The other day I was driving home from work and on the radio comes a song done by the unlikely duo of R&B crooner Nelly along with Country superstar Tim McGraw. And I’m listening to this song trying to make some sense of what I’m hearing. It’s not really R&B and it’s certainly not Country. It’s something that’s really none of the above.

So I start to think what is it about the music business that promotes these crossover mish-mash set ups? And why are we striving to create this homogenous brand of music in the first place? If memory serves Frank Sinatra did a similar album of unlikely duets some years back, you know Frank and U2 and others. Now there’s a great pairing!! The problem I have is that the music ultimately created in these pairings is rarely original or imaginative. You know it’s not pop, or rock, or country, or Rap, or soul or R&B… it’s… it’s… it’s simply a product. It’s a commodity to sell.

Remember Mary Shelley’s story about Frankenstein, when the good Doctor Frankenstein takes bit’s and pieces of others, stitches them all together and runs fifty thousand volts into the thing in a valiant effort to give it life. It’s like the record companies are trying to create “new” life. But like the good doctor these senseless pairings rarely create life, they simply create a monster.

Well, and this is where my “conspiracy” theory comes into play. I wonder if that’s not the whispered master plan of the music industry. If you read the sordid history of the label industry in Fred Dannen’s Hit Men, you quickly come to realize it has nothing to do with the music, it’s all about the bottom line and selling a product, and anything that makes it easier to market and sell their “stuff” that’s what they’re going to do. The other day I heard that the contract the winner of American Idol signs contains a clause that allows the production company to go so far as to plant stories (true or otherwise) to stimulate media coverage of their “pet” artist in yet another effort to sell records. Today to much of the “music” industry isn’t about music it’s about making money.

Now don’t get me wrong I’m not against making money. You do a days work, you should get paid. You write a song you should get paid. But I ask myself at what expense? At what point do we start compromising our souls for the almighty dollar? You know the old Faustian deal with the Devil.

So now back to the point of this diatribe. Why try and encourage these unlikely pairings like Nelly and McGraw? Well I believe the idea of concocting these duos to create a singular homogenous product is nothing more than another means for the record business to sell product. After all how much easier is it from a merchandising, marketing and production standpoint to simply have to deal with ONE chart…no longer multiple charts…country, rock, pop…let’s just have one chart. The record companies already provide radio stations with format-tied versions of songs. Every day we’ll receive a CD that has the country mix, the pop mix and so on. But it sure would be easier if the record execs could just deal with one chart. I doubt that will ever happen but they keep trying.

And in the end who is this really benefiting? Why the music industry that’s who. They really don’t care about you and me. Hey they’d just as soon sue us rather give us what we really want to purchase and listen to. They make a big show about all the money they have to invest in artists, but all that investment is recouped from the artists royalties so don’t go crying the blues. They take huge sums, hundreds or thousands of dollars to create music videos, which are nothing more than long commercials for the song and then whine and complain about the sorry state of their financial house. Sorry you’ll get no sympathy from me.

So anyway, what’s to be done about this? Well the last thing we need is for Michael Moore to produce another of his infamous “mockumentary’s” but I keep feeling that we should do something. We should be sending a message to someone. Perhaps the only message they’ll really hear is one that hurts their pocketbook. In that case, I believe the people who download music are probably having the biggest impact. For my part I’ll strive to support the artists as much as possible by purchasing my music either direct from the artist or from the smaller independent prog mail order dealers. In that respect we can all do our part in sending a message to the big, fat record companies that says enough is enough.

At least that’s what I think.

About the Author:
Jerry Lucky is the author of the book The Progressive Rock Files, now entering its 5th edition. Please feel free to send feedback to Jerry at www.jerrylucky.com.