The Null Device
Posts matching tags 'pete waterman'
2007/8/12
Pete Waterman — yes, that Pete Waterman — laments the overly commercial state of the music industry today:
One thing I find frightening about the modern music business is how it's all about money now. These kids, ooh, they have got it sussed. There's no room to see if anything happens by chance.Not that he's defending the purity of art from commercialism, mind you; Waterman makes no pretenses of being in the business of art. His argument seems to boil down to something like "we are all whores, but some of us are honest about it".
I have no problem with saying that pop music is about making money - that's what it does. But you have to entertain. To take the song one stage further and then have it all lined up so that it's a movie, it's a deodorant, it's a car line ad - that's shocking to me.
Musicians now take great pains to lead you to believe they're precious about the music. And then you see it as a car ad. It's offensive because it's a dishonest way of becoming famous. What we did was honest - we wanted to be number one and sell a million records. These guys want to be cool, and they want to take the money, but they don't want to say they want to sell a million records. I think that's dishonest.
2005/1/2
The latest OBEs on the Queen's New Year's Honours list include Roger Daltrey of The Who (you know, of "hope I die before I get old" fame) and Pete Waterman (of Stock/Aitken/Waterman fame), decorated for his services to manufacturing music.
2004/9/28
Apparently Lisa Gerrard's most recent film score is for the British gangster flick Layer Cake. I find it hard to imagine Lisa "Dead Can Dance" Gerrard doing a score for a British gangster flick, unless it's not at all a post-Ritchie brash-cockney-wideboy film and more along the lines of Beat Takeshi or something.
In other news, it looks like Pete Waterman's (of Stock/Aitken/Waterman fame) latest gig is presenting a BBC TV series about the history of Britain's railways.
2003/5/12
After the BBC's 100 Greatest Britons series (in which Winston Churchill barely pipped Princess Diana for #1, and genuinely deserving candidates like Charles Darwin were left in the dust), bolshy TV broadcaster Channel 4 have compiled a list of the 100 Worst Britons. Tony Blair is #1 (though if these were voted on by the Guardian-reader types who watch C4, it's hartly surprising), followed by Jordan (she's some kind of model or something, right?) and Margaret Thatcher. Other notable figures: The Queen is #10 (one behind Geri Halliwell), Liam Gallagher is at #11 (though you'd think his ex-wife Patsy Kensit would get a mention on the strength of her complete inability to act), Prince Charles at #24 (Diana is apparently still too much of a national saint to merit the list), Harry Potter is at #35, Tracy Eminem at #41, Pete Waterman at #45, and Loony Left Red Ken at #50. (via VM)
2002/10/7
Bubblegum pop producer Pete Waterman (of Stock-Aitken- fame) has revealed that he lifted the structures of many of his songs from classical compositions. Kylie Minogue's I Should Be So Lucky is apparently based on Pachelbel's Canon in D, and Dead Or Alive's You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) borrows from Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, one of about 20 times Waterman has copied from Wagner. (I presume he refers to chord progressions and harmonies.) Waterman also has the extraordinary temerity to compare himself to The Beatles and Burt Bacharach.
And while we've brought up Kylie Minogue, the ubiquitous pop star has recently described herself as a drag queen caught in a woman's body. Funny; I once said almost the same thing about her.
2001/12/30
The BBC has a piece on Pete Waterman, who has shaped manufactured throwaway pop music for some decades.