Music Killed the Television Star - Raging Against the Cowell Machine
All decent pop trivia buffs know that the first music video played on MTV was Buggles’ ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’. MTV’s tongue-in-cheek choice was both prophetic and self-referential, symbolising their pivotal future role in pop music’s shift towards the prominence of the visual image.
The upshot of this shift has become so deeply entrenched that nowadays we view pop music as, by its very nature, a fusion of sound and image. Indeed, many of the best current pop artists, from Lady GaGa to Girls Aloud (themselves influenced by pioneer sound/image fusers like Madonna and Michael Jackson) blend sound with image in both innovative and retrospective ways, both pushing pop into the future while simultaneously gesturing at its past.
Perfect sound/image blends, from Duran Duran’s Rio – a landmark of early music video, to more recent examples like Kylie Minogue’s artificial cityscape in Can’t Get You Out Of My Head, are as much part of pop’s iconography for their aesthetic appeal as for their sound.
And yet there’s a backlash when the blend goes awry or feels mismatched. If the apparent triumph of image over sound descends into unwelcome blandness, an anti-pop contingent calls for the return of an idealised conception of true musical talent. Seemingly there are times when we crave undiluted musicianship and genuine innovation, untainted by the superficialities of image.
This issue was glaringly apparent when X Factor winner and Christmas No. 1 favourite Joe McElderry was beaten to the crown by a Facebook campaign to install punk rappers Rage Against the Machine’s 1992 hit Killing in the Name at the top of the Christmas charts. The grainy montage video accompanying their song stood out in stark contrast with Christmas day Top Of The Pops’ glossy studio performances by pop acts like The Saturdays, Sugababes, and JLS.
Facebook has been an Internet revelation in recent years but here it was just a vehicle for protest. “F**k you, I won’t buy what you sell me”, went the campaign’s slogan (echoing Killing in the Name lyric “F**k you, I won’t do what you tell me”). The campaign had music lovers literally raging against the Simon Cowell machine – for many a paradigm case of blandness and superficiality.
There was something of a grassroots punk ethos to this. In his award winning punk chronicle England’s Dreaming, music writer John Savage explains that ‘anti-consumerism’ is one of punk’s forgotten aspects. He quotes Sex Pistols frontman John Lydon: “Don’t be told what you want / Don’t be told what you need.” And that’s exactly how the Christmas shoppers responded this year.
Cowell must wonder how this happened. After all, approximately 20m people watched the X Factor final. It trounced viewing figures for BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing. In fact, this raises an interesting question. Perhaps the country is divided? Half the country loves X Factor and the other half hates it and voted for RATM? But this seems unlikely. Many who hate X Factor probably don’t care who’s Christmas No. 1 either. Or perhaps there was a backlash against Cowell, as he himself claimed? Poor Joe, he argued, was a victim of hatred towards him.
But is he really hated? Or, even, does he really think he’s hated? Earlier in the series Cowell had apparently tested viewers’ patience when he seemed to contradict his own earnest claims to an honest talent search, controversially saving novelty act Jedward over more talented contestant Lucie Jones. It seemed he gave the audience unmediated access into his true self. Perhaps it was a risky move but, as Cowell no doubt anticipated, the viewers didn’t stop watching. They kept watching in droves.
For didn’t we all know this about Cowell anyway? This showmanship is the essence of the Cowell character. He excels at treading a fine line between pantomime villain and no nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is merchant. The audience likes him for that. Clearly Cowell cares about the talent … just so long as it repays the investment. There’s no genuine Cowell hatred. The idea of Cowell hatred is part of the mythology that keeps viewers hooked.
More convincing explanations for Joe’s relative failure can be found within the show itself. X Factor revels in contrived drama and the dream of fame. It builds and sustains a kind of illusion of success and stardom. You’re on primetime television every Saturday. Why not think you’re a star? With several previous Christmases of X Factor domination, Joe had every right to expect success. But the longer-term fate of previous winners suggests there is only one star: the show itself. Joe isn’t a popstar yet. He’s a TV star of this series of X Factor; and there’s a crucial difference.
Why have so many TV reality talent contest contestants sunk without trace? Shane Ward, Michelle McManus, Leon Jackson … all were going to be such huge stars. It’s because the new pop culture of quick and easy entertainment both quenches and causes apathy. The phenomenon shared by all reality TV shows is a fascination with contestants in the context of the show, but boredom shortly after elimination. Isn’t that always the case with Big Brother contestants? Interesting on the show, and briefly afterwards – so fans can quickly hear their post-eviction gossip, but interest soon subsides. Perhaps this loss of interest comes as much as a surprise to those viewers experiencing it as it does to those contestants who are the recipients.
Cynical-types have highlighted the Sony-ownership of both singles, or that buyers were still being told what they needed – by Facebook instead of Cowell. However, what really underlies this issue is a lack of genuine allegiance to reality show winners. Many fans were never that committed to their TV star winner anyway, so with playful rebellion, they heralded a (no doubt fleeting) return for undiluted musicianship and genuine innovation.
