Comments on: Sic Transit Gloria Barlow https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow Lollards in the high church of low culture Sun, 16 Dec 2012 02:51:19 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 By: koganbot https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-2#comment-1102629 Sun, 16 Dec 2012 02:51:19 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1102629 “humble or common or dorky” = dorkiness is considered lovable in an awesome superstar.

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By: koganbot https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-2#comment-1102628 Sun, 16 Dec 2012 02:47:21 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1102628 HiFalution the noun form of HiFalutin.

–Any thoughts about the international spread of the idols show format (I don’t know the history here; were there countries where it was being done in something like the modern idol version prior to Fuller & Cowell)? E.g., The Voice Thailand 9 Dec 2012 ??? Hava Nagila.

–Speaking on the basis of my own nonexpert observations at the time, Beatlemania didn’t code as rebellion in early 1964 in USA (which may be one reason why it ran so fluidly wild so easily so quickly). Whereas Beatle hairstyle and its effect on other people’s hairstyle was seriously disturbing.

–I have a pretty low bar as for what counts as “rebellion” — need not be social convulsion, which is something different and is generally called “revolution”; need not be progressive; need not be good; need not be lasting (but maybe needs to have some novel impact?) — but it does need to be going up against some social circumstance and I’d say it needs to be by people for whom (or from whom) such recalcitrance in the face of accepted reality is not expected or appropriate. So, e.g., rich people finding ever new ways to rebel against having to pay taxes doesn’t count as rebellion. What about that boy who walked into that elementary school in Connecticut and started shooting? I don’t think I’d count that (that’s why I potentially added that “novel impact” codicil above). I mean, otherwise we’d have to call it a little rebellion every time one of us fucked up or spazzed out.

Eyeing K-pop, I’d say that a lot of social media independence and rebellion is conservative, the ‘Net being the place where complaints first arise when someone accidentally shows tit, or HyunA gets too feisty, or a star is insufficiently humble or common or dorky in an interview — stuff the biz would be glad to let slide, otherwise.

I think Mark is looking for some sort of popular or fan initiative that’s not necessarily disallowed but seems to jump the banks and run off in an unexpected channel.

Wikip:
After the subgroups Super Junior-K.R.Y. and Super Junior-T, on October 2, 2007, S.M. Entertainment announced the birth of another Super Junior sub-unit project that would begin activities in China starting 2008. Zhou Mi and S.M. Entertainment’s new Taiwanese-Canadian trainee Henry Lau, who was also featured in the music video of “Don’t Don”, were also members of the subgroup.[116] The announcement brought in a huge wave of dissatisfaction and opposition from fans of Super Junior after the announcement of two new members. Initially, fans were planning to boycott the company’s products, however, most fans agreed on a silent protest instead. Thousands of fans from Super Junior’s official fanclub E.L.F. silently sat in front of the SM building and held signs that supported the group to have only thirteen members.[117] After more rumors regarding adding another member to the subgroup, the fans decided to gain a legal representation as part of S.M. Entertainment’s stockholders. As of March 20, 2008, Super Junior fans purchased 58,206 stocks of S.M. Entertainment, holding 0.3% of the company’s entire stock.[118] They released a statement that they will obtain all chances to prevent S.M. Entertainment from adding new members and to keep Super Junior as only thirteen.

[A possible racist motive here, Korean fans not wanting more Chinese members. But as far as I know there’s been no opposition to the Chinese members of Miss A or to the Chinese American in f(x), both groups doing quite well commercially.]

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By: thefatgit https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-2#comment-1102382 Fri, 14 Dec 2012 23:01:36 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1102382 Mum & dad vs whatever never clicked with me until I attended my first Gary Numan gig. In fact, they loved all my forays into Genesis and King Crimson. It was a real struggle to find anything in the rock sphere that didn’t rile them completely. I raided my Mum’s make-up box for Dramatis and Steve Strange. New Romanticism was my “rebelective affinity” point.

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By: Tommy Mack https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-2#comment-1102343 Fri, 14 Dec 2012 19:47:03 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1102343 sukrat @ 27 – it’s a fair point about mum and dad/the man. During my teenage years, I found my peers’ attitudes and behavioural codes far more restrictive and oppressive than my parents’ (mind you, my parents went to art college in the late 60s and I grew up in Wilmslow, one of the squarest places you could find. As far as I know, it’s still a blend of 80s greed and 50s social values there.)

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By: Tommy Mack https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-2#comment-1102342 Fri, 14 Dec 2012 19:42:16 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1102342 Well, like I said, screaming/swooning over pop stars isn’t inherently rebellious, it’s just fun and hormones until someone in charge tells you your fun is wrong and your hormones must be supressed.

Actually, adult men as the objectified prey of sexually agressive younger females, literally chasing them down the street does seem pretty revolutionary in its way!

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-2#comment-1102319 Fri, 14 Dec 2012 15:52:39 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1102319 The other point worth making is that while the Valentino/Sinatra mass teen-girl screamfests had happened in America, Beatlemania’s emergence in buttoned-up Britain was really really NOT something that had been seen before.

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By: Tom https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-2#comment-1102317 Fri, 14 Dec 2012 15:48:22 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1102317 Social media has revitalised some elements of live TV definitely – but the X-Factor was pretty lively anyway and as DDD says Twitter wasn’t a big mainstream deal in the Imperial Phase 2009-2010. (The cultural history of social media is going to be awfully written because most of the writers were on some things too early, some things too late and some not at all.)

As I said in the piece, I do think X-Factor won its huge audience partly because of the recession – it became a very cheap option at a time of narrowed choices. But narrowed choices aren’t *NO* choices so there’s no reason for the recession boost to sustain itself if the quality declines or the formula becomes worn.

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By: Tom https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-2#comment-1102316 Fri, 14 Dec 2012 15:44:31 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1102316 “Chasing the Beatles down the street surely wasn’t rebellious, it was doing what large numbers of girls did – like your mum had swooned over Sinatra and your nan over Valentino. Seeing the Stones, though, or getting into that folky protest business that was starting to come over the Atlantic, now that was rebellious.”

This seems uncomfortably like, ‘rebellion is what boys do’ Erithian! Just sayin.

(There were roaring boys aplenty prior to the 50s and 60s, too – there’s always a continuity of teenage action – but it’s important I think that there was a skipped genereration in male experience, the kids who were packed off to war, which perhaps allowed the next lot to seem more dramatic than they actually were.)

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By: thefatgit https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-2#comment-1101923 Wed, 12 Dec 2012 19:34:34 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101923 My point about social media vs charts was informed by the brouhaha when Gangnam Style reached 1bn views on YT. That’s quite a boast compared to actual sales that might not top 1%* of that figure, even Worldwide. Even the most apathetic would probably concede that the impact of reaching #1 in the charts has diminished in the download era. I’ll concede Sukrat’s point that “rebellion” is somewhat inaccurate in relation to Beatles, Stones, Rollers, Duran Duran, Britney, Gaga, One Direction or whomever become next year’s pop movers and shakers. After all, nobody can boast regime change by buying a single or attending a gig. I’m not sure “rebelective affinity” is going to roll off too many tongues outside comments threads like this, but teenage abrasiveness towards accepted norms and institutions, be they within family, or wider society won’t disappear thankfully anytime soon, so why not find another way of thinking about it. Leave “rebellion” to Arab Springs and suchlike.

*I’m not sure what Psy has achieved in world sales to date, but I still think I’m being generous by saying 1%.

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By: Tommy Mack https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-2#comment-1101887 Wed, 12 Dec 2012 16:08:15 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101887 Sukrat @ 28: HiFalution sounds like an X-factor urban act who show early promise before inevitably getting voted off in the early stages. Two guys, one girl: in my mind, they are kind of Tribe Called Quest meets N-Dubz!

