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The realities of being a pop star

itscharlibb.substack.com

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Re: The realities of being a pop star

#171

Post by foxglacier »

jdlshore wrote: post #65
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and it doesn't even seem like she passed it thru Chatgpt Oh my god, can we stop with the obsession of whether something has been chatgpt-ified? I like to know when things are true, or when they are good. I couldn't care less if they are chatgpt-y.

I think people disliked being fooled. Something seems good and true, and then you realize it was ChatGPT, and you realize it’s all fake. The connection you were forming with the author is gone (because they phoned it in) and the sense of truth is gone (because who knows what was hallucinated). People like authenticity. ChatGPT ain’t it.

Another thing that isn't authentic is anything said in public by a celebrity - or worse - the feelings they show in their work. Yet people still lap it up. I think people enjoy being fooled into believing something is authentic in some cases but not others. Not sure what distinguishes them though.

Re: The realities of being a pop star

#172

Post by wiz21c »

I was fortunate enough to be somewhat on television as a geek/nerd for 2-3 years. I was not famous, didn't make money out of it.

It happened from time to time that people recognized me when at the groceries or some other place. I always had found that very awkward. These people have an image of you, they know a bit about you, they like you but on the other hand you absolutely don't know them. I did my best to be welcoming and had genuine interest in who they were but the asymetry was very awkward to me.

Also, people close to your friends also know you are "on tv" and then you can feel they look at you differently. It's subtle (after all, I was just a verrrrrrrrrryy minor figure) but it's there.

But what I've learned a lot is that once you see the TV and some famous people from the inside, you realize that they are much more normal than what you thought. Sure they've got some talent you sure don't have, but for the rest they're human: some are cool, some are not, some funny some boring, etc.

Re: The realities of being a pop star

#173

Post by TheMayorOfDunce »

Insanity wrote: post #85
globalnode wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

never heard of them before this HN article lol. the only thing that struck me was no paragraphs in the article, just one giant wall of text. and also how bored id be living that lifestyle (personally)

I know of her name, but I couldn’t name a single song of hers. Luckily we don’t all enjoy the same music, that would be boring as well! :)

I would bet you have encountered a much larger catalog of Charli tracks than you might think. I too was in the same position last year. Then I looked her up and she has actually produced like 30% of the songs played in Urban hat shops, in public places that allow swimming, and in office buildings in the hvac-safe entrance zone between the first and second set of automatic doors.

Re: The realities of being a pop star

#174

Post by saghm »

globalnode wrote: post #62
saghm wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "average" player in one of those sports leagues isn't really a celebrity at the level the article is talking about. Charli XCX's last album was nominated for 11 Grammies and won six of them, and it has the 15th highest aggregate rating from Metacritic of all time. If you're comparing to athletes, this is All-Star roster, potential MVP winning-level performance for at least that season. By no means it's every play…

never heard of them before this HN article lol. the only thing that struck me was no paragraphs in the article, just one giant wall of text. and also how bored id be living that lifestyle (personally)

And there are plenty of people who haven't heard of Aaron Judge or Steph Curry. That doesn't change the fact that they've played at an entirely different level than the overwhelming majority of other athletes playing their sport.

My point wasn't that everyone will recognize them, just that there's a pretty clear difference between the most successful few at the top of their domain and the others who might still be able to make a living doing it but aren't superstar-level compared to their peers, and that's independent of whether every single person knows who they are. The parent comment brought to the idea of average players of the major professional sports leagues, and I felt like that was almost missing the context of this article, which is someone who might be the literally have been the most successful artist of last year, not just an average a professional musician.

Re: The realities of being a pop star

#175

Post by dbspin »

tormeh wrote: post #152
dbspin wrote: post #144

While this is a fascinating perspective, I find this analysis of the source of hate online to be under-examined and self serving. Sure, any public figure will be the target of hatred, negative projection, ridicule. And doubtless that's doubly true for female celebrities. But much of this is driven by envy - envy fuelled by the gilded age level of inequality we're currently experiencing. By the performative nature of…

It's just entertainment. I don't think there's anything to it. The four chord song over and over. We all want some sort of excitement or maybe magic, and these superstars give it to us. The reality distortion fields around them is attractive in and of themself as an escape from our boring lives. Being 'artistic' is not in itself a good thing. It could just mean you take yourself too seriously. If you advance the art…

> Being 'artistic' is not in itself a good thing.

It's as much a part of being human as love or work or dance or any other culturally universal meaningful activity. And making art is significantly more important for our personal development and wellbeing than consuming entertainment.

> We all want some sort of excitement or maybe magic, and these superstars give it to us.

You're not describing magic, you're describing succour. The avoidance of pain. It's not worthless by any means, but it's low down on the pyramid of needs. It's a testament to the diminished expectations and value inversions of our culture that we misperceive fluff as worthwhile, and sincere creative expression as 'taking yourself too seriously'.

