Music: Back to the Music: "Oh, What a Job This Is!"

Unless your mailing address is “Under a Rock” or Patrick Star is your roommate, you’ve more than likely been unfortunate enough to have born witness to the at- tention guzzling antics of musicians you wished spent a few more hours of the day perfecting their so-called craft than find- ing time (and money) doing just about everything else.

Between parading relationship trou- bles on shallow reality TV shows, accruing bodacious amounts of likes on Instagram posts, and performing on-stage twerk rituals on forty-year-old rappers, is it not, at least, somewhat understandable as to how traffic can easily pile up between your favorite artist’s job and the studio?

But wait a minute—their job is in the studio, right? At least, it was at one point in time. Record sales have been down for some time now. Though there is no iden- tifiable shortage recorded in regard to the overall output of music, musical talents grasp onto any wave of relevance so as not to drown in a sea of a rapidly replenishing pop-culture.

In their defense, celebrities usually

do their best to mold themselves a posi- tive/marketable brand at first, but like everyone else, they experience setbacks that confiscate that premature, unsolidi- fied brand from their own hands, which is then handed to regular people like you and me, for us to make finishing (or career ending) touches.

Setbacks or “L’s” like these can come in all shapes and sizes, like a bottle thrown in the club, or a molly in your champagne, or even a few affectionate love taps to the chin from your singing/dancing ex- boyfriend—all completely hypothetical scenarios.

And after a few court dates, endorse- ment reneges, and approximately twenty hundred thousand Twitter memes, an art- ist under fire can emerge from the rubble one of a few ways. He can completely ig- nore the inevitable heckling about prior charges and attempt to move on with his life (boring), whole-heartedly defend his actions and decision-making abilities (in- teresting), or (my favorite) emerge from hot water a holier individual after being figuratively baptized by the court system.

If the latter is chosen, we’re in no way obliged to believe that the change of heart is genuine, but it would definitely be something to see a hyena fit itself for a pair of angel’s wings.

Such attention-hungry icons within today’s generation of technology are more than capable of making themselves known in a room while their celebrity lo- comotive is fueled for the most part by the power of social media, which can be defined by my own personal (and sarcas- tic) Webster’s dictionary, “one big venue for leisure bullsh*t.”

Social media makes it possible to get noticed without an exceptional display of talent and little evidence of any to begin with. It kind of helps an artist pull himself up by his own boot straps without actu- ally doing anything important (i.e. Miley Cyrus, Rihanna, Joe Budden).

Not to assume that artists are com- pletely without talent, but to point out that they manage to accumulate a lot of attention without exhibiting the talent that may have gotten them noticed in the first place. 

These moody, selfie-taking, foreign car-driving, champagne in the tub-pop- ping culprits have the same job descrip- tion as the second string quarterback of any professional football team for whom Peyton Manning would consider playing:

go to practice, appear as though you’re being productive, and make sure to take a picture of the locker room so people believe that you’re actually on the team.

And I quote Devin Dude: “What a job this is!”