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By: Erithian https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-2#comment-1101885 Wed, 12 Dec 2012 15:52:58 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101885 fatgit #24 – interesting point about how important the charts still are. If what you say is true, it’s another indicator of the changes wrought by downloading, in that the link between consumer and purchase is no longer physical. That BBC4 documentary in praise of the single a few weeks back wasn’t great but did convey the almost fetishistic appeal of bringing home a single in its pristine sleeve from the shop, with the always characteristic label looking out at you conveying an identity and/or an attitude of its own. Now that’s gone, and a download costs so much less in real terms than a single at any point in the chart’s history, the character of the chart is very different. I’m sure all those people downloading Kirsty/Pogues, Mariah and Slade this month aren’t fans who’ve never bought the single or downloaded the song before.

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By: Erithian https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-2#comment-1101883 Wed, 12 Dec 2012 15:50:54 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101883 Rebelective Affinity? Didn’t they play Reading last year … etc.

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101880 Wed, 12 Dec 2012 15:43:38 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101880 Hence why we all need to start using the term “rebelective affinity” :)

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By: Erithian https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101878 Wed, 12 Dec 2012 15:34:27 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101878 Chasing the Beatles down the street surely wasn’t rebellious, it was doing what large numbers of girls did – like your mum had swooned over Sinatra and your nan over Valentino. Seeing the Stones, though, or getting into that folky protest business that was starting to come over the Atlantic, now that was rebellious. Interesting to hear the distinction made in “Crossfire Hurricane” that whereas at Stones gigs in Britain you could see streams coming down the aisle as the girls wet themselves, on the Continent the audience was mainly blokes and usually riotous, and the streams were more likely to be policemen’s blood.

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101876 Wed, 12 Dec 2012 15:18:58 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101876 HiFalution is not actually a word (though it should be): HiFalutin is what I meant…

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101875 Wed, 12 Dec 2012 15:18:02 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101875 I think this conflation of “mum and dad” and “the man” is actually turning out to be the (post-war generational) oddity, though — the assumption that “rebellion” is by nature against your parents, rather than alongside your parents against your landlord/boss/teacher blah blah. In x factor terms there’s clearly more than once now been a voters’ revolt against what’s considered the “establishment’s vote”: Jedward vs Cowellism, Rylan vs Barlow, Popular Maloney vs All the HiFalution World. All these as pop-as-rebellion votes, except the word “rebellion” is probably not the correct term for what I’m talking about (which is why I keep putting it in cute-quotes…)

The huge problem with the petrified notion of Generational Difference as an Absolute isn’t so much that it’s “ok for adults to act like teens” as Adults ARE ALWAYS GROWN-UP TEENS, and thus deeply invested in the sounds and stances they associate with their own teen-dom (“noise”, “rebellion against yr parents”). Especially once teen-dom became an accepted niche-territory to be marketed at (ie the 50s). The really interesting development is that — since the 80s especially — pre-teendom and tot-dom are new&additional accepted niche-territories to be marketed at. And Adults are also now grown-up pre-teens and grown-up tots.

(Obviously adults were always and always will be grown-up tots, but the territory of shared tot experience 50 years ago was much less mass-cultural…)

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By: Tommy Mack https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101861 Wed, 12 Dec 2012 14:22:28 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101861 I don’t think much pop music these days comes from a standpoint of rebellion*. Even rebellion against boredom. Chasing The Beatles down the street was rebellious because mum and dad disapproved: of The Beatles and of the chasing: few girls screaming at Cliff/David Cassidy/Donny Osmond were actively trying to rebel; they were just having fun and chasing after some pretty boys, but having fun and following your instincts can be rebellion if The Man is telling you you musn’t. Now, mum and dad are more likely to be retweeting your live account of chasing One Direction down the street than threatening to send you to a convent (boot camp!)

*I will admit, I am not the world’s foremost authority on pop music these days.

