The Leader

When did the word "success," as it relates to music and movies, evolve from defining artistic merit to defining sales numbers?

The entertainment industry has increasingly become more of a business venture than a creative market ever since the '80s. Mainstream actors are now more commonly known as celebrities and mainstream music artists have become products. This makes sense from an industry standpoint, because the people running the record labels and movie studios are all businessmen who don't have an artistic atom in their beings. Profit is the only word they understand, so I can accept it when they apply the sales numbers connotation of the word success.

What pisses me off is that now the average fan uses this definition of the term. Regardless of quality, you call an album a flop if it doesn't sell well. Similarly, you call some blockbusters successful because they tear up the box office even if they are nothing but pieces of cinematic shit.

The other day I overheard two people making fun of Ashlee Simpson and one girl said to the other, "She's really successful though. You have to give her that."

I don't care if her first album debuted at number one on the charts and it went multi-platinum, Ashlee Simpson is not a freakin' success!

As an artist, it is her job to create quality music, and she most certainly did not succeed at doing that. Whoever the hell's job it is to market that girl is the successful one. Her only talent is having a stupid older sister for God's sake. I'd call the guy in charge of marketing her a genius if selling hacks to the American public didn't happen so frequently now. For evidence of this, one needs look no further than the Oval Office.

I'm thinking this change of philosophy regarding the word success might have something to do with the materialistic nature of hip-hop culture, but there has to be more to it than just that. Although blaming the degradation of the music industry on the topics of most rap songs on the radio-bitches, bling or both-isn't fair. I'm willing to blame the government too, namely Ronald Reagan, but that rant is better left for a letter of its own.

So the next time you use the word success in relation to music or movies, remember that you're talking about art, not Wall Street.

Here's hoping you take a clue,

Max Neibaur

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