Best intentions
In the name of love: Bono performs at Live 8 in London, England. Photo M.J. Kim/Getty Images.
If 2004 was the year pop got political, in ’05, pop stars showed their giving spirit. The hastily assembled Live 8 concerts were proof of Bob Geldof’s indomitable will and the music industry’s ability to mobilize for a good cause. Ten concerts, an estimated three billion viewers — Live 8 was a success in terms of raising awareness of African poverty and putting the issue on the table at the subsequent G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland. Whether all the singing and finger-wagging will make a significant difference in the lives of destitute Africans now lies with the politicians.
Bono vista
Was 2005 good to Bono? Hmmm, let’s
see... His band, U2, tallies the year’s
top-grossing stadium tour ($260 million US). The
rocker-slash-über-activist earns partial credit
for his work in organizing Live 8, shares
Time’s Persons of the Year award (with Bill
Gates and his wife, Melinda), scores
Q magazine’s Man of the Year and
is the subject of a fulsome cover story in the
New York Times Magazine. Yes, he’s ubiquitous;
yes, those sunglasses look ridiculous. But I
dare you to name another private citizen who
has donated as much of his energy to eliminating
human suffering.
Agent provocateur: rapper Kanye West. Photo Brad Barket/Getty Images.
Kanye flips the script
The Hurricane Katrina relief effort
was likely the second-biggest cause of musical
solidarity in 2005. But amid the feelings
of sadness and good will, rapper Kanye West
could not hide his anger at the disparities
between blacks and whites in New Orleans.
During the NBC telethon on Sept. 2, Kanye
deviated from the scripted platitudes to
express his outrage with
the coverage of the disaster and
the government’s lackadaisical response.
“I hate the way they portray us in the media.
You see a black family, it says, ‘They’re
looting.’ You see a white family, it says,
‘They’re looking for food.’” Unprepared
for this harangue, NBC was unable to censor
Kanye’s crowning blow: “George Bush doesn’t
care about black people!”
Shopping has dropped
In what is becoming an annual
ritual, the music industry reported
another plunge in album sales; according
to Nielsen SoundScan, sales were down
more than seven
per cent from 2004. Industry
watchers can’t agree on the
reason. Is it downloading (legal
or otherwise), the rise of CD
burning or mounting competition
from DVDs and videogames for
consumer dollars? Or is it that
there haven’t been as many massive
releases? My prediction: the
industry will still be wrestling
with the question this time
next year.
A star is reborn
Admit it: before 2005, you’d written
Mariah Carey off as a has-been
pop diva. Short of expunging her film Glitter from
our collective memory, you figured
there was no way she could ever
be relevant again. Well, Mariah made
you look like a fool. The Emancipation of
Mimi, her 10th album, sold seven million
copies worldwide, her single We Belong Together reigned
supreme on the Billboard Hot
100 for 14 weeks and she scored a throng
of Grammy nominations. In related
news, Rebirth,
Jennifer Lopez’s attempt at career
rejuvenation, flopped magnificently.
Hate him or love him
If Kanye flirted with news headlines
in 2005, fellow rapper 50 Cent practically
dictated them. In March, Fiddy released
his sophomore album, The
Massacre. In April, he became the first
artist since the Beatles to have four
songs in the U.S. Top 10. In early November,
he starred in Get
Rich or Die Tryin’, a thinly disguised
autobio directed by Jim Sheridan.
Later that month, a Toronto MP attempted to
have the contentious rapper barred
from entering Canada, saying 50 Cent’s
music fetishized the sort of gun
violence that has plagued Toronto
in 2005. And that sound in the background?
Cash registers ringing up The
Massacre.
Payola doesn’t pay
In the 1950s and ’60s, record companies
often bribed radio stations to play their
songs. The practice, known as payola, wasn’t
legal, but it also wasn’t unusual. Most
people had forgotten this primitive practice
until an investigation by New York State
Attorney General Eliot Spitzer determined
that payola
was still “pervasive.” Among
his findings was this e-mail by someone at
Sony BMG's Epic label, addressed to an employee
at radio station WKSS: “WHAT DO
I HAVE TO DO TO GET AUDIOSLAVE ON WKSS THIS
WEEK?!!? Whatever you can dream up, I can make
it happen.” The findings were so embarrassing
that Sony BMG Music Entertainment agreed to
pay a $10-million US settlement and promised
to stop bribing radio stations. Spitzer mooted
that other major record companies could be
next. (In related news, forgotten Canadian
band the Payola$ saw no discernible spike in
their popularity.)
Good times never seemed so good: Singer/songwriter Neil Diamond. Photo by Scott Gries/Getty Images.
Diamond mine
In 2001, Neil Diamond was such a kitsch icon
that he lampooned himself in the frat comedy Saving
Silverman. Who could have predicted he’d
have enough mojo left to release
another album — much less one of the best-reviewed discs of
2005? Ruminative, heartfelt and 100 per cent
kitsch-free, 12 Songs is utterly compelling.
Much of the credit goes to mega-producer
Rick Rubin. As he did with Johnny Cash’s
waning career in the ’90s, Rubin saw through
the layers of parody to pinpoint the honest songcraft
that made the man great in the first place. If
you’re looking for another Cracklin’ Rosie or Kentucky
Woman, you won’t find it; what you will
find is a great American songwriter, his skills
undiminished.
R.I.P.
Another year, another spate of passings. Deaths
in 2005 included: surf-guitar god Link
Wray; R&B smoothie Luther
Vandross; Ibrahim
Ferrer, revered Cuban singer and the wizened
face of the Buena Vista Social Club; legendary
singer and piano maven Shirley
Horn; guitarist Clarence
“Gatemouth” Brown, a Texas original whose
distinctive sound was a searing blend of bluegrass,
jazz, Cajun, country and calypso; and jazz great Jimmy
Smith, arguably the most famous emissary
of the Hammond organ.
Please, please, no more Peas
If it’s possible for a band to over-saturate
the market, the Black Eyed Peas have
done it. In 2005, the California quartet — once
a hip-hop outfit, now the worst kind of mongrel
pop act — was everywhere, demonstrating a willingness
to appear anywhere, with anyone, for any cause,
any time. While that included a fair bit of altruism
(e.g. Live 8, an Amnesty International charity
album), the Peas were far too voracious to let
it end there: award shows, free concerts sponsored
by Honda, the Super Bowl, the Grey Cup — plus
the threat of opening the 2006 World Cup of soccer
in Germany. To ensure we’d be talking about them
through the holidays, in November, BEP released My
Humps, a strong contender for Most Nauseating
Single Ever.
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