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101856 Wed, 12 Dec 2012 13:03:20 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101856 “The rebellion” is probably no longer a clear enough term — there are now surely several parallel “rebellions” of varying types, against a variety of institutions or bothersome boredoms or wrong perspectives (as the rebels see them). And there are also always still “rebelective” affinities, if that’s the right phrase for mobs of screaming teens chasing Moptops/Rollers/Wand Erection etc down the street…

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By: thefatgit https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101844 Wed, 12 Dec 2012 12:45:11 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101844 The rebellion is against the charts. Sales alone can no longer determine popularity. Twitter Trending and YouTube views have, I believe, overtaken the Official Chart as THE primary indicators of “who is more popular?”. Cowell’s occupation of the Xmas #1 slot might have persuaded social media-savvy teen punters to look for their thrills on the Trending lists, because it was immediate and they already knew it could not be manipulated by marketing strategy (yet). It’s a purely fan-generated phenomenon, as is how many times a video is viewed on YouTube. If the X Factor winner gets an Xmas #1, the “#FANS” won’t care tuppence, until James Arthur (or one of the runners up) trends Worldwide or gets the kind of YT views 1D get.

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By: Tommy Mack https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101841 Wed, 12 Dec 2012 12:23:46 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101841 get your music heard by people without having to pay for rehearsal space, compromise with other musicians, spend several hours in sticky-floored Camden boozers etc.

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By: Tommy Mack https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101839 Wed, 12 Dec 2012 12:08:12 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101839 An alternative theory: it’s all about technology: forming a band is a useful division of labour and a pragmatic way of making a pleasing racket when you have limited means of both production and promotion. Reasonably professional home recording, but it’s much easier to

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By: Tommy Mack https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101833 Wed, 12 Dec 2012 11:46:23 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101833 The emergence of rock was coupled to the rise of the teenager as social phenonmenon:is the decline of rock: it linked to the dissapearance of the teenager as a distinct social group? Now that youth blends seemlessly into adulthood and grown-ups can pretty much get away with acting like teenagers, there’s no mass market for noisy ‘rebel’ music.

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By: Tommy Mack https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101831 Wed, 12 Dec 2012 11:37:06 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101831 Rat Pack seems a good shout for Cowell’s poptopia: X-factor’s mantra “you’ve got to be versatile/when are you going to sing a different sort of song?” seems a pre-Elvis notion of light entertainer-craft over pop thrillz. I guess it’s a party line maintained to generate jeopardy in the live shows more than a heartfelt artistic conviction but. To my mind it’s why, despite turning up loads of genuine talent, some mavericks even, you’ll never get a total WTF gamechanger emerging thru X-factor.

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101826 Wed, 12 Dec 2012 11:02:23 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101826 Adding: talent shows went right out of fashion within light entertainment — perhaps round about the time that pop and rock went mainstream as splash-page topics in the tabloids (ie the early 80s)? — so that their return c.2000 could actually be a big deal: the (re)gamification of variety on a much larger, sparklier scale. OpKnocks and New Faces had been popular TV, but they were much more at the pootling routine level than the all-the-papers OMG level.

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101824 Wed, 12 Dec 2012 10:54:25 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101824 Not entirely following Another Pete’s argument: if twitter and recession are the reason X Factor got so big, why are figures are in decline as twitter gets even bigger and the recession deepens further?

The real-time interaction with fan groups — and having (arguably) manipulatively encouraged them to start, the relative difficulty of controlling them, the life-of-their-own they can manifest — is very much a new (post-millennial) phenomenon, and it’s the subtleties of this engagement I’d actually be most interested in. (Because the gatekeeper role of the judges — and even the producers — is challenged at least enough that they have to learn to adapt) (something similar has of course happened over in rockland, with the challenge of fan-energy and organisation to the gatekeeper role of critics…. )

In the 90s ordinary primetime programmes — aside from telethons and Eurovision after 1998 — were almost entirely top-down. But Talent Shows (OppKnocks, New Faces etc) in the 70s had elements like the “clapometer”, so that live audience opinion was an element, though not exactly a nuanced one. (Actually I can’t really remember if New Faces had an audience element, but it did have a Brutal Professional Judge element: Tony Hatch and Mickie Most were both rolled out in this persona.)

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By: Mark G https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101783 Wed, 12 Dec 2012 07:13:04 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101783 Bear in mind the first series of PopStars had no public voting at all.

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By: Another Pete https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101709 Tue, 11 Dec 2012 23:26:50 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101709 I think the recession and Twitter are very good reasons why it was so popular. To think when Popstars was on the fact you could text your vote was seen as TV being forward thinking and embracing technology. Now social media seems to be as much a vital organ to the show as the acts and judges. (the teenage fans trying their damnedest to get their favourite top trending etc) making it more than just a Saturday night TV show it initially was.

In regards to the recession would the primetime Saturday night TV output of the seventies be as fondly remembered if that decade wasn’t so turbulent economically, probably. What came before X-Factor’s many early manifestations, was it still Blind Date and Gladiators for the late 90s boom years? Certainly wasn’t memorable whatever it was but then again did it need to be because most of us would of been out anyway.

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By: Iain Mew https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101704 Tue, 11 Dec 2012 22:37:18 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101704 Popstars had two series! The second one had the rivals gimmick which actually set up the chart performance as the final decision on a winner. It killed off One True Voice and hasn’t been tried since, but worked out pretty well for Girls Aloud (also the fact that they were sort of seen as the reserve initially meant giving them a bit more freedom maybe? I don’t know very much of the detail about this).

The first series of X Factor had G4 finishing second to Steve Brookstein. G4 didn’t have hit singles but definitely had the better career of the two.

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101666 Tue, 11 Dec 2012 18:42:21 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101666 haha OK in that case can I change my question, bob?

i: Did this feature of Popstars — which only lasted one series in the UK — uncomplicatedly transfer to all its successors, X FACTOR IN PARTICULAR: ie that a surprising number of NON-winners ended up doing better than the winners
ii: if not why not?
iii: if so, but complicatedly, when DID it start to emerge, esp.in X Factor?

(the answer to i is surely NO)

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By: Mark G https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101654 Tue, 11 Dec 2012 17:18:36 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101654 Well, there you go: Liberty X.

The ‘runners-up’ in a competition to pick the best five, (so, people in positions 6 to 10) banded together, made better records, had a much longer run in the charts, as much success, and disbanded seemingly of their own volition..

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101637 Tue, 11 Dec 2012 15:44:25 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101637 Darius’s Britney cover was pre-youtube, wasn’t it? Did Darius fans actually ever gather and organise?

(Of course the endpoint of Popstars was actually the formation of a group — hear’say and Liberty X being the actual outcome — which adds a whole bunch of other wrinkles.)

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By: Steve Mannion https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101635 Tue, 11 Dec 2012 15:31:50 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101635 Darius not winning and not fitting the makers idea of winner initially worked out very well for him. His debut single foxed people slightly with its obedient pleasantries but only then was he taken seriously, albeit briefly, as a would be pop idol. Not quite the same thing tho as his initial popularity came more as joke butt. What about Il Divo?

Re #9 Like the point re the idea of Cowell foreseeing a rawk/bands decline in this way. Was he somehow the chicken to Napster’s egg?

Re #8 I remember Cowell introducing Eoghan Quigg’s performance of ‘Does Your Mother Know? as one of his favourite songs ever fwiw, but I’m sure he’d rather have peddled Abba as just a female duo.

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101631 Tue, 11 Dec 2012 14:39:21 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101631 Question for those who watched earlier series more assiduously than I: who was the first non-winner to have gathered enough of a fan-group momentum, further energised by their not winning, that their non-winning was arguably a better result than actually winning? (Give the obvious disbenefits of winning, in terms of being embedded in a pre-decided and not-that-flexible management/production/contract structure…)

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101621 Tue, 11 Dec 2012 14:12:00 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101621 The rat-pack paper-trail — including the apparent fact that he was working on a Rat-pack style group just last year!!! :D What happened to this?

To be fair, there are two distinct elements here: the rat-pack era sound, which in rebirth-of terms is a TITANIC ASK and the perfected rat-pack era management/production structure, which has obviously never gone away (but had very much gone out of fashion).

