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Richard Botto, Editor in Chief / CEO of RAZOR Magazine, has created the definitive men's magazine which features the best in men's fashion, travel, sports, autos, celebrities, technology, humor, fiction, fitness and more.
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 WRITINGS:
RICHARD BOTTO
Back to Writings Main Menu
May 2002
The Women of Music- and Folk Songs About Forty Year Old Asses
Think about how hard it is being a female music star. Your male counterparts
can bed anything in sight including any prostitute his Bentley happens
upon, incinerate a five thousand square foot hotel suite, indulge publicly
in the drug du jour or commit just about any felony on the books and
their legend grows. But you… you have one little nervous breakdown,
carry a dime bag through airport security, demand vitamin enriched mineral
water in your dressing room or make one abysmal movie where you play
the same character you do in the "reality" of the music world
and you're branded for life.
But if there is anything tougher for the female musician than gaining
respect and/or integrity, it's maintaining it.
Think about the lengths female artist will go to in the name of taking
their careers off the respirator or resurrecting them altogether. Tiffany,
the eighties mall magician, she of the cutesy songs and the epic battles
with Debbie "call me Deborah now or I'll bitch slap you" Gibson.
You remember her, right? She's back and her vehicle of choice to springboard
her career is not a killer song with a killer hook, it's implants and
a spread in Playboy. Just a suggestion Tifster, but you may want to
hold off on the Gucci dress for next year's Grammy's.
Melissa Etheridge had a two-pronged attack. In order to deflect the
bad press surrounding the poor sales of her previous album, she came
out of the closet AND had a baby using David Crosby's sperm - genius!
It got her on the cover of many a women's magazine, but didn't help
her sales worth a lick - no pun intended. And speaking of magazine covers,
what are we to make of Sheryl Crow - forty year old public advocate
of the elimination of the new wave of female bubble gum pop artists
and the overt sexuality they bring with them - posing for one aimed
toward seventeen year old guys with her ass cheeks drooping from the
bottom of some hot pants she probably wore at her first gig in 1979?
But I digress. Many of today's artists are simply showgirls. They of the
bubble gum beat and the ever-shrinking halter-top. Image is king, talent
the court jester. To wit, most guys can't name three Britney songs, but
they can lead you to seventy websites where you can see her breasts in
varying degrees of, um, development. And that, to paraphrase Janis Joplin,
just ain't what it's all about. Or, as Ms. Crow once mused, and again
I'm paraphrasing, it's not about crotch shots, it's about music. The jury
is still out on whether it's about ass cheeks.
Then there are artists like Alicia Keys, an artist who knocked a home
run the first time out of the box by not wavering on her musical vision
and, in the parlance of our times, keeping it real. Artists like Jewel,
who despite having the looks and the body to sell her soul to the corporate
pop gods, continues to focus on her talent and her songwriting. This
month we celebrate female artists of the same ilk - those who have just
started down the road and those who have been driving it, and many times
repaving it, for future generations for some time now.
The future remains bright for all the musicians profiled this month
as long as they don't crash and burn in the light of fame's fire. If
not, there will always be someone willing to see them falling out of
their drawers twenty years from now.
Don't even think about it Alicia… Keep it real, baby.
Enjoy the Issue,
Richard Botto,
Editor in Chief / CEO of RAZOR Magazine - The Definitive Men's Lifestyle Magazine
www.razormagazine.com
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