More White Guys with Guitars, or, How We Jinxed Siobhan Magnus

I was reading a popular “American Idol” blog this evening after Lee DeWyze was “crowned” season 10’s winner.  It’s the third year in a row that a safe, somewhat bland white male vocalist/guitar player beat a talented, (and vocally different) runner-up.  Some comments on the blog were from folks who love to listen to “white guy” music, but another commenter expressed her frustration with the result because to her, it proved that society can only relate to a ˇ§middle-class white straight socially conservative male”.  In other words, people voted for Lee not necessarily because they felt he was the best contestant on the show, but they voted for him because he seems familiar, like the guy next door, and he’s not going to doing anything scary or suddenly kiss his male bass player during a live TV performance.  I think that Season 1 got a pass and was about pure talent, and I think Carrie Underwood won on undisputable talent, too, but otherwise voters in any given season tuned out the singing and rewarded the contestant who seemed the epitome of middle America, or who had the best “story arc”.  An argument could be made that the female voting majority was often selecting who would make the best husband or boyfriend, or in the absence of a viable candidate, selecting who they’d want for a bff.  Crystal Bowersox was obviously talented, and she definitely had a great voice, but we all know that once the semi-final rounds are completed, it’s not much more than a congeniality contest.  The guy who smiled shyly and had pretty eyes defeated the sassy single Mom who needed dental work, and I hope no one was surprised.  People don’t like change, and if Crystal had won, she might have eventually done something scary and unpredictable, acting like a wacky “feminist” or something, maybe even refusing to shave her legs.  With Lee, his pants might get a big baggier, his jacket might be brown one day and beige the next, and if he wants to go crazy, maybe he’ll shave off the facial hair.  I don’t think we’ll ever have to wonder if Lee DeWyze is wearing guyliner, and American thinks that’s just fine.

I thought of writing this blog entry because I was remembering the years I spent working in radio as a Program/Music Director, and thinking that the industry now isn’t much different than it was almost 30 years ago.  At my first job (in 1983), I was only allowed to play one female vocalist per hour because the radio station owner said, “No one wants to hear women on the radio”.  Granted, the owner was an old man who was probably born in 1910, but nevertheless, he didn’t want female vocalists *or* female announcers on the air, so I “spun the discs” while a male announcer provided scintillating commentary and segues into commercial breaks.  I finally got my “big break” reading news when my boss went on a drinking binge and slept past his 4am alarm clock buzzer, so it was either listen to me or listen to dead air, and surprisingly, they chose me *and* they kept me.  Without the help of Cap’n Morgan, I may never have realized the joys of reading traffic reports and talking about the fall of the Iron Curtain, so “Thanks, Cap’n!”  In any case, I may have been tearing up the airwaves from 1983 through 1995, but I wasn’t being a trailblazer for anyone.  The “boy’s school” mentality was still very prevalent in the industry well into the late 1990s, even in major US markets where I’d started to program music.  A General Manager in a Top 10 US market complained that as Music Director, I added too many female vocalists to the rotation.  I was never allowed to play female singers back-to-back in 1997.  Think of the great female singers from the ‘90s like Gwen Stefani/No Doubt, Janet Jackson, Melissa Etheridge, Tina Turner, Mariah Carey, Annie Lennox/Eurythmics, Madonna, Natalie Merchant/10,000 Maniacs, etc…. these were the artists I was getting grief over.  When Sarah McLachlan created Lilith Fair she was speaking out against the bias I’d been witnessing my entire career:  no matter how popular, most female artists weren’t given the respect that male artists got from the radio industry, the recording industry, the live show industry, etc.  You could be a homely dude and get signed on the strength of your vocals or songwriting, but god forbid a heavyset woman with a great voice try to break into the industry (and not be named Aretha).  Simon Cowell parroted that perspective on AI… he commented on how the male auditioners sounded and how the female auditioners looked.  If you were a pretty girl with a nice body you were perhaps more likely to get through the Idol audition process and make it onto the show, but even that rewarded the boys in the end because the male competitors were represented by Clay Aiken while the females were stuck with untalented (at least, behind a microphone) people like Antonia Barba.

I understand we all have preferences for things, and it’s not “wrong” if you prefer to listen to male vocalists, or if your iPod contains 75% male artists.  However, do you think you were born with this preference, or that you simply grew to accept the sounds you were most-exposed to as a kid?  I grew up buying LPs by Barry Manilow and John Denver (yes, I’m that old), but once I *discovered* artists like Kate Bush, ABBA, even the Mamas and the Papas, I realized those were the sounds that moved me most.  I had to hunt for the music, though… I had to listen to alternative college stations if I wanted to make new discoveries, or take a chance buying a new album or CD just on the basis of the artist’s (female) name.  I have a huge collection of CDs that I purchased just because the artist was an all-female group and I figured there was a chance I’d hear something I liked.  I rarely ever found a new female artist that I loved by listening to mainstream radio.

Before the American Idol results were announced today, I posted a comment on another blog and said that I didn’t think a woman would ever again win American Idol (at least, not without a rule change that allows more producer control over choosing the winner).  I think AI is representative of the swirling vortex the music industry in caught in: the more “cute guy with guitar singing sincere love song” music we’re exposed to, the more we forget that other types of music exist, and the more our brain forgets to enjoy other types of music.  AI’s probably already lost most the audience that would vote for something other than a male vocalist, and while some fans might think that’s just fine, it’s sad for people whose ears yearn for something else.

Speaking of ears that yearn for something different, my ears are yearning for more Siobhan Magnus.  I’ll come back tomorrow and write about how we got to know Siobhan and how a little piece of me died the day she got voted of AI.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 05/27 at 12:14 AM

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