Let’s say you’re sent to cover the Country Thunder festival for your local Wisconsin newspaper and Jessica Simpson is slated to perform. Would you expect your portrayal of the audience’s reaction to her performance to launch dozens of stories and blog posts around the globe?
Understandably, the idea of Jessica Simpson crossing over to country after a so-so career in pop might be a little irritating to some country fans, but did they really boo Simpson over the weekend, as so many media outlets have claimed? No one’s really sure, but Megan Schmidt from the Kenosha News certainly gave the world that impression.
The crowd welcomed Simpson with a mixture of boos and cheers Saturday night. She strutted onto the stage in Daisy Duke shorts, a white button-down shirt and cowboy boots as she sang a cover of Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots are Made for Walking.”…
It didn’t sit well with audience members that Simpson played after a more established country singer, Kellie Pickler.
Many audience members found her attempt to crossover into country irritating and that her vocals lacked a southern sound.
“I just don’t hear the country in her; I don’t hear the twang. She’s not good enough to be here,” said Adam Matos, 21, from Arlington Heights, Ill.
One man summed her performance up in a single word.
“It’s crap,” said Ryan Sia, 28, from East Troy. “She doesn’t belong here.”
That one article hit the wires running, and now the story is nearly everywhere, from the LA Times to MTV to E!. However, was she really booed? Was the crowd’s reaction largely negative, or was that Schmidt’s biased take? Even her piece acknowledged that a few concertgoers were fine with Simpson’s appearance.
But there were a few die-hard Simpson supporters in the crowd.
“I actually like her country songs better. She has a great voice, plus, she’s adorable,” said Mary Grace, 24, from Mundelein, Ill.
That part didn’t seem to make most of the other reports, for some reason.
Sites like CMT that have passed on the “booing” story have comment sections seem to have either Simpson’s street team or actual fans defending her, with most saying the audience was mostly cheering. If you can trust shaky YouTube clips, most of the crowd seems more preoccupied by boredom than anything else.
Now, whether Simpson succeeds or fails with her foray into country is largely irrelevant, but is this the nature of music news now? No one seems to have information about the show beyond Schmidt’s report, and the three anti-Simpson to one pro-Simpson quote ratio in her piece might not be the most accurate sampling of the audience as a whole. I enjoy the quick hit piece on someone who doesn’t seem “authentic” as anyone, but that one person at a paper in Kenosha can set off an avalanche of negative criticism seems more than a little unfair, to say the least.
Country Fans Turn Into Critics [Kenosha News Online]
I wonder what prompted that one person (or persons) to post thirty seconds of dull banter to Youtube, more than anything.
Some YouTube posters aren’t looking for anything logical. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some YouTube posters just want to watch the world burn.
The irony of anyone from Wisconsin decrying country music for lacking “twang” is about to make my head explode. Just because Brett Favre is from Mississippi doesn’t make you an expert on southern lingo.
well, kenosha IS known to be a hotbead of satanism. maybe this is all the work of some misguided disciple of lucifer?
“It didn’t sit well with audience members that Simpson played after a more established country singer, Kellie Pickler.”
lolz.
fuckin’ ree-tahhdz.
“‘I just don’t hear the country in her; I don’t hear the twang. She’s not good enough to be here,’ said Adam Matos, 21, from Arlington Heights, Ill.”
At the risk of duplicating Ted Striker’s post, the notion of someone from Arlington Heights, an Illinois suburb that, on its poorest day, is still solidly upper-middle-class, complaining about “twang” is off-the-charts absurd.
(this is said as a dude who grew up in Wilmette, the town that brought you Bill Murray and Fall Out Boy). Tricky legacy, that.
Damn, I don’t understand is why it matters that this girl wrote for a small newspaper, a live journal, or the New York Times- a voice is still a voice.
Seriously, how much country these days has authentic “twang” anyway? Shit, someone like Hank I would probably sound like he’s singing in a foreign language to these suburban soccer moms and the like.
My question is, if this is what they think of Simpson, what do these people think of Bon Jovi?
@AquaLung: Because thousands of gossip rags ran with one possibly poorly sourced account of events. You didn’t hear people say “Jessica Simpson gets mixed reaction,” which might have been more plausible. I mean, it would have been less odd if a LiveJournal post about the crowd had been mixed in. Instead the whole sourcing process was like a game of telephone that wasn’t double-checked at all, and the crowd reaction was referred to as if that was the prevailing opinion instead of just one reporter’s account of events.
“Possibly poorly sourced?” How do you know that?
What this reporter likely did was just got to the concert and walk up to random fans and ask their opinion. I don’t think it was ever implied this was some sort of consensus, just a smattering of random people at the event.
The gossip mags are slime, obviously, and this reporter has no control if they take her story and twist it into something that sells.
It sucks for Simpson, but I don’t think the reporter did anything wrong and I don’t think the fact that her outlet is a small newspaper means it’s any less credible. It’s almost certainly more credible than OK! or something.
The point is that the many newspapers that picked up this story and ran with it didn’t even source the ONE REVIEW they were quoting, they just accepted the booing as fact, and the game of telephone where this reviewer’s perceptions were calcified into fact was on. I’d call that “implied consensus.”
Okay, I got ya.
“a more established country singer, Kellie Pickler” - excuse, me… what planet is this?