Not In the Same Business
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Still in Los Angeles, I’m driving down Sunset the other night. (It’s something that I find myself doing a lot while in SoCal, because of the boulevard’s proximity to my lodgings.)After a random scan, I’ve absent-mindedly left the radio on Star 100-something, one of the ubiquitous stations running the so-called “Hot Hits” format. And what do I hear, to my surprise, but Lily Allen’s “Smile” bouncing out of the speakersI’m getting a nice groove on as I swing west down the Strip, past a crowd of wanna-be hair-band superstars and their groupies – twenty years too late, and a sad sight in any decade - milling around outside the Rainbow bar, their watering hole/meat market of choice since way back when all the Ratts in the Crue got Poison-ed.The song ends, and here comes the smarmy on-air “talent” to back-announce: “That’s Lily Allen, the latest hot singer from England, and her song ‘Smile.’ What did you think? Give us a call. Y’know, Lily Allen and new Star favorite Amy Winehouse are – heh, heh - England’s Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan! Lily and Amy are bad girls! They like to party! They’re drinkers! Like Britney and Lindsay! So tell us if you liked Lily, but forget about all the drinking. Don’t let it influence you one way or the other. Heh, heh, heh.”Thanks for the good old American idiocy, Radio Boy. Could you be more insulting to a pair of talented artists? Which pair? Oh, please. Somehow, celebrity has come to trump talent in Western Civilization. Thus, fame levels all famous people so that their actual achievements become secondary to their notoriety. It's sheer ridiculousness.Spears (now in full train-wreck mode) and Lohan (who I don’t mind as an actress) are manufactured, over-produced pop stars with technologically-boosted vocals affixed to trite, crass material, and a habit of melting down in public. Allen may have less than impressive pipes, but she makes up for it with her cunning lyrics, genuine spunk and airy charm, and an album awash in imaginative dub-and-sample-heavy production; while Winehouse (who I’ve previously and cheekily dubbed “a sex-soaked stick of dynamite”) is a gifted singer with an appreciation of pop, rock and soul history that informs and enhances her ability to channel elements of those styles into her passionate, straight-from-the-heart-material.From all the anecdotal evidence (and at least one video – Winehouse’s slurred duet with Charlotte Church as they beat on Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”), we know that Amy and Lily do party hard, and shoot off their mouths. Hell, Amy’s musical calling card is the funked-up mid-tempo confessional “Rehab,” which plays like New Orleans R& B queen Irma Thomas coming off a bender. But, even if Amy and Lily are lippy, they’ll occasionally try to debunk the pompous or make a serious point. And neither is short on wit, as you’d notice if you saw them as guest contestants on British TV’s wacky pop-culture game show “Never Mind the Buzzcocks.”Artistic merit aside, an Amy and Lily tag-team would out-drink and out-debate Britney and Lindsay with little effort. And in a no-holds-barred cage match, the Brits would chew up and spit out the Yanks within seconds of the first-round bell.No contest.Now, just for fun, Lily Allen’s jocular video for her somewhat autobiographical tune “Alfie”:And, because it begs to be seen again and again, here’s Amy Winehouse, hammered but delivering on Charlotte Church’s variety show:
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