Good music can hardly be called the prerogative of any class, but to be fair what has any of us got to sing about, seeing as "we've never had it so good"

@Neuroskeptic

It was actually Black Sabbath's guitarist Tony Iommi who created metal. After losing the tips of his fingers on his right hand (he's a left handed player), he tuned his strings down to make playing more comfortable and that's how the metal sound came about. Combine that with Geezer butler's dark lyrics, Bill Ward's ominous drumming and Ozzy's wails and you have the first ever metal band.

From my post, you could gather that I am a dynasty hater. Particularly because I think India was badly served by Gandi family.

However, what do we do of Norah Jones. Should we be sad that she is successful even though she had nothing but genes from her father. Or be angry with her father for abandoning the child?

Or maybe just celebrate? Like like that. Like that or not like that.

Not an easy question to answer.

I agree with Lloyd. Talent (and that's an understatement at best) is mostly manufactured in America. I get excited with anticipation when I hear a spawn from Rocker Royalty on the scene. Bob Dylan and John Lennon's (sean) prodigies are good examples of hard working kids who don't use their parents fame as an excuse not to practice their craft. I am really looking forward to see what Bruce Springsteen and Bono's off spring have to offer.

buckskins, ehtch tee is a wee cardiff boyo who loves tom jones,medhi hassan is just becoming at pantomine act and in fact he should get a part cinderella,that man is so biter and twisted and paranoid,as for laurie penny,do you know what buckskins,she only 24 and a young lady finding her way in life, and i would be amazed when she settles down and gets married if she is still writing a blog in the new statesman,in fact 15 years on i could see her writing a column for the daily mail alongside the excellent melanie philips,everybody can change,just look at nick clegg,hows that !!!

Include me in, on bass. But only on condition I have my own dressing room.

well buckskins,behind all laurie pennys feminist angst and fury, i reckon lies a bit of a raver who likes to go to a good party at the weekends and indulges in a bit of drinking and weed smoking listening to old led zeppelin records surrounded by josh sticks,i might be wrong, but then again when i was 24 i certainly spent my younger years getting drunk and stoned and iam 32 now and i cant remember much now about what i done in my 20s i was that stoned.but as they say life is supposed to be a pleasure and not a misery,there you go!!

You should have a listen to Luton's "The Adenoids" & their side project "Granny's C*nt". Often very humourous punk songs, completely BPI-free, by real people, not plastic trustafarians.

A career in a "creative" industry for someone without the imagination to find her own path in life... like goldy or bronzey, but made of iron.

More seriously, Left Is Forward nails it.

The Internet revolution has fundamentally reshaped modern music .Arcade Fire have a dynamism and musical brilliance which draws parallels with the great bands of the late 1960's .however they are not known to the wider public despite being number 1 across the road.record companies can't invest in music if people don't buy it .that's why the horrific music that pollutes the airwaves is extremely poor.there are only 200 records shops left in the uk .the younger generation will be queueing up for FIfa 11 or CAll of Duty rather than going to the record shop to buy a latest albums which the young people did in the 1970's .the game had changed for music

Coco Who?

"so many of our pop icons are famous primarily for being someone's son or daughter?"

So many? There's Coco and...er...who?

If by "pop" you mean "pop culture" not "pop music" then yes, of course, a lot of celebs are only famous for being related to someone famous but that's because people are interested in the families of famous people.

Ozzy Osborne is deservedly famous as the founder of metal; for some reason he and his family decided to turn their lives into a crap TV show but the rest of them owe their fame to Ozzy. You can hardly blame people for being interested in the other Osbornes, and given their background, a career in showbiz was inevitable anyway so...

Surely Coco is not the one to blame, but the glossies that herald the arrival of her and her ilk? Also, rather than denigrating this young woman, would it not be more productive to propose a more viable and, dare I say it, worthy holder of the title of 'icon'?

If the youth of today are only spoonfed their role models by the press then, as a member of the industry with a voice, why not offer an alternative?

I don't mean to be overly argumenative, I completely agree with your sentiment. I just feel that there's a final step to be taken.

