The Tris McCall Report

Critics Poll 2005 -- The Singles

Idolatry thrives in '05.

I've never seen the program, so perhaps I'm talking out of turn here, and you can just toss everything I'm about to say straight into the crapper. But my understanding is that American Idol operates on the same logic as the rest of the reality programs: young hopefuls get onstage and do their thing, older "experts" make sadistic evil-gatekeeper comments about the performers, and viewers who care call a toll-free number to vote for which of the contestants get to come back the following week for further torture-tests. Cynics and believers in the power and devious intelligence of the culture industry will probably want to argue that the "experts" determine how America (or the segment of America that can stomach this stuff) votes by authorizing their opinions. Well, sure. But it's come to my attention that one of the judges on this program is Paula Abdul. I like Paula Abdul as much as anybody; I own all her cassingles. Taking career advice from Paula Abdul, though, is like accepting boating lessons from the captain of the Titanic. America (even the segment of America that enjoys stomaching this stuff) surely knows that.

Besides, it is my belief that Americans take pop star selection very seriously; much more seriously than, say, the selection of U.S. Senators or a spouse, and much too seriously to be swayed overmuch by a panel of sadistic judges. The music we listen to and the idols we respond to reflect our values. Moreover, everybody secretly believes that he is a profoundly infallible judge of talent who has been force-fed inferior product by a record industry loaded with nepotism, corruption, and secret backroom dealing. We don't want direct democratic selection of pop stars, but not because we suspect we couldn't do it ourselves -- we don't want it because we believe that our immediate neighbors are the only people more unqualified to select idols than the members of the current starmaker machinery.

I don't suppose too many people reading this bothered to call that toll-free number. But I suspect a substantial percentage of you TV addicts out there actually did watch American Idol, and I am sure you had your own violently-held opinion about who ought to have won. If you didn't vote for Kelly Clarkson then, Critics Poll 2005 gave you another opportunity to do so -- and boy, did you ever. Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone" took our singles poll by more than 50 points, trouncing "Golddigger" and the rest of the field. Hipsters who declined to mention Clarkson on their singles list instead found creative ways to dish out backhanded praise, casting her as Thing You Feel Cheapest About Liking or Thing That Turned Out To Be A Hell Of A Lot Better Than You Originally Thought It Was. She even got her votes for Best Singer. In 2005, as it turned out, we were all idolators.

Clarkson is the only singer of her sort who has ever done well in this category. Every year, the culture industry offers us a deck filled with flashy face cards like this; we shuffle through it and hand it back to the dealer without selecting a trump. This year was different. A legit teen-queen singer melted the hearts of hipsters who otherwise would have spent their votes on Calla and the Doves, and hip-hop fans who were otherwise deciding between Atmosphere and The Game. I do not believe we did so because we were brainwashed by Paula Abdul or by the Evil British Guy. In this case, Occam's Razor really does apply: Kelly Clarkson, the people's choice, turned out to be a hell of a lot better suited for pop stardom than her industry-selected peers.

Go back to the top of this page and take a good look at that photograph. What do you see? A young woman who, despite the best efforts of the network cosmetologists, still looks like she just walked out of the Express superstore at the Garden State Plaza. She's slightly cross-eyed, her mouth is a little crooked, and her nose looks like it was swiped from Mr. Potato Head when he wasn't looking. Hey, she's still cute as hell; I'm not talking now as a red-blooded American boy with an appreciation for pop singers, but as a hypothetical industry mogul rummaging around for the next big thing. Clarkson is confident, sure; she's got a big voice and she knows how to use it. That's appealing. But that confidence is not, I would suggest, enough to make a major label executive take a flier on her. The culture industry would never have made an idol out of Kelly Clarkson. She's not a supermodel, or even an average everyday sane psycho supergoddess -- she's just an ordinary girl who happens to be one hell of a singer.

If you look back at the history of any genre or, for that matter, any local musical subculture, you will find that the earliest stars -- the first, popularly selected stars -- don't look like stars at all. Go scrounge up an old photograph of KRS-ONE or Ricky Walters, and juxtapose those with the images of commercially successful rappers on Total Request Live. If the young Kris Parker turned up at the offices of RCA Records today, it doesn't matter how well he spit over beats, that nose of his would get him laughed out of the building. People believe that there was a time when Van The Man didn't look like that; some distant Belfast evening when that legendary voice was complemented by a movie-star physique. It never happened. He always appeared to be one step away from the fat farm, and one step from the sanitarium.

Here's another picture of Kelly Clarkson. Put yourself in the shoes of a typical major label executive, and tell me if this is your next idol:

Not so much, huh? You'd be on to the next Jennifer Lopez or Mandy Moore faster than your CEO can say "organizational restructuring". And you'd be wrong; wrong as all of the other starmakers, and wronger than the great American consensus.

