red carpet entrance. The category he was in was the last one on the Grammy list, and the winners did get about 10 seconds of play time, I think.

Talking about non-singing composers and lyricists, the music world has not changed that much, except maybe there are more song writers who can sing. That's also happening in filk, I think.

The vast majority of what is played on the radio are covers. Dylan was, IMHO, a poet whose words lended themselves to folk tunes. I credit the popularity of his concerts and recordings with an ideosyncrazy of the times which applauded content even when it completely lacked style. Rap continues that tradition today, but with less valuable content.