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katstevens.livejournal.com posting in

I read a (rather poorly-written) comment piece about Amy Winehouse's Mercury Awards appearance yesterday. Apparently her performance was 'electric' and it was generally agreed that somehow over the last year, Amy had transformed from a talented soul singer from Camden into an International Megastar Icon!!1!1.

"Every generation needs its Kurt Cobain!" wailed the writer, gnashing his teeth and already writing the poor lass off for lost.

Well, does it? Do we need self-destructive pop icons like Cobain/Hendrix/Sid Vicious? If Amy is the latest victim of rock'n'roll, then who will be next?

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From:

mcarratala.livejournal.com

Actually, Hollywood has had a few casualties in recent years: Ted Demme, Chris Penn, Chris Farley – the clear lesson there being that cocaine + obesity really is unsustainable.

Rock star mortality report (http://music.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2161966,00.html) from earlier this week.

I've never had any time for the self-destructive icon business, or what Parsons and Burchill call "the established bourgeois immorality of rock'n'roll" in The Boy Looked At Johnny. It's only interesting at the level of sick comedy when the person in question lives through it: Keith (Richards or Richard, incidentally: he's been both) in the 70s, or George Jones' (quite astonishing) autobiography.

From:

katstevens.livejournal.com

It might just be that I haven't been paying as much attention to Hollywood in the last couple of years, but I haven't heard of any of those chaps, let alone knew that they died. Perhaps there are just as many actors as musicians, it's just the musicians tend to be younger/famouser/more widely covered in the press?

That's a point - would Amy be getting all this 'OMG She Might DIE!!' attention if she was 45?

From:

alexmacpherson.livejournal.com

I dunno, Courtney did when she had her own Unpleasantness the other year...not to the extent maybe but I don't think she actually had any product out.

I think the current generation of off-the-rails starlets might be the first to have their antics documented in such up-to-the-minute detail? as in, as soon as Britney shaves her head the world knows about it, those photos of Amy in blood-soaked ballet pumps were broadcast as soon as it happened...I think this actually must work in DE-glamorising it, b/c a lot of what we see are the rather nasty side effects of going off the rails.

I have a feeling that this might help the, er, Amy myth, not because people identify with and want to be like her - prob quite the opposite - but because it all reinforces and confirms her emotional authenticity; she sings about being troubled, and L@@K there are her troubles in full technicolour display on the front cover of the Sun...

From:

mcarratala.livejournal.com

There is a very particular young-women-in-peril aspect to the Brit-LiLo-Nicole-Amy coverage. There's a Doherty=twat, Amy=victim (somehow) equation.

Plus, indeed, the FOR REAL thing, which fits Winehouse's work. I've always felt, for instance, that the reason that the cult of Kurt boomed after death and River Phoenix's didn't was the differing matching of their death to public persona while alive. (Equally, poor Owen Wilson's problems are thought to be a marketing disaster within the movie industry, because they clash with his affable stoner stock character).

Kat, as you haven't heard of them, the three oversized hedonists:
Ted Demme: director of lots of hip-hop videos, plus some movies, most notably Johnny Depp starring coke-athon Blow and Beautiful Girls (top thoughtful male-bonding fave/dodgy underage Natalie Portman vehicle, depending on POV).

Chris Penn: Sean's fat brother. In Reservoir Dogs and Footloose (the beefy chum who learns to dance).

Chris Farley: died back in the 1990s, briefly huge career-wise, always huge sizewise, comedy actor operating in the dumber-than-Adam Sandler mode.

Only Farley was a big star, and only just around the time of his death, but then as that report pointed out, not so many pop stars die these days.

From:

katstevens.livejournal.com

Ah - I vaguely recall the Chris Penn thing now I have some context. (Thanks!)

From:

alexmacpherson.livejournal.com

Yeah there's a definite fallen-from-grace aspect to a lot of those: Amy and LiLo are perceived very definitely to be wasting their talent, Britney to be wasting...something. Paris and Nicole aren't perceived to have had talent in the first place but then, despite the jail, neither of them seem to be as wrecked and out of control as the first three.

From:

katstevens.livejournal.com

Good point! BLAME THE INTERNET :) Yeah, I guess there's pressure/suffocation side of Heat/Hello etc that hounds the stars to Ruin in the first place & its much harder to hide yr problems if yr in the public eye. And then by showing their flaws to the young lasses who would otherwise be idolising them. I am v wary of falling into a big 'thinspiration' tangent here but that really is a different argument (however I must mention a big O RLY wrt the explosion of media focus on Amy coinciding with her losing all that weight).

From:

alexmacpherson.livejournal.com

I don't know if the 24/7 attention drives them to ruin so much as...well. I am pretty sure that other pop stars have head periods of similar Unpleasantness, let us say - remember the year or so everyone thought Xtina had gone off the rails? based on little more than her looking a bit skanky in public? - and I think it's pretty well-known that starlets of yesteryear, Marilyn Monroe and Lana Turner and so on, weren't exactly well-behaved women; and yeah, rumours would surface and people might realise that something was wrong in a general sense, but...even 5-7 years ago, we wouldn't have seen the ACTUAL FOOTAGE of the car crash or the blood-stained pumps, I don't think.

From:

piratemoggy.livejournal.com

Are these nasty side effects not becoming glamourised, even turned into virtues though? Like 'oh man you've really been there when you've overdosed like that' etc. due to the requirement for the angst of music to be backed by some kind of "genuine pain" (this is Cobain's legacy, blech, I hate him) eg: oh no I am addicted to drugs. Therefore, yer common or garden teenager wants that ugliness; it's not enough any more to do a bit of coke maybe and then have a giggle and come home, you've got to get wrecked or you're not doing it right.

You can see it in the idolisation of Nicole Richie circa. her anorexic low because that woman was not beautiful then, was definitely not glamourous but people wanted to achieve it.

From:

mcarratala.livejournal.com

Also, witness the reaction when Keane-chap went into the Priory: "what's he doing there? His music is so dull..." – totally buying in to the whole lifestyle=music thing. Bah.