It’s a structure in which performers had quite reduced say in choice of songs, arrangement, image and such. Also: it’s the era which the Beatles waged such effective war on, not least by writing their own songs, gaining say-so over their LP sleeves blah blah ect ect. Worth noting that if X-Factor is past its imperial phase, so is Beatles-band era (defined at its most expansive: 60s plus “rock” plus aftermath).

I’d also be inclined to argue — and very likely Cowell would too, through from a difft angle and with a difft agenda — that there is a deep relationship between sound-as-ethos and the underlying management/production structure. The fact that Cowellism has always been hostile to rock is taken (by many) as a sin that fits tidily alongside all his other sins (which are legion, before anyone thinks this is a general apologetics). But I think this hostility was shrewdly prophetic, even if his motivation was purely evil.

Of course, I believe* there’s a McLaren-KLF-Blobby line to be drawn: which will trace a radical doubt about rock’s beliefs about its lasting superiority as a music-form and social formation, and the corrupting effects of rock’s own evasion of ephemera-is-ever-its-best-quality yaddayadda…

*Sorta-kinda, trollclown-style.

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By: Tom https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101617 Tue, 11 Dec 2012 13:52:41 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101617 Did Cowell have any inkling how enormous One Direction were going to be? It would well be that he went to America to keep a closer eye on them.

Sukrat yr Rat Pack idea is interesting – is there any documentation of that at SC’s ideal (has the X-Factor kept up with the terrible Big Band Week since he left?. The question of what, if any, music Simon Cowell actually likes – or rather what the relationship is between his tastes and his actions – is quite an interesting one I think. If he does like Rat Pack era stuff he’s very successfully avoided it in terms of the material he’s actually promoted and signed through his career.

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By: lex https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101615 Tue, 11 Dec 2012 13:35:39 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101615 I suspect that no matter what Cowell says about wanting pop-that-lasts, he knows that TV phenomena can’t last (on the XF imperial phase scale): we say that XF has gone downhill since Cowell fucked off to America, but to me it looks more like Cowell fucked off to America because he sensed it was about to go downhill. I assume there’ll be further tinkering to the panel/format next year – it’s not dead enough to put out to pasture completely – and maybe what’s happening now is a transition period between XF-as-cultural-phenomenon to XF-as-establishment-series-pootling-away-quietly.

(NB I didn’t watch a single second of this year’s series despite my avowed Scherzinger love.)

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By: sükråt tanned rested unlogged and awesome https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101605 Tue, 11 Dec 2012 12:35:22 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101605 Isn’t that what Britain’s Got Talent is?

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By: Mark G https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101604 Tue, 11 Dec 2012 12:27:32 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101604 mmm, Sack it and bring back “It’s A Knockout”

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By: sükråt tanned rested unlogged and awesome https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101600 Tue, 11 Dec 2012 12:10:46 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101600 Very unsure if the “everyone” in the first sentence of Lex’s second para includes Cowell, though: precisely because Lex’s overall point surely unveils a hidden contradiction in the Cowell project, which as well as transient ratings-world conquest ALSO included a sustainably long-term reliable talent filter-cum-conveyorbelt. Ratings-topping and reliable sustainability aren’t compatible: though the latter could emerge in the long-tail aftermath of the former.* Because the ephemera-is-ever-its-best-quality aspect of pop is exactly the attitude Cowell was looking to counter, wasn’t it? He wanted a return to tried-and-trusted quality popular music based in talented singers guided by a well-informed and shrewd arranger-producer-management layer. His avowed Golden Age was the Ratpack: he reveres Sinatra with Nelson Riddle etc.