See, the minute big money starts flowing in and corporate executives from the coasts begin selecting stars, the game ends. Executives are trained in marketing, and marketing dictates the selection of appearances that conform to the standards of traditional beauty. These people are from Planet Manhattan and Planet Hollywood; they don't know any better. They live in a culture that values sex appeal and good looks over everything else, and they assume that the rest of the world shares their prejudices. I happen to think sex appeal is very important; I'm shallow like that. But as it turns out, most people don't want to be entertained by a supermodel. Most people want to be entertained by somebody talented. And talented people are never traditionally good-looking.

Think, offhand, of the ten most talented people you know. Not a bunch of Vogue cover girls, are they? Many of them will be striking-looking, and manybe even most have some twisted kind of sex appeal. But if you sent their headshots to William Morris Agency, you're not getting any callbacks. This isn't a genetic argument; I leave that stuff to the sociobiologists. It's just a simple observation: if you are gorgeous, you do not teach yourself to sing like Kelly Clarkson. You don't have to -- you just don't need to push yourself like that. You're going to be able to communicate in the way you want to, because people are going to be predisposed towardwhat you have to say. You don't need to get up onstage and bellow into a microphone to make yourself clear, and to get the attention of the boy in the corner. You've got his attention already.

If you're searching for talent -- a real talent -- just about the last place you'd want to look is among the traditionally beautiful. But as long as marketing executives continue to select pop stars, we're going to keep repeating this mistake. Kelly Clarkson was lucky: in her case, there was a direct election, and there was no point denying that she could move the crowd on a national level. She's proven she can sing R&B like "Miss Independent", radio emo-pop like "Behind These Hazel Eyes", and even bathetic schlock like "A Moment Like This". America knew what it was doing. Your grandmother in Peoria turned out to be a better A&R man than Clive Davis.

Since she won American Idol, there have been about forty subsequent competitions and spinoffs, none of which have produced an artist of Clarkson's caliber (though I hold out hope for Fantasia, another funny-looking R&B singer who never would have been given the time of day by a major label exec). That hardly matters to me. Programs that become national phenomena achieve their own internal logic and conventions, and the process breaks the very minute the producers try to recapture the magic of the original. I don't need to watch the damn thing to know that; I do own a television. American Idol has done its work: it's given us a pop star who is actually worthy of the mantle. She's not a beauty queen, and she's not a sex doll, or the subject of adolescent masturbatory fantasies. She's a vocalist. And as it turned out, that's all we were asking for. I wrote it in this year's Pop Music Abstract, and I'm repeating it here for emphasis: this is what modern rock radio would sound like if any of those no-talent motherfuckers could sing.

Your picks:

1. Kelly Clarkson – “Since U Been Gone” (193)
2. Kanye West – “Golddigger” (142)
3. Amerie – “1 Thing” (132)
4. The Game & 50 Cent – “Hate It Or Love It” (122)
5. R. Kelly – “Trapped In The Closet” (93)
6. LCD Soundsystem – “Daft Punk Is Playing At My House” (90)
7. The New Pornographers – “Use It” (90)
8. The Doves – “Black And White Town” (88)
9. The Decemberists – “Sixteen Military Wives” (71)
10. Nine Inch Nails – “Only” (66)
11. Tori Amos – “Sleeps With Butterflies” (65)
12. Gwen Stefani – “Hollaback Girl” (64)
13. The White Stripes – “Blue Orchid” (61)
14. Death Cab For Cutie – “Soul Meets Body” (58)
15. Three 6 Mafia – “Stay Fly” (58)
16. Kaiser Chiefs – “I Predict A Riot” (56)
17. The White Stripes – “My Doorbell” (55)
18. Kanye West – “Heard ‘Em Say” (55)
19. Kelly Clarkson – “Behind These Hazel Eyes” (54)
20. The Mars Volta – “The Widow” (54)
21. Architecture In Helsinki – “Do The Whirlwind” (54)
22. Paul Wall, Bun B, & Mike Jones – “They Don’t Know” (53)
23. The Killers – “Mr. Brightside” (51)
24. Roisin Murphy – “If We’re In Love” (51)
25. My Morning Jacket – “Off The Record” (51)
26. Beck – “Girl” (48)
27. Antony & The Johnsons – “Hope There’s Someone” (46)
28. Bloc Party – “Banquet” (46)
29. Of Montreal – “And So Begins Our Alabee” (45)
30. Bruce Springsteen – “Devils & Dust” (43)

Look back at last year's singles list:

Yesterday I did the albums lists:

Tomorrow, I round up the miscellany:

On Thursday, I post my grand incredible top everything lists:

On Friday, we take a fascinating journey through the numbers:

 

Gilding the lily:

 

Since you e-mailed me, I can breathe for the first time.