The Curse Of Fame

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

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?

Comments

Re: Assorted thoughts

[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).

Re: Assorted thoughts

[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.