Lex’s third para I feel would also be what we’d be saying if my ideal of these kinds of projects were emerging**: that we were approaching a situation where judges had (visibly, as part of the melodrama) to discuss out loud the tensions between “destined for sustained success”, “series winners”, “popular votes”, “anti-musical x-factor” and so on (Rylan couldn’t sing for toffee but he was easily the most talented all-round performer; Jedward are trollclowns not singers, but surely there’s an x-factor in trollclowning as well as singing, whether or not they had it…. ). There were flashes of this actually happening this series — and it’s pretty much what I mean when I say GB was boring because he didn’t play along, too stubborn to turn the pushback against his ideas of quality from Nicole (dippy poetic strong-arming, easy to get on board with in a WIDE-EYED BELIEVER sinse) and Tulisa (earnest and exasperated. often a bit hard to follow if you don’t know much about “urban” etc), into a genuine element in the drama. (Though by defalt this somewhat ended up being the drama of Maloney, sacrificed on the unexamined altar of nang-vote vs nan-vote, to pick up and extend eg Lady Chann’s twitter-reading…)

*And in fact I think this is what was at the back of my mind in my earlier post: that if we have indeed entered the long-tail, this creates a stable routinised context, which is arguably (or anyway potentially) a better ecology for the longer-term nurturing of musical quality? Precisely because it’s increaasingly off the splash-page journalism map…

**Which to be clear I’m not saying we ARE. I’m saying how would we distinguish the early stages of my ideal from what we actually have?

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By: lex https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101598 Tue, 11 Dec 2012 11:42:03 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101598 The thing with any Imperial Phase is that by definition everyone knows it won’t last, ESPECIALLY once it’s got to the stage where everyone’s aware it’s happening – the thrill of knowing a particular zeitgeist-catching phenomenon is at the crest of the wave necessarily involves admitting that from here on in it’s diminishing returns. An individual can morph what they do and ride a career out to longevity, but TV programmes are inherently transient – certainly if they’re so dependent on scale.

I think the One Direction/Cher Lloyd/Rebecca Ferguson/Matt Cardle year was the peak, and everyone knew it – it was the first time the show had thrown up four viable and very different pop stars (well…three viable pop stars and one obvious flop of a winner). It was probably the most consistently watchable series to date, and in many ways fulfilled the flashes of brilliance it had previously given us. But after a series like that, going back to the usual arc whereby the winner doesn’t “need” to be heard from again is always going to be a comedown.

That series also showed up the limitations of the format – the fact that the acts who were obviously destined for success were equally obviously not destined to win. And also the judges – that series worked despite the Simon/Cheryl/Dannii/Louis panel. Literally none of their comments made sense by that point – Simon was bored, Louis was mental and all of them just spouted empty praise regardless of how badly the contestants actually performed. It’s a real contrast to go back to clips of the early days, when Simon/Sharon etc were genuinely ruthless and, you felt, honest in their assessments. By 2010 there was no assessing going on at all.

So by the X Factor’s final Imperial Phase I think it was already obvious that it was never going to be as good as it had been – so all the irritating or boring things the audience previously put up with because of the excitement of the Imperial Phase suddenly were active turn-offs. All the tweaks to the panel and the format were valiant but not enough. Would it be unprecedented for a show like the X Factor to return to its peak?

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101479 Mon, 10 Dec 2012 21:34:48 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101479 The arglebargle over Christopher Maloney’s exit — or rather, how he misbehaved after it — has thrown up the interesting claim that Cowell was terrified he would win, and “discredit the show”. Maloney’s popular vote fell below Jahmene’s and James Arthur’s at round about the point when the judges stopped criticising him and started instead resignedly saying things like “you work hard” and “you’ve got this far”. I did actually (maliciously more than preciently) propose on twitter a couple of weeks back that Gary was keeping CM in in order that his fall seem greater. This ended up being more or less what happened: the manner of his leaving seemed genuinely humiliating, because he’d had been so buoyed up by implausible fortune earlier — perhaps by people voting for the underdog, Jedward-in-photonegative, and against this so-called “judges” sneering at him (they were entirely right about the one-note quality of his actual style and talent, and his increasingly brittle defensiveness was becoming strikingly less attractive week on week).

I’m glad James Arthur won: I was a very early stan — he was an unexpected type of singer on the show, and his version of “Power of Love” last week was genuinely astonishing (aka “shamazing”). I suspect the win won’t be good for him as an artist: he had a lost-in-music doom-wracked formlessness (as if Van Morrison had been a down-rosta act on Factory) which I loved, and which I think has been disciplined out of him.

I actually liked Tulisa: she was overly earnest and cares about music in a straight-forward professional way. I loved Nicole, from the dotty poetry of her word-choice to the fact that she was obviously a mentor her charges were enormously affectionately grateful towards (good mentor, also, apparently, assuming no shanigans, anyway) — though as many people on twitter seemed to loathe her for these exact same qualities.

BORELOW is Borelow: I tire quickly of love-to-hate (it’s why I’m allergic to Cowell), but I also got bored with GB’s stolid refusal to be in on the joke ever. Watching it last night with T, I made a joke about his weird mein kampf look — and she said “Oh, he hates all this, his job, the music he has to play.” I assumed she’d read something, but she said she was just reading the tension lines in his mouth and eyes as we watched. “That’s depression,” she said. Which also makes sense.

Louis is such an idiot. You can’t dislike him, but he’s impossibly out of his depth. What’s he good at? I’m tempted to argue that the show’s gathering unpopularity tracks an actual rise in quality in the musicians applying — of course I’m slightly trolling by saying so (James Arthur is my only evidence really, Ella had incredible skills but no real personality or personal presence, Jahmene was a deeply sweet person who clearly can sing, but he wasn’t a TALENT BEYOND in respect of earlier years I don’t think). But the element of bolshiness and playful refusal to accept the judges’ tastes and perspectives as worthy of respect — on Rylan’s part in playful fashion, and Maloney’s in a much more whiney and dickish way — seemed so much more pronounced than before. All those years ago, what I’d loved about Kym Marsh’s pounce back at Nasty Nigel was the potential to turn this kind of show into an actual public argument about the nature of judgment, the rival and contradictory ways music matters. Not because it’s not controlled and manipulated, but because the various contradictory elements that will need to be tinkered with allow all these little rifts and breaks and wrinkles, and when the wind’s in the right direction something can happen. (on ilx round the same time I argued — with Geir of all people — that the proof of the lack of imagination of the indie generation was that no one in it had the smarts to spot the McLarenite potential, or just the gumption to step in to make something of it…)

Actual favourite moment: when Chistophers’ nan was asked, as it was about to through to the final two, who was going to win, and instead of saying “My lovely Christopher who I love” she said “Whatever will be will be.” I (like to) think she voted for James Arthur too. Maloney was SUCH a c0ck.

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By: JLucas https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/sic-transit-gloria-barlow/comment-page-1#comment-1101456 Mon, 10 Dec 2012 19:21:32 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23763#comment-1101456 There are many reasons why it peaked when it did, how it did, and you cover a lot of them. I do think that one important element was that the balance of judges was as perfect as it’s ever been. Louis the clown before he became too self-aware and self-referential about it, Simon the ringmaster, Cheryl the likeable young ingenue and Dannii Minogue, who you didn’t mention but who I think played a very important role. Her popularity mirrored the show’s in many ways. When she came on in 2007 she wasn’t well received, people wondered at her qualifications and she wasn’t entirely comfortable. Losing Sharon saw her installed as the matriarch rather than the upstart newbie, and she appeared much more comfortable in that position. She was by far the warmest and most constructive of the judges and she spoke the most sense. The “fashion wars” between her and Cheryl brought in a whole different viewership and became as talked about as the contestants week on week.

Tulisa comes across as dull, petulant and fashion-wise she’s a wallflower. Nicole is very entertaining, but tries that little bit too hard and doesn’t know when to step back. People talk about the appeal of rivalries, but actually Cheryl and Dannii had a visibly warm relationship, whereas it’s obvious Nicole and Tulisa – while not antagonistic towards each other – have no relationship whatsoever. There’s no chemistry and it’s dull to watch.

And y’know, crap acts, stale format, obvious manipulation. But I still miss the minor Minogue most of all.

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