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In this New York Times profile of ubiquitous mewler James Blunt, we learn a lot of little factoids about the crooner–women who eat at “trendy meatpacking district restaurants” somehow find him sexy! he’s probably shut down the Ibiza party scene with the power of his own blandness! he’s buddies with Kid Rock!–but probably the most enlightening part of the story is the breakdown of just how, exactly, the world came to be throughly sick of “You’re Beautiful” a year ago:
In Britain two singles preceded “You’re Beautiful.” But Atlantic Records, which issues Mr. Blunt’s music in America in partnership with Custard, released that song first. Though it stalled on the charts at the beginning, a flurry of commercial licensing made it inescapable on television. It was used in a Sprint ad campaign, in prime-time dramas like “Smallville” and “ER,” on daytime soaps, in promo spots for “Extreme Home Makeover” and even in the 2006 Winter Olympics. That exposure helped its popularity on radio, and after seven months it hit No. 1. To date the album has sold 2.6 million copies in the United States.
As Ms. Perry sees it, all that licensing backfired: “You’re Beautiful” became as hated as it was loved.
“When you have a really big song and you want to see some legs on a record,” she said, “you don’t start putting that song in commercials and on TV shows and keep oversaturating it. Because that’s when people get sick of it.”
And if anyone should know about oversaturation of a song, it’s Linda Perry. But guess what, everyone? We’re going to need some extra airsickness bags, because Atlantic Records’ high-rolling chairman Lyor Cohen knows that Blunt’s signature blend of stubble and soft-rock caterwauling will, at the very least, allow enough licensing money to roll in so he can keep helicoptering Rolling Stone-employed lapdogs between New York City and the Hamptons:
Mr. Cohen said fears of piracy kept him from sending out the songs on “All the Lost Souls” for licensing in advance of the album’s release. But now that the album is out, the saturation can begin.
“We will license these records, in movies, TV and commercials,” he said. “Trust me, you will hear these records.”
“Trust me, you will hear these records.” This amounts to a terrorist threat, doesn’t it? “If you insist on illegal downloading, we will be forced to bring out the Linda Perry until our demands our met.”
I noted this in a comment on the Linda Perry / “What’s Up” post the other day, and the Times article notes this as well, but for those readers who don’t care to click through, Linda Perry is responsible for James Blunt. Also for some career-redefining work by Pink, Xtina, and Gwen. But also, there’s that whole James Blunt thing.
Don’t quite know how I feel about that…
It means you should stop giving pop monsters a free pass. (Having said this I don’t know if you actually give any pop monsters a free pass.)
@dickdogfood: It’s totally a threat! And their most terrifying one yet. Screw lawsuits – being constantly enveloped in the nasal tones of James Blunt is worse than poverty.
Yet nowhere do they mention that the song itself — you know, the actual chord changes, the way the words are coupled with them, etc. — are inherently just really, really grating on the nerves.
Linda Perry’s big ugly problem: she evidently thinks that by inflating them into anthems, she’s honoring humanity’s most powerfully vague emotions (”wow, like, this awesome day makes me like shouting or something!”; “I think we were meant to be together, o nameless person”) rather than making them seem stupider than they are.
Linda Perry is incredibly depressing to me. I used to see 4 non blondes play when she was a little spitfire with a huge voice. She was the kind of performer who wore her politics on her sleeve, but was too shy to speak when she came into a store I worked at. She kinda kicked ass. And then..
That record they made and that song. Producing Pink is alright I guess, but the rest of her stable, and now James Blunt. Ugh, such loathsome music. Would I make such crap if the price was right? Okay, maybe I would.