Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Media and So On...

This is great.

All three major cable news networks are wasting valuable air time on Senator Obama's former pastor. Why? Is the story newsworthy? Sure. Is wall-to-wall Wright coverage more important than Iraq or gas prices or the climate crisis? No way. But Reverend Wright is a scary, shouting black man and scary shouting black men equal ratings-sweet-ratings.


It comes from this post at HuffingtonPost.com.

Nothing to add, so I'll move along...

My annual A.I. post:

This season has featured public butcherings of two of my favorite song catalogues -- The Beatles and Neil Diamond. The latter was last night. Holy crow.

There were definitely a few good ones -- Syesha's "Thank the Lord for the Nighttime" and D. Cook was good both times out. Brooke's "I Am I Said" came off well. The others though?

The problem with songs like the Beatles' or Diamond's are that they are centered on fairly simple melodies and written to be sung fairly straightforwardly. Is that a word? Anyway, the kids on the show can't help but oversing because they've been lead to believe that vocal runs and so forth are going to win votes. Great melodies be damned!

Honest to Pete, if Aurchuleta had butchered "Sweet Caroline" any more by singing everything BUT the melody, I would have been sure it was a put on. As it is, I have doubts. Seriously, between him and that dreadlock kid it would have been hard to identify the songs if not for the recognizeable lyrics.

Song choices that should have been:
1. D. Cook -- "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon" (the solo guitar and voice version from the mid-70's live album)
2. Archuleta -- "Heartlight" -- Kid's to cheezy it would have come off well.

Yeah. It sucked.

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