#sembello

So I was listening to 'Maniac' by Michael Sembello and a friend of mine started the usual 'one hit wonder' comments, and it led me to thinking, why do we chastise and mock the one hit wonder?

Sure there's novelty records and the like, their to cash in on the fad du jour (Mr Blobby anyone?), but that aside in no other walk of life do we so readily criticise those who have achieved success and mass popularity just the once....won just the one gold medal....failure, didn't follow up that nobel prize huh....not interested....would never happen but..oh you ONLY had the ONE hit record, hey there's a reason to mock, and then you delve a little deeper sure lets mock Michael Sembello, it's not like he achieved anything else, not like he was a core musician on Stevie Wonders' seminal 'Songs In The Key Of Life' or wrote for Diana Ross, Tina Turner, Michael Jackson to name but three, or it's not like he may have scored a blockbuster movie like say Gremlins or Independence Day, no lets just tag him as one hit wonder...and then you do wonder how many of these other 'musical failures' have such an illustrious back story...and why do we so readily wait to knock them down......thoughts on the back of a postcard.....

The same evening discussion turned to talent, and I know appreciation of talent is subjective, but irrespective of taste and preference, there surely has to be a general appreciation of talent, and during this I always tend to refer back to three things

1. Taylor Swift

Like her or not she consistently shifts units, and I have a great appreciation for her catalogue, not necessarily due to her (though I believe she deserves much more credit than she gets), but she (and her record company) have the savvy and the acumen to build an amazingly talented team around her, co-writers, musicians, engineers and producers (more on producers shortly)

2. Britney Spears' Toxic

For me the perfect pop song, well written, well balanced, catchy, well mixed and produced, and having seen classical and bluegrass versions of it, it's clever writing transcends genres and always stands up as a piece of music (hell I've even been known to perform an acoustic version of it myself, falsetto vocals an all!)

3. 80's rock musicians

This is generally my clincher, the general comments when you get to talking about such musicians, your Bon Jovi, Van Halen etc etc....the first words people tend to utter are Cheese, Pompous, Too Much.....but the bottom line is these kids can play....better guitarist in terms of technique than Eddie Van Halen, hard to find, better collective of stadium pop rock than Bon Jovi...come on you were pogoing to Living On A Prayer last weekend weren't you...Of course such exuberance is frowned upon these days as young artists search for that ever elusive 'credibility'

So I always (referring back to point one) take great production, actually being able to hear all the elements of the song, all the instruments, the interplay the hooks, and great players, those who know when to fly, when to stop, how their craft compliments the piece to be the essence of talent when it comes to music. The honesty of being the best you can be, gives you more credibility than a lot of the 'cool' bands of the day could hold a torch to.

Now we listen to records deliberately made to sound 'bad' to sound authentic, employing poor recording methods in the search of 'loudness', and poor players who have 'passion' and 'energy'

Give me pop, give me rock, give me classical, but give me craft, give me 'talent', give me honesty, and I'll give you a good record..

Michael Sembello - She's a maniac