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Nivea: 'I was seen as unfuckable, and therefore unsellable'
Remember Nivea? No, not the lotion, the singer.
At the start of the century, she was doing quite well, but around 2005, Jive Records suddenly stopped promoting her second album, Complicated; since then, she's seemed to spend a lot of time working on projects which didn't seem to go anywhere.
What happened? Nivea has a theory:
“At the time I wasn’t receiving a lot of support,” expressed the Atlanta native. “I had management issues and imaging issues. I was being labeled ‘unf*ckable’ to male fans because the industry wants female artist to be attractive because sex sells. They said, ‘you are getting booed up, wifed, and trying to have a baby. You are unf*ckable to us.’ Jive Records, the industry itself and all of the games you have to play, and the fake persona you have to maintain is overwhelming.”Of course, it's not impossible to be, erm, "wifed" and still have a successful career - but you do have to be Beyonce first.
What's especially depressing is that even within its own shabby logic, the music industry makes no sense. Because if you're saying 'basically, we're only making records so we can film videos for people to wank to', what sort of people do you think make up that target market? They'll be sat at home, sports sock at the ready, just about to get going but thinking "you know what, I'd better just check Wikipedia to make sure the person I'm just about to dehumanise doesn't have a home life"? The music industry doesn't understand music fans; it doesn't really seem to understand solitary masturbators either.
What's wrong with the entertainment industry? Don't they understand how fantasy works? "Yeah, sorry, you'd have been perfect for the role of Superman but now the Mail Online has these pictures of you taking a bus, the audience will KNOW you don't fly everywhere."
But this is discovering someone has dug a cesspit in your living room and worrying about the quality of the spadework. The most depressing thing is it's not even surprising hearing that the 21st Century music industry still has the values that made post-war Hollywood such a wonderful place for a young woman to be.
2 comments:
"At the time I wasn’t receiving a lot of support,” expressed the Atlanta native."
Nice use of 'expressed' there. Reminds me of those English lessons where you'd have to write about a conversation without using the word 'said'. "How are you?" I asked. "Fine, thanks" he replied. "Is that a new hat?" I enquired. "Yes, I just bought it" he explained. "It looks good" I exclaimed. "Thank you, it fits perfectly" he yodelled.
It seems we project the reaction we'd normally have to this sort of thing onto long-haired spandex glam dude Rawk Stars, who in the end have turned out to be a lot more "real" than many, many other people trying to "make it" in the music industry. They may have been upfront about being "commercial" (which may be why most of them dropped it when they got the signal from the industry that that sort of thing would no longer get them anywhere big), but deep down they were doing something they believed in, no matter how terrible it could be musically (something which punk has always gotten away with for some reason).
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