Talent

Will someone please tell me, at what point did it become acceptable to judge someone's musical talent by how many notes they can hit, how perfect their voice is, and how much money they make? I got the above linked article from Wil Wheaton's blog. In that article is a link to Tom Waits on Dave Letterman. This man has no talent by today's standards. His voice is old, scratched, and worn. He can't hit them notes and he don't make the money. Yet he has magnitudes of talent far above and beyond that of Mrs. Simpson. Why? His music is from the heart. It's from a lived life and born of the very pains that we all have to accept as part of being alive. Ashlee Simpson knows no life and certainly knows no pain. She hasn't been poor. She hasn't fought for the right to live a decent life. She was given what she has by MTV and her father.

Have you ever listened to Hendrix? Not Hendrix the guitar god... Hendrix the musician. That man had a voice that would turn a deaf dog over. It was that bad. Yet when he sang about war and drugs, everyone listened and thought about it. He was giving you the life of a poor, under-educated black man trying to make a living at a time when the very fact that you were black still meant you were less than the dirt white people walked on. Maybe I'm too soft, but that sure seems like a lot to deal with. Hendrix didn't lip-sync and he wrote his own music. To say that Ashlee Simpson has any semblance of heart in her music, is to spit on everything that real musicians have worked so hard for. Hell, I'd even be willing to be that today, Hendrix wouldn't get his word out because no one wants to sell someone without that perfectly pitched voice.