I watched Taylor Swift on "Ellen" singing and shouting "Out of the Woods" and the audience of her fans shrieking and jumping for joy. She was in her black underwear and hardly ever smiled. Ms. Swift has won every award possible and sells millions of recordings. That's quite an achievement for a six-foot female in her twenties!
Taylor Swift's fame and fortune is something I don't understand. But then I've been just as mystified by Justin Bieber's success too. Or Miley Cyrus. Her father, Billy Ray, only had one hit song in his life, "My Achy Breaky Heart," and would have ended up in the poorhouse if it weren't for his daughter's success. Especially the TV show they did together.
Then there are all these singers who appear on the TV no talent shows. They all sing songs hardly anyone has ever heard of and belt out the high notes to great applause. The judges award the "winners" with what seems to be an enlarged bus ticket to the next city. There, they will audition again and perhaps leap frog to another city for another audition. What a great way to keep a crop of young wannabees under your wing.
What I am leading up to is resurrecting more singing by the youngsters teaming up with the oldsters. A perfect example was the combination of Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett in duets. She is 28 and he is 88. They sang the hit songs of the 40's with 45 musicians backing them. The sound of melody with harmony and orchestra accompaniment was intoxicating. Their performances were superb.
Presently, there is an attractive lady singing on German Television every week, "Die Helene Fischer Show" Ms. Fischer has a beautiful voice, she looks fantastic and her cast of musicians, singers and dancers are flawless. There are 5,000 people in her audience, mostly in their 40's, 50's and 60's. They love Helene Fischer. And she often teams up with the incomparable Andrea Bochelli for duets.
I wish we could return to the era of Radio City Music Hall with four stage shows a day, five during December. There was a large orchestra in the pit, the Rockettes on stage, a vocal chorus and ballet dancers to fill the bill. A major motion picture film was shown between each hour stage show. We really do need this kind of live entertainment to satisfy our mental pleasure. But I'm not holding my breathe!
Wow I think about music all the time but some of this has barely crossed my mind. I would like to see more trans-generational collaboration and grand spectacle as well. There are a lot of logistic and budget barriers to these shows, especially for inexperienced young artists and cumbersome large groups. Whenever I read your words on music, I am tempted to share. This is not my favorite song, but it was one of the few examples of age gap pairing I could remember. Heidi Happy (born 1980) has recorded several songs with Boris Blank (1952) and Deiter Meier (1945) of Yello.
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