Old Men Be Complain' Dept.: Cold, Calculating British Pop Producer Is Aghast At Cold, Calculating Young Musicians

Old Men Be Complain' Dept.

Cold, Calculating British Pop Producer Is Aghast At Cold, Calculating Young Musicians

Pete Waterman—best known as part of the terrible trio of Stock, Aitken, and Waterman, which brought you a string of mechanicistic late '80s pop trifles from Bananarama, Rick Astley, and others—is apparently taken aback at how common it is for young musicians to immediately hock their songs to advertisers. In a post on the Guardian's music blog, Waterman complains that young musicians are too money-hungry and too business-minded (and perhaps not so in need of a producer-svengali):

One of my favourite songs of recent years was Bad Day by Daniel Powter. Brilliant song. And then I turn the telly on, it's on a fucking deodorant ad! What are you doing?! And people go, "well, he got paid £200,000". Hang on a minute - you write a song and all you care about is the money

This may surprise people, but I'm totally against that. You've never heard a Stock Aitken and Waterman song on an advert. I've been offered millions of pounds for our songs to be on adverts, but absolutely not.

We wrote Never Gonna Give You Up for Rick Astley for a purpose. It wasn't for the Bank of Scotland. 15m people bought Never Gonna Give You Up because they believed Rick Astley singing it, and because they believed what we said, and because we were passionate about what we said - kids grew up with that song as an anthem. You sell it to the Bank Of Scotland for £1m - what's the point?

I have no problem with saying that pop music is about making money - that's what it does. But you have to entertain. To take the song one stage further and then have it all lined up so that it's a movie, it's a deodorant, it's a car line ad - that's shocking to me.

I actually agree with the teeny, tiny kernel of Waterman's basic point about selling music to the ad men—even if it's not cool to say so these days—that's lurking somewhere under his 10,000 pounds of wack rhetoric about wanting to make a million dollars "the honest way." But it still seems kind of ridiculous that he's defending his position about the santicity of art (or even entertainment) (or even making a million dollars) with a Rick friggin' Astley song.

Today's Music Business Is Selfish And Greedy [The Guardian]

10:00 AM on Fri Aug 10 2007
By jharv
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7 comments

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by xtianrut at 10:31 AM on 08/10/07
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If only he'd done some production work with Milli Vanilli. Then he'd have some serious ammo to back all this up with.
by Ned Raggett at 10:34 AM on 08/10/07
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Yeah but compared to the rest of Waterman's output said Rick Astley song is his "Sex Machine" or "Bring the Noise."

One of my favourite songs of recent years was Bad Day by Daniel Powter. Brilliant song.

Hmmm. Kill him.
by The Van Buren Boys at 10:52 AM on 08/10/07
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He lost me right after he said Daniel Powter was brilliant. He could find a cure cancer and I still wouldn't take anything he says seriously.
by Audif Jackson Winters III at 11:23 AM on 08/10/07
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"Stock, Aitken and Waterman, however, are kings of writing chorus
lyrics that go straight to the emotional heart of the 7" single buying
girls in this country. Their most successful records will kick into
the chorus with a line which encapsulates the entire emotional meaning
of the song. This will obviously be used as the title. As soon as
Rick Astley hit the first line of the chorus on his debut single it
was all over - the Number One position was guaranteed:

"I'm never going to give you up"

It says it all. It's what every girl in the land whatever her age
wants to hear her dream man tell her. Then to follow that line with:

"I'm never gonna let you down
I'm never going to fool around or upset you"

GENIUS.

As soon as they had those lyrics written they must have known they
could have taken out a block booking on the Number One slot. Then
within the next twelve months to have written the chorus:

"I should be so lucky
Luck, lucky, lucky
I should be so lucky in love"

Out of context, as meaningless to lads as our own Doctor Who chorus
was to girls but in those three lines there are for many more meaning
than in the complete collected works of Morrisey. Stock Aitken and
Waterman are able to spot a phrase, not actually a catchphrase, but a
line that the nation will know exactly what is been talked about and
then use it perfectly.

"Fun Love and Money"
"Showing Out"
"Got To Be Certain"
"Respectable"
"Toy Boy"
"Cross My Broken Heart"

"The Manual," by the KLF
by McCroskey at 12:18 PM on 08/10/07
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Smashmouth disagrees with this post
by Jon W at 12:24 PM on 08/10/07
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@Audif Jackson Winters III: link to text of the manual
by JedTheMime at 02:11 PM on 08/10/07
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Pete Waterman can afford to turn down millions of pounds because he already has millions of pounds. Bad Day will probably be the last we ever hear of Daniel Powter (at least let's hope), so he needs to cash in while he can.

Find a good investment broker, Daniel, and ride this gravy train as far as it'll take you.