A friend introduced me to Michael Bublé’s music tonight. Michael is a Canadian singer with three CDs of other people’s music. I am usually supportive of new Canadian artists, but I have to put my foot down on this one.
Far from adding to the pool of artistic diversity, Bublé merely reproduces the golden oldies, a la Harry Connick Jr., despite his web site’s insistence to the contrary. The waste of energy and resources in rehashing these songs again in an industry already clogged with facsimiles frustrates me. You like these tunes? Go buy Sinatra. It sounds exactly the same, it’s cheaper, and it’s the real thing.
There are literally hundreds of unique, talented, Canadian musicians out there who are struggling for financial support and publicity. Record companies are either too lazy to find and develop these musicians, or they fear the uncertainty of the return on investment. It’s far easier to recycle the proven business plan: repackage an existing genre with a different face and market the shit out of it. Gross.
Don’t get me wrong; Bublé seems nice, and has a nice voice, but it’s been done. If I went out and painted a perfect replica of the Mona Lisa, former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney wouldn’t ask me to display it at his daughter’s wedding (where he invited Bublé to perform). So why do we reward musical impersonation when we punish this tendency in the other arts? How many Celine Dions does one world need?
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