It's not often we praise the American music industry (we find it to be much more homogenised and often less innovative than elsewhere) but let us now take a chance to do that, because this above is at number 1 on the US iTunes store, and whilst it's not at all down our street musically and we wouldn't pay 79 pence for it ourselves, we still consider this to be a good thing.
The little embedded video at the top of this post is "Fireflies", a single by American 'bedroom musician' and 'myspace phenomenon' Owl City. He is not at all the kind of artist who usually penetrates the upper reaches of the Billboard Hot 100. He's not a rapper, he's not a pop or R&B diva, he's not a country artist or a stadium rock band. He's not even the kind of ultra-commercial male singer/songwriter that conquers music charts with relative ease. He makes a kind of soft, melodic emotronica that was written off as old hat and flavour-of-the-month when US band hellogoodbye scored a worldwide hit and then disappeared from the face of the earth in 2006.
Again, his music is not to our tastes and whilst pleasant, does indeed feel like it's verging on 'dated' already (such is the nature of our ephemeral fads and crazes) but his commercial success symbolises something very special that only seems to happen in the world of American popular music. A similar thing has happened with up-and-coming trashpop star Ke$ha, a similar thing happened with Lady GaGa last year, and a similar thing happened with Imogen Heap when her landmark (oft-copied-but-never-bettered) song "Hide and Seek" scored a prime spot on hit US show The OC: an outsider who doesn't necessarily have the financial backing of a priority artist or the industry connections of a spoiled pop brat manages to score a big hit in America.
And it's a beautiful thing.
We have to say, we're not entirely sure why or how this happens. Maybe it's because American charts are linked to and compiled using radio airplay, or maybe it's because America is so vast compared to other countries and their music markets that there's more scope for unforeseen underdog contenders, but for us British music journalists who mostly follow the British music industry it's a strange and heartening thing to see an unheard of young musician peddling something not-entirely-commercial and scoring a big hit.
In Britain this rarely happens, or with much less regularity than in the US. For a new, or unusual artist to hit the Top 10 over here they have to either win a talent contest or be put through the increasingly tedious machine that is the start-of-year hype list(s). They have to release endless taste-making 7 inch limited edition singles on obscure 'boutique' labels, court the middle class music press by doing Jools Holland and the Guardian culture supplement before anyone even knows who they are. And they have to endlessly chase and solicit the praises and support of BBC Radio 1, without whom fledgling artists often struggle to score a hit, but whom also, because radio airplay doesn't count towards charts in the UK, can't guarantee success to the artists they back.
Or they have to be really lucky, like Speech Debelle, and win the Mercury Prize.
Even then, once they've caught the attention of the music journalism reading/listening public, they have to make even more concerted an effort to cross over into the mainstream. It's one thing to have the dedicated readers of the Observer Music Monthly on your side, but to even skim the top 10 you need to be completely ubiquitous. You need people who don't even listen to radio to be able to hum your song, either because it's endlessly blasted over shop tannoys, or because their children are forever watching the video on TV over breakfast. For a left-of-field or brand new artist to go top 10 you either need to do a hell of a lot of work, get really very lucky or just risk it and rely on that bizarre and intangible wildfire-like magic that got La Roux one of the top selling singles of the year.
What we're trying to say, basically, is that for commercial success to come to unheard of artists in Britain, the whole country has to fall in love with them, even if only for a few weeks. They have to be approved by some corner of the media and they have to shift a lot of actual sales.
But in America, where radio really matters and where teenagers with their slightly skewed musical obsessions can use word-of-mouth to hoik something unusual into the bottom end of the top 100, that previously mentioned wildfire-like appreciation for something that in Britain wouldn't get a look in, seems to genuinely make a difference to artists and work on a much more regular basis than over here where it's a rare occurrence, so much so that it's something to be marvelled at.
(We're not entirely sure if we've got this one right so... please correct us if we're wrong.)
The little embedded video at the top of this post is "Fireflies", a single by American 'bedroom musician' and 'myspace phenomenon' Owl City. He is not at all the kind of artist who usually penetrates the upper reaches of the Billboard Hot 100. He's not a rapper, he's not a pop or R&B diva, he's not a country artist or a stadium rock band. He's not even the kind of ultra-commercial male singer/songwriter that conquers music charts with relative ease. He makes a kind of soft, melodic emotronica that was written off as old hat and flavour-of-the-month when US band hellogoodbye scored a worldwide hit and then disappeared from the face of the earth in 2006.
Again, his music is not to our tastes and whilst pleasant, does indeed feel like it's verging on 'dated' already (such is the nature of our ephemeral fads and crazes) but his commercial success symbolises something very special that only seems to happen in the world of American popular music. A similar thing has happened with up-and-coming trashpop star Ke$ha, a similar thing happened with Lady GaGa last year, and a similar thing happened with Imogen Heap when her landmark (oft-copied-but-never-bettered) song "Hide and Seek" scored a prime spot on hit US show The OC: an outsider who doesn't necessarily have the financial backing of a priority artist or the industry connections of a spoiled pop brat manages to score a big hit in America.
And it's a beautiful thing.
We have to say, we're not entirely sure why or how this happens. Maybe it's because American charts are linked to and compiled using radio airplay, or maybe it's because America is so vast compared to other countries and their music markets that there's more scope for unforeseen underdog contenders, but for us British music journalists who mostly follow the British music industry it's a strange and heartening thing to see an unheard of young musician peddling something not-entirely-commercial and scoring a big hit.
In Britain this rarely happens, or with much less regularity than in the US. For a new, or unusual artist to hit the Top 10 over here they have to either win a talent contest or be put through the increasingly tedious machine that is the start-of-year hype list(s). They have to release endless taste-making 7 inch limited edition singles on obscure 'boutique' labels, court the middle class music press by doing Jools Holland and the Guardian culture supplement before anyone even knows who they are. And they have to endlessly chase and solicit the praises and support of BBC Radio 1, without whom fledgling artists often struggle to score a hit, but whom also, because radio airplay doesn't count towards charts in the UK, can't guarantee success to the artists they back.
Or they have to be really lucky, like Speech Debelle, and win the Mercury Prize.
Even then, once they've caught the attention of the music journalism reading/listening public, they have to make even more concerted an effort to cross over into the mainstream. It's one thing to have the dedicated readers of the Observer Music Monthly on your side, but to even skim the top 10 you need to be completely ubiquitous. You need people who don't even listen to radio to be able to hum your song, either because it's endlessly blasted over shop tannoys, or because their children are forever watching the video on TV over breakfast. For a left-of-field or brand new artist to go top 10 you either need to do a hell of a lot of work, get really very lucky or just risk it and rely on that bizarre and intangible wildfire-like magic that got La Roux one of the top selling singles of the year.
What we're trying to say, basically, is that for commercial success to come to unheard of artists in Britain, the whole country has to fall in love with them, even if only for a few weeks. They have to be approved by some corner of the media and they have to shift a lot of actual sales.
But in America, where radio really matters and where teenagers with their slightly skewed musical obsessions can use word-of-mouth to hoik something unusual into the bottom end of the top 100, that previously mentioned wildfire-like appreciation for something that in Britain wouldn't get a look in, seems to genuinely make a difference to artists and work on a much more regular basis than over here where it's a rare occurrence, so much so that it's something to be marvelled at.
(We're not entirely sure if we've got this one right so... please correct us if we're wrong.)
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