is classical/pop crossover helping music?

Question

i don't want any accusations of snobbery but all i hear are average musicians/singers backed by huge corporations who,frankly,aren't very good.
at the same time dedicated labels are seeing sales fall,and they're putting out music by uniquely gifted people.
i get wound up when i see the likes of all angels in the same section as cecilia bartoli,someone who can actually do it without a mic,massive reverb and some nob of a chart publicist.
forgive me if you think i'm being uppitty but since when did crooning vaguely constitute opera ?

John W:that's a bloody good point

Answer 1

The only thing that recording companies are interested in helping is their own bank accounts - but it's not new - think of the idiots that proclaimed Mario Lanza an opera singer !!!

On the other hand there was the "Three Tenors" concert/record/dvd. Did that really forward the cause of Music - or their own and their recording companies bank accounts ??

There is hope however. Top Brazilian artists (probably sick of money being syphoned out of the country) have kicked the big companies into touch and started their own label.

How many "artistes" in the english speaking countries have the confidence in their own supposed talent to do the same.

Here - as long as the "performers" look half sh*ggable - the recordings can be doctored into something resembling music / talent - and the silly buggers buy it.

By "buy it" - I don't just mean the punters - I mean the likes of West Life and Spice Girls who actually think they have talent.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..

Oh well - I'll put my soap box away again

Answer 2

Great question!
The whole cross over thing is about one thing and one thing only - Money.
The popular music world at this particular moment in history in completely bankrupt of ideas and talent... so they take a bunch of kids with a modicum of talent (yes I am being charitable here), with looks that could be described as "eye candy", take some rehash of a popular classical tune and voila! Instant revenue.

I guess it had to happen - how else are all the record companies going to keep making money. I mean look at the state of music currently making the rounds - it is not even good pop music. Its all crap. People are looking for something closer to real music and so this is what they come up with - and it requires minimal investment, hell for the most part they don't even have to pay composers.
This is why classical music endures - great music is always great music.

Answer 3

I agree with the ranters!

I hate it when Russell Watson is refered to as an opera singer - HE ISN'T! He's never sung an opera in his life! He just does an impression of an opera singer.

Classical music has it's own beauty, there's absolutely no need to stick drum beats behind it to make it sound 'modern'.

Unfortunately, these 'crossover' artists have the backing of the big record companies, and the buying public generally don't know any better. Until music gets a higher profile in schools, this is unlikely to change. We need to educate kids from a young age that classical music isn't scary, it isn't elitist, it's the basis for all the pop music they listen to.

I love rock, pop and jazz as well as classical. Please let the genuine talent perform the music as it was meant to be!

Answer 4

I can only endorse what my fellow contributors have said. I see red when I hear the likes of those awful frauds. Let me list them:

Josh Grobag
Russell (Awful) