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Whatever happened to a sense of place in song? Andrew Mueller laments pop's homogenised voices
Saturday September 13, 2003
The Guardian
Keeping it real: Charlie and Craig Reid, or is it the other way round?
There's a new Proclaimers album. It's called Born Innocent, and it sounds the same as all their others, and that doesn't matter. As Craig, or possibly Charlie, Reid once said when I put it to them that their works were not noteworthy for stylistic innovation, "nobody else does what we do".
Charlie, or possibly Craig, was right - few are the songwriters as briskly honest, fewer still the singers who harmonise so beautifully (the brothers Reid merit comparison with any of the brothers Louvin, Righteous or Everly).
But what he really meant was that the Proclaimers' unique selling point is the accents: the porridge-thick Edinburgh brogues in which the Reids have obstinately insisted on singing. Strangely, and depressingly, it is a quirk which has been emulated only by witless parodists who've employed it to mock.
Why do so few pop singers use their own voices? The early heats of this year's Pop Idol confirmed a number of things: that there is no spectacle so compelling as human folly, that it's time thought was given to the reintroduction of conscription, etc.
What was most remarkable, though, was the homogenising of voices that occurred the instant the hapless contestants attempted to sing. When they spoke to the judges, they did so with the rich and extraordinary range of British regional accents.
When they sang, they all - Geordie and Scot, Cockney and Welsh, male and female - sounded like Justin Timberlake, or rather Justin Timberlake's congenitally half-witted and tone-deaf cousin. The accent of pop has become a characterless, gutless, transatlantic nothing that sounds as bland as hotel furniture looks.
When I was growing up in Australia, most of our rock singers sounded American. It was something of a revelation when I first heard Paul Kelly, or Midnight Oil's Peter Garrett, or Weddings Parties Anything's Mick Thomas: they were who they were, and they weren't embarrassed.
I'd suggest that an overlooked reason for the mid-1990s resurgence in British indie was that the singers involved sounded like they couldn't have come from anywhere but here - also why the Streets' album of last year rang as true as it did.
Both Britpop and the Streets did respectably in America, for the same reason that British people who've visited neither Galveston nor Wichita might listen to Glen Campbell: a sense of place in music matters.
It's true that neither the aforementioned artists nor the Proclaimers were pop singers in the Simon Cowell sense of the phrase - and true that every empty-headed chart mannequin produced by Australia or Scotland is as keen to sound American as their English counterparts.
But it's a misguided strategy - nobody British is going to be a better American pop icon than Eminem or Beyoncé, whose voices can be unmistakably identified with their states, never mind their country.
One thing that can be said with total certainty is that the Proclaimers' ancient hit Letter From America will be recognised, and loved, long past the lifespan of anything produced by the Reids' countryman, and accent traitor, Darius.
link
Whatever happened to a sense of place in song? Andrew Mueller laments pop's homogenised voices
Saturday September 13, 2003
The Guardian
Keeping it real: Charlie and Craig Reid, or is it the other way round?
There's a new Proclaimers album. It's called Born Innocent, and it sounds the same as all their others, and that doesn't matter. As Craig, or possibly Charlie, Reid once said when I put it to them that their works were not noteworthy for stylistic innovation, "nobody else does what we do".
Charlie, or possibly Craig, was right - few are the songwriters as briskly honest, fewer still the singers who harmonise so beautifully (the brothers Reid merit comparison with any of the brothers Louvin, Righteous or Everly).
But what he really meant was that the Proclaimers' unique selling point is the accents: the porridge-thick Edinburgh brogues in which the Reids have obstinately insisted on singing. Strangely, and depressingly, it is a quirk which has been emulated only by witless parodists who've employed it to mock.
Why do so few pop singers use their own voices? The early heats of this year's Pop Idol confirmed a number of things: that there is no spectacle so compelling as human folly, that it's time thought was given to the reintroduction of conscription, etc.
What was most remarkable, though, was the homogenising of voices that occurred the instant the hapless contestants attempted to sing. When they spoke to the judges, they did so with the rich and extraordinary range of British regional accents.
When they sang, they all - Geordie and Scot, Cockney and Welsh, male and female - sounded like Justin Timberlake, or rather Justin Timberlake's congenitally half-witted and tone-deaf cousin. The accent of pop has become a characterless, gutless, transatlantic nothing that sounds as bland as hotel furniture looks.
When I was growing up in Australia, most of our rock singers sounded American. It was something of a revelation when I first heard Paul Kelly, or Midnight Oil's Peter Garrett, or Weddings Parties Anything's Mick Thomas: they were who they were, and they weren't embarrassed.
I'd suggest that an overlooked reason for the mid-1990s resurgence in British indie was that the singers involved sounded like they couldn't have come from anywhere but here - also why the Streets' album of last year rang as true as it did.
Both Britpop and the Streets did respectably in America, for the same reason that British people who've visited neither Galveston nor Wichita might listen to Glen Campbell: a sense of place in music matters.
It's true that neither the aforementioned artists nor the Proclaimers were pop singers in the Simon Cowell sense of the phrase - and true that every empty-headed chart mannequin produced by Australia or Scotland is as keen to sound American as their English counterparts.
But it's a misguided strategy - nobody British is going to be a better American pop icon than Eminem or Beyoncé, whose voices can be unmistakably identified with their states, never mind their country.
One thing that can be said with total certainty is that the Proclaimers' ancient hit Letter From America will be recognised, and loved, long past the lifespan of anything produced by the Reids' countryman, and accent traitor, Darius.
link