Re: The realities of being a pop star

#176

Post by sethaurus »

sfblah wrote: post #40

I had to go on Youtube to listen to some of the music mentioned here, as I'm pretty out of the loop on it. Given what I heard I honestly think we're basically at the point where AI can generate equivalent or even better music. It's just very simple and doesn't feel particularly innovative or noteworthy. Point being, I think it's likely this person is one of the last pop stars. Actually, as I'm writing this, I realize…

> Actually, as I'm writing this, I realized that probably the music being produced by this person is actually done by a computer. So, maybe she's in the first wave of totally artificial pop stars.

Her main collaborator, co-creator and producer of many years is the artist AG Cook, who founded the label PC Music. He appears often in her music videos and gets mentioned in her lyrics. His own solo work plays a lot with pairing the artificial and the organic, taking the "slick" aesthetics of electronic pop to abrasive extremes and placing it next to vulnerability and gentleness.

This is my favourite piece of his work (both the song and the video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kH2wQ5speuU

Charli's work or his might not suit your taste! But these are real people doing interesting stuff and playing with the form. It's not fake.

Re: The realities of being a pop star

#177

Post by amenhotep »

NaomiLehman wrote: post #163
brabel wrote: post #153

> We are still trained to hate women, to hate ourselves and to be angry at women if they step out of the neat little box that public perception has put them in. I really don’t see this. Female singers seem to be enjoying about as much freedom to do and act in whatever way they please as it’s possible without basically letting them get away with criminal behavior… and even then many openly talk about doing drugs and o…

Few female pop stars manage to gain success without appealing to the "male gaze" even if they produce stuff for women as their target demographic. On the contrary people mostly don't care if male musicians are hot - Ed Sheeran or make very questionable decisions - Drake. Look at top 20 male and female popular artists on Spotify and try to think how many of them are agreeable and objectively good looking. https://kwor…

The majority of the popular male musicians there are comparably photogenic to the females, Sheeran is really the major exception and he's not even ugly, just Distinctive in a way that's easily matched by Sia and personally I'd say both Gaga and Eilish.

It just looks like pretty people are in general a lot more successful, which is unsurprising. The attempt to apply a sexist lens to it is a bit tortured.

Re: The realities of being a pop star

#178

Post by TheTon »

Insanity wrote: post #84
decasia wrote: post #6

I thought this was a really good piece of writing. It’s rare to do something like this because the job discourages it by putting PR filters on everything you say. My uncle was a pretty big pop star in the 1960s. His group at one point had a big fanzine, they were household names across the country, over time they had stalkers and weird fans and all that, made movies and albums, had big parties and knew other famous p…

It was interesting and a fun read, but not a “good piece of writing” in my opinion. Apart from some spelling mistakes, the sentences droned on and it read more like a semi-coherent rant than a thoughtful piece on “being a pop star”.

I admit I started reading with some skepticism. It didn't read like PR, so I assumed I was reading fanfic. By the midpoint, she managed to convince me otherwise.

I think the author is walking a tightrope between convincing the reader that she wrote this herself and that there's more depth to her than what we see on stage or in pop media. Writing this blog is definitely a tougher assignment than doing podcast interviews or behind the scenes videos.

You are right, of course, a good editor could make this better, but I think she's deliberately avoiding that here. A pop star is unwise to fire a good producer without a better replacement, but sometimes they have to bring out the piano and do an acoustic performance live.

Re: The realities of being a pop star

#179

Post by NaomiLehman »

amenhotep wrote: post #177
NaomiLehman wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few female pop stars manage to gain success without appealing to the "male gaze" even if they produce stuff for women as their target demographic. On the contrary people mostly don't care if male musicians are hot - Ed Sheeran or make very questionable decisions - Drake. Look at top 20 male and female popular artists on Spotify and try to think how many of them are agreeable and objectively good looking. https://kwor…

The majority of the popular male musicians there are comparably photogenic to the females, Sheeran is really the major exception and he's not even ugly, just Distinctive in a way that's easily matched by Sia and personally I'd say both Gaga and Eilish. It just looks like pretty people are in general a lot more successful, which is unsurprising. The attempt to apply a sexist lens to it is a bit tortured.

i absolutely don't agree that they are in the same ballpark of being photogenic when we look at top 50 and estimate averages - this could probably be easy to measure with a jailbroken LLM.

the difference is even bigger when I look at agreeability - this is more difficult to measure.

Re: The realities of being a pop star

#180

Post by CoastalCoder »

Insanity wrote: post #84
decasia wrote: post #6

I thought this was a really good piece of writing. It’s rare to do something like this because the job discourages it by putting PR filters on everything you say. My uncle was a pretty big pop star in the 1960s. His group at one point had a big fanzine, they were household names across the country, over time they had stalkers and weird fans and all that, made movies and albums, had big parties and knew other famous p…

It was interesting and a fun read, but not a “good piece of writing” in my opinion. Apart from some spelling mistakes, the sentences droned on and it read more like a semi-coherent rant than a thoughtful piece on “being a pop star”.

I was interested by the part in the middle talking about society not tolerating women stepping too far out of traditional roles.

I'm a 50-ish years old American man, and I just don't notice anything like that in my own attitudes or of those around me.

I wonder if one or both of us have biased vision, or alternatively maybe we just live in different societies.

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