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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

#191

Post by imtringued »

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…

It's the other way around. Female privilege is invisible, so you can easily claim the opposite.

Female privilege can be used to bend men to a woman's will. It's kind of like a resource curse like oil exports. You can cheaply import anything and pay for it by exporting oil. This means your country doesn't have to develop independent production, which makes it dependent on the imports of another country. When things are going wrong internally, you can always point at an external locust of power. The problem is that your trade partners are no longer exporting their products to you and they obviously know that this will hurt your country. They are making a calculated decision against you. You are powerless and it's because the other countries have been hoarding/accumulating power and are using this power to keep you powerless. The classic communist excuse that it's the capitalist sanctions that are the problem.

As I said, the problem is a lack of an internal locust of control. The externalisation, no matter how convincing, is a way to distract from the actual problem. The fact that there are gender specific boogiemen doesn't really change anything.

Re: The realities of being a pop star

#192

Post by derangedHorse »

> I don’t view what I do as a ‘job’ > doing an actual real service industry job

I see a lot of other figures in pop culture echo this sentiment. The need to downplay the effort involved because the payoff is disproportionate to the effort/payoff ratio of most other jobs. In a job where mass public perception dictates success I can see why she would feel the need to include this, but I hope she doesn't truly believe it. A globally recognized chef who gets paid millions for their work isn't downplaying his effort because of how disproportionately valued it is, so neither should a pop star.

> patriarchal society we unfortunately live in has successfully brainwashed us all

I'm not totally subscribed to this "patriarchy" narrative. I think any "brainwashing" (or establishment of cultural norms) is from a mix of figures from both genders alike. I don't think it's a symptom of the perceived problem of higher positions mainly holding men in power. I do agree with her assessment with there being people postured to give an excessive amount of hate to women who don't fit their societal expectations vs. men who don't, so I'll give her that.

With that said, this was still a good read. I'm not too familiar with Charli XCX but I have a lot of respect for her using her free time to share her experiences. I hope to see more from her in the future.

Re: The realities of being a pop star

#193

Post by bahmboo »

BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #53
bahmboo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a great interview, thanks. Never heard of him, he's a smart young person. Goes hand in hand with Charlie's post. Hey it's Saturday night we can talk about culture stuff, right? Edit to add: young prodigies in artistic pursuits have similar choices as young tech prodigies.

>young prodigies in artistic pursuits have similar choices as young tech prodigies. How so?

Values - I'm not judging.

Do you want to be the best rapper in Sweden? Do you want to be the best engineer at EA? 2 million a year to work at Palantir? Sign with a label and get 2 million a year to live in LA and have your music in Pepsi ads? Start an open source greenfield passion project that has only your vision as the runway? Work your own musical genre even if your audience isn't there yet?

As a talented young person (or at least you believe in yourself!) it's early in your life/career where you can sculpt and morph yourself while you are still formable.

Re: The realities of being a pop star

#194

Post by nikhizzle »

WalterBright wrote: post #54

> especially when your old friends mock and ridicule you for caring about something absolutely pointless. My dad flew 32 missions over Germany. He watched men die. 80% of his cohort did not return. He expected to die and made his peace with it. He told me once that when he returned home, he was struck by the trivial problems people had and obsessed over. After all, they weren't flying a mission tomorrow with near cer…

Thanks for sharing this. Needed something meaningful this morning.

Re: The realities of being a pop star

#195

Post by derangedHorse »

nunez wrote: post #122
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…

That's the fate of many acts from that period. So so so many artists who were stratospherically popular but are still touring for cash playing to nobody younger than them. It's sad.

"better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all"

Is it sadder than any other individual who has to work into retirement age? Or is the fall itself what you find sad? I can imagine some artists might be happier in this latter stage of their lives where they can focus on their real fans and better fostering other personal relationships in their lives.

Re: The realities of being a pop star

#196

Post by MiddleEndian »

One thing I found clever about certain celebrities, like Dolly Parton and Guy Fieri, is that their public images are so distinct but transient (Dolly Parton has a wig, Guy Fieri looks like Guy Fieri) that I imagine if they dressed down like normal people, they'd be able to blend in with the public.

Re: The realities of being a pop star

#197

Post by derangedHorse »

IceDane wrote: post #106
Insanity wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”.

As interesting as I find it, cannot agree more. It's very childish writing - feels a lot like it was written by a teenager. It sort of reminds me of my young 8 year old niece telling me a story she finds so exciting she barely comes up for air.

It read like something the young adult women I know would write. It's surprisingly normal.

Re: The realities of being a pop star

#198

Post by derangedHorse »

jppope wrote: post #18

Courtney Love wrote a fabulous article explaining the realities of a million-dollar album (2000 - https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/ ) and it explains so much of whats actually going on that the public doesn't fully comprehend. Its a great read if you've never read it. The realities are similar to what we are reading in this article. Most of what gets talked about is gross numbers not net. Most of the benefits…

That just sounds like you're saying the "average" person in all those professions are bad at personal finance. Maybe that's a reflection of society at large. One articles estimates 90% of Americans being in debt[1] so it wouldn't surprise me that this successful subset would fare much better (although I would bet they do when compared to the general population).

Also debt isn't always bad, but most individuals quoted in the study are probably not holding the good type of debt (debt one can easily pay off but doesn't).

[1] https://www.debt.org/faqs/americans-in-debt/demographics/

Re: The realities of being a pop star

#199

Post by derangedHorse »

trogdor wrote: post #69
SL61 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to observe that fame (and the money that usually comes with it) seems to follow something like a log scale. People usually don't become gradually more famous in a linear way. They're more likely to spend a few years with 50k listeners and then get a big hit and get 1 million listeners overnight, then the next big jump is 20 million, and so on. It's possible to be semi-famous and still able to go to t…

> I think Charli crossed that line with the success of her album Brat last year. In Hollywood, that line gets crossed at a surprisingly low level. I am friends with Josh Sussman, who played Jacob Ben Israel on Glee. I occasionally visit him in LA, and we can’t go anywhere in public without getting constantly stopped by people wanting photos. It’s exhausting.

I didn't watch it myself, but Glee was a very popular show. Since Josh Susman was a recurring character, it's unsurprising that he'd have a large fanbase (especially in LA).

Re: The realities of being a pop star

#200

Post by derangedHorse »

varjag wrote: post #3
carabiner wrote: post #2

Fascinating. Also impressive rawness, and it doesn't even seem like she passed it thru Chatgpt. It's insane that my first inclination is to detect those telltale signs in a blog post, and here I found none.

Yeah there's a 'delve' there but it almost feels it was put in as a taunt.

Delve was a word I used before generative AI and it's a word I'll continue using into the future. I will not let people's perceived use of AI stop me from writing what I want to write.
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