Must look good in leather - singing optional

There is an interesting trend that’s been going on for a few years in the American music business, which seems to be gaining lots of steam now as the recording industry struggles for its final gasps of air, hoping that somewhere out there is the act that will catapult the industry back into financial health.

The trend seems to be away from musical acts, those that play their instruments and sing their own songs, and toward a kind of weird David Bowie/Madonna kind of deal, where a strange, edgy personality takes the front of the stage and throws that personality in your face, backed up by a plethora of dancers and lights and elaborately staged theatrical routines. Leading this trend at the moment is Lady Gaga, who seems to epitomize the whole idea of music as a semi-nightmare landscape of twisted fashion and bizarre behavior, at least on stage.

This trend seems to be spilling over into the overall musical landscape as well. The other day I decided to go down the list of top iTunes singles, and what I found there was a little startling, to be honest. Out of the top ten songs on the list, there was not a single performer who used a live drummer on the tracks, and I doubt if there was a live bass player on most of them.

Topping the list is Katy Perry’s summer romp, California Gurls. I love Katy Perry. She’s just sassy enough to be adorable, and her music is catchy in the way that Cindy Lauper was back in the 1980s. But like Lauper, Katy uses the artfully programmed synthesizer in her studio productions, and while ‘Gurls’ attempts to summon up the feel-good bump of a classic mid-60s Motown single, if you listen you can tell that the drum part is programmed. This is a fun song, and I’m not denigrating it in the least, but somewhere in Los Angeles there is a drummer who couldn’t pay his rent last month because Perry’s producer knew how to program a drum machine.

Rap star B.O.B. has a great track called Airplanes (feat. Haley Williams of Paramore, and have you noticed how many tracks these days feature the ‘feat. so and so’?). I love B.O.B. He takes me back to the same vibe as old school NWA, fun and nasty and full of sharp rhymes. I love well-done hip-hop. But it does not usually involve live musicians, and this track is no exception.

Third on the list is OMG, by Usher (feat. Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas – see? There’s that ‘feat.’ thing again). Again, no surprise here that the track is dominated by synthesizers and drum machine beats. Brilliantly executed, of course, because Will.i.am is one of the great beat masters, and Usher, otherwise known as Justin Bieber’s producer, is no slouch in this arena either. But this track took two guys and a computer to record the music tracks. No live musicians were brought in, or if they were, pains were taken to disguise that fact.

‘Rock That Body’ from the Black Eyed Peas is a straight ahead Will.i.am production, including more drum machines, synth bass, electronically enhanced vocals, clever phrasing, sexy lyrics, the BEP formula that has made them one of the rare creatures in today’s music scene: a money machine that can’t seem to miss. But their show is just that – a show. The Peas can’t just stand on stage and perform – they need the lights, the smoke, the dancers, the costumes. It’s their brand. They’re great, but again, they don’t play.

The aforementioned Lady Gaga weighs in with ‘Alejandro.’ If there’s a live instrument anywhere near the studio on this track, I can’t detect it. By the way, this track really harks back to the sound pioneered by ABBA in ‘Fernando.’ Depending on your worldview, that’s either a good or a bad thing. This space will let the reader decide that one.

We’re running out of space, and can’t go through the whole top ten, but trust me, I have. And virtually all the tracks are virtual – in other words, one person with a computer, a keyboard, and a great creative sense of rhythm, structure, and sonic adventure put them all together. The singers just stepped up to the mike and sang the songs.

What you get with this approach is a sanitary, controlled environment where the tracks can be built one step at a time, and the producer (who is usually the programmer) can take the work home at night. It doesn’t cost nearly as much for one person to program the music as it does for a band to play it. What you lose, though, is the magic that a band playing together creates. Listen to Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Ray Charles – those artists were literally propelled by the power of the music behind them.

Hopefully, this is just a phase the industry is going through, and one, which will pass. The songs on the iTunes chart are all good songs. It’s just that they would all be better, in my opinion, if the music behind them were being played by, um, musicians.