Being Real

Being Real  

    I'm going to go back a bit and rehash a few things, each of which deals with writing. Much of this came from an article in The Atlantic about a group of Norwegian songwriters, five to be specific, who write most of today's hit songs and have done so for nearly a decade (one of the Norweigians is Karl Martin Sandberg: The lead singer of an obscure ’80s glam-metal band, Sandberg grew up in a remote suburb of Stockholm and is now 44 [and] is responsible for more hits than Phil Spector, Michael Jackson, or the Beatles). Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, Kelly Clarkson, Brittany Spears...these five songwriters write most all of those singers songs, and those are the older singers of today's world.  Says author Nathaniel Rich: As I write this, at the height of summer, the No. 1 position on the Billboard pop chart is occupied by a Max Martin creation, “Bad Blood” (performed by Taylor Swift featuring Kendrick Lamar).  No. 3, “Hey Mama” (David Guetta featuring Nicki Minaj), is an Ester Dean production; No. 5, “Worth It” (Fifth Harmony featuring Kid Ink), was written by Stargate; No. 7, “Can’t Feel My Face” (The Weeknd), is Martin again; No. 16, “The Night Is Still Young” (Minaj), is Dr. Luke and Ester Dean.  And so on.  If you flip on the radio, odds are that you will hear one of their songs.  If you are reading this in an airport, a mall, a doctor’s office, or a hotel lobby, you are likely listening to one of their songs right now.  This is not an aberration.  The same would have been true at any time in the past decade.  Before writing most of Taylor Swift’s newest album, Max Martin wrote No. 1 hits for Britney Spears, ’NSync, Pink, Kelly Clarkson, Maroon 5, and Katy Perry.  But singers (nicknamed "artists" by their publishers and marketers), don't want you to know this, so a word or one note is changed or added by the "artist," thus enabling the artist to claim the song as mostly theirs, or at least obtain a good portion of its royalties...as the saying goes (from the article), "change a word, get a third" (of the royalties).  This is fine with the actual songwriters, just as it is with ghostwriters for celebrities.  But as the article notes, at what point does the description "artist" fade away?  Singers, performers, entertainers, sure...but probably not songwriters and perhaps not true "artists.".

    So I jump back to Editor Glenn Stouts opening for the 2006 copy of The Best American Sports Writing: Simply put, too many who call themselves writers have chosen to lie, ranging from the big lies of such pariah as Jayson Blair and James Frey to the smaller lies of any number of plagiarism that are uncovered almost weekly, to the fully compromised writer who looks in the mirror and knows he or she owes more to a corporate sponsor than to any internal and eternal ethic.  Each new such revelation, ranging from fibs, falsehoods, and pure propaganda to outright lies, chips away at the bond of trust between the reader and the writer.  Too many readers, accustomed to such invention, either become incredulous before genuine efforts, believing that EVERY story contains some form of embellishment, or, even worse, expect every story to reach the visceral and counterfeit perfection of some discredited "masterpiece," a thoroughly false standard that very few real stories actually reach...If everybody  faked it, how would we recognize the truth?  This question is particularly important in an era when the independence of journalism is so often and so easily and so correctly called into question, when teams, leagues, networks, governments, and other not always independent entities produces even something they call "content"...This odd convergence and blurring of the line between content and commentary, often absent any reporting at all, results in something made of words, but not anything I recognize as writing.

    So now let's jump to the recent domination by the major breweries, exemplified by Budweiser being bought by AB InBev, which now seeks to buy out Miller.  As my earlier post described the small craft beer resurgence (excitedly making its way to England and beyond), now comes the article in Bloomberg Businessweek about those "small" breweries now being slowly bought out as well, partly (say the massive corporate breweries) for knowledge about the varieties of hops and  formulas, but also for the knowledge about why there even exists a growing audience for such individual beers.

    Which, in a roundabout way, brings us full circle to the beginning, that marketing is marketing, whether you're making an audience believe that the stage performer wrote all of his or her songs, or that the small local brew you're drinking is really coming from a small local brewery.  Staying true to your course is difficult, says editor Stout, both for the writer/drinker AND for the reader/consumer.   So once again, it was refreshing to not only drink the delicious Imperial Stout from the refreshingly independent Lagunitas Brewing Co. (at a whopping 9.9% alcohol by volume) but to read their blatant writing that declares their freedom to do their own thing, as if proclaiming, we ARE doing our own thing (with words such as "unlimited release" plastered on their label).  Here's what's on their Imperial Stout label:  Having downed his fourth Imperial Stout of the day, the wild eyed charlatan from Voldvrostronglaky belched and hollered for the Czarina to enter his chamber and bend herself to his will.  The economy was a wreck and revolt was just around the corner.  Nicky the Czar dude was off playing soldier like any pale nobleman with a hemorrhagic skin condition would. Such were the final days of the old empire.  Reactionary, decadent, sputnik, stroganoff, weird, and drunk. But even as the proletariat countryside labored under inhuman conditions and the threat of being sent to a futile war in the east, they wisely took the time to slam back an Imperial Stout or two.  After all, life can be a real 'suka' as they said in the old country.  Big, black, bourgeois, bolshoy, belligerent, buxom, and scary.  This is our version of the end of an era in a bottle.

    Like it or not, like many things (even, one hopes, some blogs), the writing is fresh, refreshing, and honest.  And in a world trying to reach millions over fiber optics and satellite transmissions, a world where magazines (such as Fortune) and professors (talking on TED) can describe the coming "useless" human being, isn't it nice to have something real for a change?  As Editor (and author) Stout comments: The mere fact that in the present day words can appear almost instantaneously, almost anywhere, anytime, is no excuse.  Just because the field has evolved to include new, electronic - based media does not mean that the essential standards have changed.  The luster to entertain does not justify using reality as if it were plastic, or treating the truth as as if it were flexible...Once upon a time I believed everything I read until given a reason not to.  Now I question everything I read and look for reasons to believe... (stories) that tasted authentic, that didn't feel contrived or created or calculating.  Whatever the color of the truth uncovered by each author, if was celebrated for the shade that it was.

    As so many writers colloquially end their stories, "amen" to that...and amen to Lagunitas Brewing Co. and the others out there trying to stay the course in stormy seas.  Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!  By the way, did I mention that Lagunitas just sold 50% of their company to Heineken?  If you can't trust a bourgeois and belligerent brewing company to remain true to its roots, who can you trust?  May as well just stream that latest song from Taylor Swift...dang that girl can write!