Bradley Cooper and Lada Gaga

I didn't think it sounded great. There was a video floating around of him 'surprising' her in Vegas and they sang the song. That one sounded much better to me. This one : I got the feeling that they were trying to dramatize it and it ended up sounding off and not smooth at all.

The song : what a well written song - music and lyric... BUT ...that one part in the chorus..."shal-la-la-la-low" is the laziest thing for a song that was so well put-together. I almost would have rather that Snoop co-wrote it and say "shizzle" instead of the 'let's make a 2 syllable word into as many as we need'.

I don't know. I just like the art of language and this seems like a cop out. A good session with 'The Elements of Style' or maybe just some critical thinking like "does this measure up to the rest of the song?".

Get the shizzle off of my lawn.
 
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And that means what? Attractiveness is subjective. She's beautiful in her own way.
I miss the days when it wasn't a prerequisite for female entertainers to be sexy. I think it was a detriment for Christina Aguilera that they played up the sex image so much when she should have been able to get by easily on her voice alone. Turn off for me at least. I know millions didn't care or even disagree, I just find it a shame. Same with fast shaming Kelly Clarkson. Motherfkkers, she's there to sing.

As for the song, I don't like it. Obviously pieced together parts to underscore a film sequence that could have made a good song, and an entire bridge of just ad-libbed " ahhhhh-AHHHH-ahhh-ahh-ah...etc..." Is poison for me.

Pieced together parts without a definite structure sometimes makes for a good song (see some of the Beatles songs or Love Song from Tesla). Not really here though IMHO.
 
I miss the days when it wasn't a prerequisite for female entertainers to be sexy. I think it was a detriment for Christina Aguilera that they played up the sex image so much when she should have been able to get by easily on her voice alone. Turn off for me at least. I know millions didn't care or even disagree, I just find it a shame. Same with fast shaming Kelly Clarkson. Motherfkkers, she's there to sing.

As for the song, I don't like it. Obviously pieced together parts to underscore a film sequence that could have made a good song, and an entire bridge of just ad-libbed " ahhhhh-AHHHH-ahhh-ahh-ah...etc..." Is poison for me.

Pieced together parts without a definite structure sometimes makes for a good song (see some of the Beatles songs or Love Song from Tesla). Not really here though IMHO.

Pop music is full of people with good vocal technique. It's not just Kelly Clarkson and Christina Aguilera. The idea that pop music is not for real musicians, or the even more ridiculous assumption that singing is not music, is a myth created by salty guitarists. As evidence, ask people who are vocal coaches or even Berklee grads what they think of various artists like Ariana Grande or Selena Gomez. They do not say 'this is autotune. fake news!' like guitarists do. They treat those names about the same as people here talk about their favorite shredders.

There seems to be a weird puritanism around women being sexy on stage. When men have never been accused of wasting their talent for being sex symbols at any point that I'm aware of. Really the only male guitarists who are asexual are jazzers.
 
Pop music is full of people with good vocal technique. It's not just Kelly Clarkson and Christina Aguilera. The idea that pop music is not for real musicians, or the even more ridiculous assumption that singing is not music, is a myth created by salty guitarists. As evidence, ask people who are vocal coaches or even Berklee grads what they think of various artists like Ariana Grande or Selena Gomez. They do not say 'this is autotune. fake news!' like guitarists do. They treat those names about the same as people here talk about their favorite shredders.

There seems to be a weird puritanism around women being sexy on stage. When men have never been accused of wasting their talent for being sex symbols at any point that I'm aware of. Really the only male guitarists who are asexual are jazzers.
My two examples were not the only ones, I know. I put Ariana Grande into the same fold with Xtina maybe even worse, such a great voice and not a single song to show it. We only know it from SNL or Jimmy Fallon where she nailed those impressions, yet they keep feeding her songs that are too sexy for her girlish looks to pull off. Once she ages she'll be tossed aside. Again... rinse, repeat...

Then again, you get Britney Spears, and I'm not impressed with Selena.
 
Somebody likes Ariana:

One, two, three -- Ariana Grande is in the best possible place to be.

The singer's "Thank U, Next" album has her sitting pretty atop the Billboard charts.
She's the first artist to occupy the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 positions simultaneously on the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart since The Beatles did it in 1964.
Grande did it with her singles "7 Rings," "Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I'm Bored," and "Thank U, Next" respectively.
 
