Grammar-challenged crybaby Internet gossip Perez Hilton has revealed the name of the first artist signed to his attempt to set some of Warner Music Group’s money on fire WMG-financed vanity label: He’s a French singer with the improbably appropriate name of Sliimy. (Oh, sure, thanks to his Frenchyness it’s pronounced Slee-mee, but come on.) Perez claims that Sliimy’s music is “good, adult, quirky pop,” which translates to “sounding like a cross between Mika and one of those super-wordy cutesy singers who get one song on Grey’s Anatomy before fading into I Love The ’00s-worthy obscurity” to these ears. A few songs after the jump.
Oh yeah, I can definitely see a gender-ambiguous male covering Britney Spears going over like gangbusters in America. Can’t you? Perez tried to stoke interest in Sliimy by having “pals” like Lady GaGa and Katy Perry cryptically Tweet about him, a little bit of cross-label viral marketing that I’m sure thrilled the people at Universal and EMI. It worked on the Twitter charts, but something tells me that said list’s particular inability to be, y’know, monetized is going to cause a few problems down the road.
(NB: Sliimy has only been mentioned on Popjustice a few times! That’s progress, I suppose. Or maybe just a deliberate attempt to stay out of trouble.)
(Also: Sliimy is already signed to Warner in France, as a few EW commenters astutely pointed out on the post announcing the signing. So really this isn’t a “Perez discovery” as much as it is an “attempt to help a European pop star break the notoriously tough for Euro acts U.S. market.” Yeah, good luck with that!)
Perez Hilton reveals his label’s first artist: An EW Exclusive [EW Music Mix]
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Perez Hilton Is So Sliimy
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The chorus to “Wake Up” might work in a breakfast cereal/body wash commercial, but otherwise, I can’t imagine that label as anything more a tax writeoff for WMG (unless there’s a huge unfulfilled demand for first-album-Lily-Allen castoff tracks sung in an incomprehensibly thick accent - and French is my first language).
Ugh. I am confused and disturbed by all this fake indie-edgy-euro in mainstream music and film these days. It’s precisely the culture of my adolescence and young adulthood, but totally co-opted and marketed and therefore made rather suspect and horrid for me. No thanks, will stick with my newish, pure pop phase. It produces fewer ethical issues for me, as it feels more honest about its roots and what it’s all about. Guess I better go study up on that Backstreet Boys stuff you just posted then! It all makes me feel much more punk rock.