The Ryman Test
Alison Krauss, Vince Gill, Ricky Skaggs, George Jones, Roy Acuff, Earl Scruggs, Elvis Costello, James Brown, Ashlee Simpson.
As they say on Sesame Street, one of these is not like the others.
Come April, Ms. Simpson will grace the stage of the Ryman, the Mother Church of Country Music, joining a long list of legendary performers whose talents and impacts on their genres are without dispute. Within the Scene offices, anyway, this upcoming show is as divisive a pop culture issue as the war in Iraq is a geopolitical one. A segment of us view anti-Simpson sentiment as "rockist"—that is, biased toward the old model of the solitary, "for the ages" artist over fabricated pop acts. Others of us simply believe that Simpson's talents aren't in the same league with these Ryman royalty—that, in fact, her abilities are inversely proportionate to her record sales. What's more, it could be argued that she is but a marketing creation whose live performances are notoriously flawed, screechy and, as her Saturday Night Live debacle and subsequent explanations made clear, never her fault. (Remember, she first blamed the fiasco on her band, then blamed acid reflux.)
Ultimately, though, it's not Simpson's lip-synching or contrived success that are so problematic. Lots of performers in many different musical genres have used various devices as crutches for live performances. The country stars who graced the Ryman stage back in the day lip-synched their records in TV appearances many times. But they at least did it well. Simpson flubbed her one meager task as a singer—to follow a pre-recorded vocal track and muster some feeling and enthusiasm. If she had gone with the moment, doing something spontaneous and goofy and infectious (or even remotely musical), the audience would've been in the palm of her hand. It would have been a forever moment, like Elvis Costello stopping his late-'70s SNL appearance dead to count off his anti-industry anthem "Radio Radio." He was banned "for life" from the show back then; now the clip is on every SNL anniversary special.
But what did Simpson do instead? She got flustered, did what looked like a few steps of her choreographed routine—then quit. How many groups would give their eyeteeth for those three minutes of airtime? And lest we sound "rockist," that includes boy bands and girl bands that focus more on dance routines than singing, but still pull off amazing things. Hated acts like the Spice Girls and Britney Spears have recorded fake, plastic, inauthentic, cheesy three-minute pop songs that are damn near miraculous. When it came time to perform them live—fudged vocals, studio tricks and all—they could do so with style, energy and flair. In other words, they still had something to bring to the party.
There is indeed a tidal shift in the way music is made, received and even sold, which is what those who label the anti-Simpson view as "rockist" want us to accept. We buy that. Just like the next guy, we can appreciate a good mash-up, which requires nothing more than a kid in a basement using software to merge two different songs.
But good music requires one more thing: talent. There are good mash-ups and bad mash-ups that simply fail on their own terms, just like there are good performers and bad ones who fail on their own terms. Shouldn't we still expect artists to excel at the aims they set for themselves? That's our problem with Ashlee Simpson and the SNL clip. We don't mind seeing the man behind the curtain, but Jesus, let us at least see a little Wizard of Oz first. If Simpson can't deliver on a carefully planned TV appearance, what would she give us at the Ryman?
We'll soon see. The Mother Church is like truth serum for talent.
