Re: Whitney Houston Comeback CD Sept. 1st!!!
Minor thread hijack. Relax - I'll bring it back.
Another R&B artist from the past put out an album today. Smokey Robinson's "Time Flies When You're Having Fun".
I'm shocked how good it is. Smokey's voice is amazingly solid at age 69, and he wisely sticks with his strengths here - quiet storm material. (Hell, the genre is named after one of his songs...) The songs might run together a bit by the end, but it's an excellent listen. Smokey arranged, produced and wrote (with the exception of a track or two) the whole thing, too. Just a really solid, really great album. Won't get much airplay, of course, but it's nice that he still has it and can still put out such great material.
Back to task at hand. He's not in this game, is he? Rereading this thread (and others like it), I remain convinced that gay men look at divas the way straight men look at football teams. Not just as entertainment, but as something to cheer for. The go-Whitney, Mariah-sucks posts may as well be for football teams. Swap out Whitney for the Broncos, and Mariah for the Raiders, and I swear I've heard this argument before.
I dunno. I guess if you're aware that you're playing the game, and you want to, that's fine. It presumably results in fuller coffers, if the NFL (and other sports leagues) are any indication. But I don't have any interest in playing that. It seems like such a limiting way to approach music. It means you have to pretend to like songs that you don't (I mean, Whitney HAS put out some crap material), and you have to pretend to hate song that you don't (Mariah has put out some good stuff). And you have to focus all your energy towards pushing your team over the finish line, and towards keeping a brave face during adversity ("no, everything's great!"), and generally end up looking like those guys who paint letters on their chests.
I'd rather just listen to stuff I like. If it happens to be from a "bad artist", so be it - I'll still listen to it. And if one of my favorite artists puts out something I don't like - and EVERY single one of my favorite artists has put out stuff that I thought was half-baked at best, and outright crap at worst - I have no trouble saying so. Yeah, I'd like my favorite artists to do well. But I don't feel like playing cheerleader any more than telling people "Hey, I really dig this song - check it out". And I guess I'll just have to accept being different in that regard.
Back to listen to Smokey again.
Lex