It Sucks To Agree With Will.I.Am
I have mixed feelings about Will.I.Am protesting Sony's release of Michael Jackson's unfinished work. The new single came out this weekend, with a new album (the first of many, apparently) due in December. Will says:
"Whoever put it out and is profiting off of it, I want to see how cold they are. He just wasn't any ordinary artist. He was a hands-on person. To me, it's disrespectful. There's no honoring. Michael Jackson songs are finished when Michael says they’re finished. Maybe if I never worked with him I wouldn’t have this perspective. He was very particular about how he wanted his vocals, the reverb he used … he was that hands-on."
I mean, I agree with his point. It's like what Joan Didion said about why it was wrong to publish any of Hemingway's work posthumously: "You care about the 'ands' and the 'buts' or you don't, and Hemingway did." For this reason, I am generally against releasing any artist's unfinished work after he or she has died. So much bad Tupac music has come out that never should have. (Though I've been listening to Elliot Smith's New Moon and From a Basement On a Hill a lot recently, and they're both great and I'm very thankful I have access to them. So… it's difficult.)
But to hear Will.I.Am talk about the subject of "honoring" versus being "disrespectful"—especially while he works in the pukily self-congratulatory notion of how he worked with Michael and so therefore knows hims so much better than most everyone else—is incredibly hard to do! Though, I guess I have to accept it: what I consider to be the debasement of songs I love by Bob Dylan and The Who—well, I suppose those guys signed off on Will.I.Am's interpolations. Why, I'll never know. But they are still alive.
Anyway, here's the new song. It's very catchy, but very treacly to me on first listen. I'm not much of an Akon fan. But some people (some people who I like very much!) love it.
I really wouldn't use the phrase "he was that hands-on" when talking about Michael Jackson.
The hook for this song is totally bit from that Hootie & the Blowfish song of the same nameaklsdjflskdfsdlf;aksdj;flsdf
Ha! You're right. I'd forgotten (blissfully) about that one.
Now I will go about trying to forget it again.
I do have to ask: what kind of singer isn't "particular" about how his vocals sound?
Judging by his music….Will.I.Am?
I think that that there is something utterly hypocritical about someone who samples other artists' musics willy-nilly with very little respect for their visions for how their compositions and arrangements should be used. Hip-hop sample licensing is such that i.am can, and does whatever he wants with whatever he wants, because who says no to checks? He is the absolute last person who has any right to suggest that music is employed in any fashion, posthumously, or super-wicked-humously. Whatever. The argument is sound even, but it makes me so stabby that a guy known for doing the thing he's talking about, to a certain extent, is saying it. That's ridiculous. There's no way dude has gone this far in his career as a Hip-hop producer and has not used a public domain sample, which means he's disrespected someone's song, posthumously. Fuck. that.
I don't think it is inherently hypocritical! I think his position is about authorship, not expressly profiteering, and I think creative vision wrt sampling/etc. is also different from labeling an unfinished original work with the name of an artist.
I see your defense. There is a difference, clearly, between sampling an artist, and releasing a posthumous work under the name of said artist.
However, what is that difference? What is the difference, for example, between sampling the vocal chorus to Billie Jean (hypothetical) while you rap about Thinking about having a Good Night (Mazel Tov,) or releasing a song that, in all likelihood (I'm assuming this. I recognize that fact, but knowing what I know about the music industry, and Michael Jackson, this seems a reasonable way to assess the situation since I don't have liner notes in front of me,) he co-wrote or did not write at all and in either case, as a fairly in-debt individual, might not even own the license to any of these recordings at all, let alone the written songs.
Will.i.am has a problem with legend MJ's music not living up to his "vision" of how the reverb should sound on his voice. Because he's dead. But it doesn't matter that Jacob Miller might not have wanted his voice, reverbed or not, on Clap your Hands That it is warped and manipulated to fit the song, it can be argued, makes it even more cold. Either way, a dead guy is having his music used in a matter that is out of their control. I find that hypocritical.
Sorry for the late reply–and it may be beside the point because a day lapsed in commentland is very moving on–but I wanted to clarify a bit because I think my position isn't a completely direct correlation to yours, but first and foremost: I am not a Black Eyed Peas apologist, and know next to nothing about Will.i.am's (henceforth, "William") shiftiness. My background is in fine art, and think of sampling more in terms of appropriation and pastiche, and subsequently consider works that employ them in very different terms than original works. Obviously secondary works that utilize sampling can forever alter the way the primary or sourced works are received, and as this pertains to the ethics of sampling/sourcing, it is something that you can feel pro- or anti- about. I personally embrace it, and think that cultural producers, by participating in the making-stuff game, open the door for it .. but I hold nothing sacred (while still loving stuff, I swear), and respect the alternative argument.
But this is where *my bag* led me to point out that I don't believe the pull quote of William was an inherently hypocritical position, as I read it and without knowing much about his politics, because I do respect an author's intentionality toward their own work, and the connotations of labeling a work by a person. Context is everything, and I think it is possible to do the posthumous thing well and tastefully, but freeing things into the world is slippery, and it is easy to lose that context.
Basically I think it is fine to use/reference someone's work to create a new work by a different author, regardless of their intent (I am abominably heartless this way, 100%!), but not necessarily to assign a work authorship.
But I see your point, and it sounds like William isn't the ideal person to be speaking to this point! <3
I don't disagree with any of your points. With music there are certain licensing and copyright laws, as with anything, and none are policed (at least, not unless there's serious moolah involved) and most if not all are completely out of date and out of touch. I hate them, and I am totally with you that it is better for art as-a-whole to embrace using other authors' original work to make new work. That is totally awesome. We do it now anyways, even without recognition. I once wrote a song that turned out to be "Baby I love your Way" chords and melody and all, by accident. Chords and melodies we've heard a million times are just dancing around our subconscious, along with images and dialogue and such-and-such. All artists are thieves because we have the entire history of art in our memory banks, totally unaware that we compose almost entirely using this catalogue. Cool! We like that. I love that we can use stuff to make stuff. That's why we have stuff!
That's why I feel Will.i.am is such a douche (like he wasn't before) for being so obtuse about what he does. Like he has no idea that he IS only secondary work. There are no 100% original Black Eyed Peas songs (and we agree that is okay! If the music didn't suck at least) and more importantly, he is unaware that a large portion of the works he borrows and manipulates – altering tempos, tonalities, effects, arrangements – are being used differently than the author intended, without the author's consent or knowledge. This is precisely how he feels (negatively) about Michael Jackson's new song.
I never move on. At least, not until the original post has moved to the 2nd page. Then it's over.
I felt the same way when they released The New Testament.
Album cover looks exactly like the Gmail logo. Cannot unsee! http://erinjoan.tumblr.com/post/1582958109/cannot-unsee
So, I know some things about an upcoming track off of the next Black Eyed Peas album that would make Will.I.Am look VERY STUPID right now.
You mean "even more stupider," right?
When discussing the variation in Will.I.Am's stupidity, you run out of modifiers and superlatives damn quick.
Is it weird that when I saw the picture for this post, I thought it was the gmail symbol for a good 10 seconds?
I made it to 1:51. Tell me, does it get any better? Or will the remaining 1:40 just make me have to lie on the floor until I no longer feel like vomiting and my ears stop bleeding?