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Mr D; Ha ha, now we all know that would defeat the object! My poster will be appropriately worded and aimed at the disgraceful actions of this coalition over their plans to withdraw Legal Aid to people who positively need it to challenge unjust & over bureaucratic decisions made by the DWP, HMRC and LA's.

"...but Sting, she ain't."

Well, that's one thing she's got going for her...

my hall of fame for musical legends and icons has to be dolly parton xxx and slash ex of guns&roses the best guitarist in the world since jimi hendrix.

Blimey even "Rebellion" has been approved and is now corporate!

this is partly our fault, thats all of us collectively, whoever we may be.

the pop music industry is like a giant chameleon, it will change its skin to suit whatever is popular at the time, so if something is successful then loads of copycat artists will appear, so we have one successful rock royalty star, like kelly osbourne (though i hate to use the word successful here, but in thier terms i suppose she was) and they will then throw more at us til we die of boredom.

the only real solution is to start buying music not on the basis of the persona of the artist but on what the damn thing sounds like, if people were to rebel and buy only good music, regardless of what the person looked like or the image they chose, then where would that leave them? they'd have to try and copy and provide us with some music worth buying, unlikely though it seems.

we'd be back in the 1960's, sort of!

@frances smith

It's interesting - it is partly our fault, in a sense, as consumers, but it's also misleading to see consumers as having a real choice.

Music sales are very strongly correlated with publicity. There are plenty of "nobodies" who are perfectly good songsmiths and musicians, and who make their music available for download or even physical purchase, but can only afford to do it as a sideline because they don't make enough money. Nobody has ever heard of them, so people don't buy their stuff.

The son or daughter of a famous person knows all the right people to start with. How to find a label. How to pull the strings. How to get press coverage. How to get airtime. Moreover, celebrity is a valuable and to some extent inheritable asset - it's possible to get coverage as the son or daughter of someone famous to start with, before developing your own career later. Had she become a painter rather than a songstress, she'd still have sold a few paintings on the back of her name and connections.

So blaming society is only partly the answer. We have a large profit-driven music industry (if they think they can use her parents' names to make a success out of her rather rather than another singer of exactly equal talent but less auspicious background, they rationally will do so), we have legal nepotism (the comment above about New Statesman internships is telling!), we also have an insatiable media appetite for "celebrity" (partly driven by readership/viewing figures - but that in turn only matters because they are profit-driven industries; if all media was state-owned like the BBC we COULD compel a less fawning or shallow attitude).

There are solutions. And it's not enough to blame society or consumers. But unfortunately the only solutions I can think of are genuinely radical - it's difficult to shift the advantage that having famous parents bestows, without very restrictive legal changes and big alterations to media ownership and obligations.

http://www.midheaven.com/

awesome anti mainstream ,avant experimental weirdness with not a single pander to stardom desire

its not what you know, its who you know. always been there, always will be.

this story is small fry. imagine being in hollywood where nearly everyone is a friend of a friend or family

nice thinking buckskins,i might just do that.

"It's interesting - it is partly our fault, in a sense, as consumers, but it's also misleading to see consumers as having a real choice.

Music sales are very strongly correlated with publicity. There are plenty of "nobodies" who are perfectly good songsmiths and musicians, and who make their music available for download or even physical purchase, but can only afford to do it as a sideline because they don't make enough money. Nobody has ever heard of them, so people don't buy their stuff."

Eh? Of course consumers have a choice. For one thing, we have a choice as to whether or not to buy music as opposed to torrenting it (let's be honest) so what sells is irrelevant.

It's true that in order to be a full time professional musician you need to sell. But there are thousands and thousands of local bands, many of them excellent, that do it part time.

if you like them, buy their stuff. if you like them but not enough to buy them, you are a hypocrite, but go and torrent their stuff and listen to it.

it's your choice.

Thank you Laurie, but we have it far worse in America where the corporate bosses have manufacture talentless glamouraty pop dribble for years now. With robot radio stations owned by right wing master minds real grassroots music is ground out under the jack booted heal of cultural fascism.

Great article Laurie
Love ya tons

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