All posts by Jonathan Andre

MOMENTOUS MONDAYS: INFLUENTIAL ARTISTS OF ALL TIME – WEEK 66: CARLY RAE JEPSEN

Never in my life did I actually think that I’d write a blog like this. There. I said it. Frankly, it wasn’t even until a few weeks ago did I actually ponder about my blog series as a whole. Was I actually writing about these artists for a year and a half because they were actually influential, both in my very own life and the life of others, or was it on the basis that it was assumed to be influential, even without me listening to the artist? Because more often than not, a lot of these blogs that I wrote throughout this year, were about artists where I’d listen to them almost the very week of. Yeah, poor planning I know, but one thing struck out to me as something I should think and ponder about…was there an unseen assumption that certain artists are influential and certain artists are popular, and was I playing into that assumption? I’ve written 65 blogs so far in this series, and as I glance through who I’ve written about (and who I haven’t), there’s one big striking omission (be it intentional or not, I’m not entirely sure), that I can’t ignore- the absence of female-driven pop. I mean sure, there’s pop in a sense that it is pop-rock or pop-country or just pop-_____ (fill in the blank) on my list: see artists like Delta Goodrem, Avril Lavigne, Kelly Clarkson, Amy Grant, Mandy Moore, Natalie Imbruglia, Vanessa Amorosi and Colbie Caillat, and you can see that there isn’t necessarily a lack of females on my list investing their music within the pop sonic space, but there is a lack of female representatives in pop in the sense of the dance-pop variety. And herein lies the point. I used to think that pop in the very sense of the word- the 1D pop that is flooding the airwaves since…well, ever; shouldn’t really have a place on my list, whatsoever.

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MOMENTOUS MONDAYS: INFLUENTIAL ARTISTS OF ALL TIME – WEEK 65: JOHN FARNHAM

Longevity is hard to come by, especially in music. I dunno if you’ve seen a pattern, but what I’ve seen is this- for an average career in music, you’d get pretty much a decade. A decade of radio hits, of albums that hit a niche market…mind you, it’d be less if you’re only ‘ok’ and then if you’re competing in a digital space and medium where there’s heightened competition, or more if you’re really, really good and your music actually speaks for itself. And in the context of Australia, artists have either come and gone, or they’ve stayed for quite some time, delivering great songs to people over the years. And usually it’s pretty hard to know from the get-go if this artist is going to make it big or not. Nevertheless, even though as a whole, Australian artists don’t necessarily get as much exposure to the international market compared to artists from other countries; there is still a big pool to choose from if you’re looking for Australian artists to listen to and want to branch out into music from artists not from the U S of A. Artists like Delta Goodrem, Guy Sebastian, The McClymonts, Missy Higgins, Daryl Braithwaite, Jessica Mauboy, Kasey Chambers, Slim Dusty, Ricki-Lee Coulter, Natalie Imbruglia, Tina Arena, Marcia Hines, Newsboys, for KING AND COUNTRY, Rebecca St. James and Kylie Minogue, are just some of the many artists from Australia that have had varying degrees of success over the years. And while a lot of music at the moment is very much America-based, we must not forget that music can still be good and not be from America…shudder to think, right? Because honestly, if we get most of our movies and TV shows from America, then surely the music from America is the best, right? Not necessarily.

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