My two examples were not the only ones, I know. I put Ariana Grande into the same fold with Xtina maybe even worse, such a great voice and not a single song to show it. We only know it from SNL or Jimmy Fallon where she nailed those impressions, yet they keep feeding her songs that are too sexy for her girlish looks to pull off. Once she ages she'll be tossed aside. Again... rinse, repeat...

Then again, you get Britney Spears, and I'm not impressed with Selena.
Doing tricks for Jimmy Fallon seems like a very arbitrary criteria for having something to show for your talent as a singer.

And your comment about singing songs that are too sexy for her young looks seems to be a contradiction (not to mention casual misogyny). If she is too young-looking to 'pull off' being sexy wouldn't it be better to be older looking?

I also don't see this 'being tossed aside' argument that gets thrown around so cynically. Many pop singers scoring hits from the early 2000s are still touring and packing arenas almost 20 years later. The same is not true of rock musicians who do actually have very short periods of creativity before fizzling out. Even the ones often considered classic give up actually writing anything after maybe a decade at most. And yet rock is never accused of over relying on youth. Or blamed for getting tossed aside by record executives.
 
Doing tricks for Jimmy Fallon seems like a very arbitrary criteria for having something to show for your talent as a singer.

And your comment about singing songs that are too sexy for her young looks seems to be a contradiction (not to mention casual misogyny). If she is too young-looking to 'pull off' being sexy wouldn't it be better to be older looking?

I also don't see this 'being tossed aside' argument that gets thrown around so cynically. Many pop singers scoring hits from the early 2000s are still touring and packing arenas almost 20 years later. The same is not true of rock musicians who do actually have very short periods of creativity before fizzling out. Even the ones often considered classic give up actually writing anything after maybe a decade at most. And yet rock is never accused of over relying on youth. Or blamed for getting tossed aside by record executives.
My comments about the sexual songs are that they come over as forced and downright embarrassing when they could put her talent to better use elsewhere, (I'm not a fan of over sexualized male based songs either. Much old hair metal makes me cringe, even when I was young) and by doing so they run the risk that we see too often, of her not having a strong musical base to return to when her looks (of which I'm not a fan of exploiting, hence this conversation) start to (regretfully) fade.

If you're hell bent on twisting me into a closet womanizer go ahead, but that isn't me and wasn't my point.
 
My comments about the sexual songs are that they come over as forced and downright embarrassing when they could put her talent to better use elsewhere, (I'm not a fan of over sexualized male based songs either. Much old hair metal makes me cringe, even when I was young) and by doing so they run the risk that we see too often, of her not having a strong musical base to return to when her looks (of which I'm not a fan of exploiting, hence this conversation) start to (regretfully) fade.

If you're hell bent on twisting me into a closet womanizer go ahead, but that isn't me and wasn't my point.
I dunno she is like mid-twenties. It's probably not worth worrying about her doing sexual material at that age. Nor her looks dying off.

I mean this is not porn where you turn 30 and become a granny. Pop singers even in their late thirties are not ruined. Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Alicia Keyes, Katy Perry, carly rae jepsen, ellie goulding, lana del rey, rihanna, adele,... all of them survived into their thirties. And probably aren't going away soon.

And even if she was turning 60 tomorrow, it would just push her towards doing what you think is better material for her which is more adult-oriented music.
 
I'm with @Knox in Box on Ms. Grande all the way.

Her personality comes off as a 15 year old chewing gum and texting her BFFs from study hall.... while her songs are things like "Do Me Harder" with her wearing a latex S&M costume. It's really quite incongruous.

She also has a huge voice when imitating Celine Dion on Fallon, but most of her singles have this waif of a vocal that's slammed full of autotune as if she has half the vocal talent she actually has.

Probably more of an indication of her masochist, deep pocketed, handlers, agents, and producers than her musical tastes and talents.
 
Pop musicians aren't usually making great music. But what 'works' for them is making money and they do it quite easily. I also think pop music holds onto people today much more than rock does. Indie rock bands with 'normcore' looks disappear all the time even without relying on their youthful looks or being sexy.

Point is good technique is not that unusual for pop. A lot of autotune (where you really dial it up) since that Cher song have been just trying to create a weird effect rather than cover something up. And some of it is that it has entered r&b through hip hop after Kanye and Drake started using it.
 
I guess I'm in the camp that finds Lady Gaga attractive. I think it depends on her outfit & hair style though. Not that it matters to her music, which I don't listen to anyways.
 
I guess I'm in the camp that finds Lady Gaga attractive. I think it depends on her outfit & hair style though. Not that it matters to her music, which I don't listen to anyways.

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