Friday, May 14, 2010

Links & Bits for 5/14/10

Kind of a random assortment of things this week. I haven't been around the music blogosphere too much lately, and I'm still recovering from last week's snafu with my internet provider. My newsreader is a mess-and-a-half. Here are a couple things I found to obsess over, though:

Of girl sopranos, male altos, female tenors and lady basses (The Chorister)
This is a pretty good introduction to some rarer voice types. I'm a fan of singers, so I like learning all I can about the craft of singing.

Do you respect "strictly vocalists" as musicians? (From a discussion on Rate Your Music)
Keeping on the "singers" theme. Yes, in fact, I do respect "strictly singers" as musicians. End of story. And to their credit, so did a handful of the commenters, but that doesn't stop a lot of music fans from believing in that old trope,"chick singer; not an integral part of the band."

Miley Cyrus < Betty Friedan: On The Search For a Feminist Pop Star (Tiger Beatdown)
Granted, I have yet to see Miley's much-talked about new video, and being a thirty-something music snob with no children, I have no desire to. However, I don't live in a bubble, and if there's a feminist message in something mainstream, I'll raise my fist in sisterhood. This video isn't it. Says Chloe Angyal: "But whether or not Miley’s new song and video are feminist or not isn’t really the issue here. The issue is why, every time a pop star comes out with a song that’s even vaguely feminist, we try desperately to position that person as a potential feminist flag bearer in popular culture.

Psychiatric Hospitals and Music Videos: Part 2 (FWD/Forward)
The second in a seres of posts dealing with images of mental illness in music videos, this one focusing on Green Day's "Basket Case" and Eminem's "The Real Slim Shady."

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