Drunktank: Kings Of Leon v Amy Winehouse

An interesting, but not entirely fully-formed, post by Everett True on Collapse Board compares the way the media covered Amy Winehouse's Belgrade Show and the Kings Of Leon in Texas.

I'm not sure there's a direct comparison to be made here:

Winehouse's gig was one she tried to do, but failed; Caleb didn't even try to play.
Winehouse appears to have been put up to play the gig when she wasn't ready; there doesn't seem to have been the same pressure put on Followill to turn up. Winehouse was, pretty clearly, known to have a serious illness; Followill we simply don't know about.

True's gripe is that Winehouse appears to be chastised by The Guardian for the quality of her performance, while the Kings Of Leon are given a "tee-hee, rock and roll" write-up.

To be fair, though, the Winehouse piece was a straight news report, written in part by agency reporters, while the Kings Of Leon piece is more of a blog entry from the website, so it's not really a straight comparison.

Everett seems to be assuming that The Guardian was somehow punishing Winehouse for her (unladylike) behaviour while celebrating that (blokey) drunkeness of the Kings Of Leon. I'm not so sure, though.

We know that Winehouse was booed, and even without the benefit of hindsight, her inability to make it through the set was pretty worrying. Surely True isn't suggesting that it lent itself to a jokey write-up?

It might be that Caleb is also seriously ill, and perhaps we should all be resisting the temptation to giggle at the idea of a member of the Kings Of Leon being so sick of the band he makes himself sick to get out of their gigs. But True has a laugh at how bad the group is in his complaint about double standards, so it's clear he's not calling for their drunken melt-down to be treated more sympathetically, either.

Which leaves the question... what does he actually think should have been done differently?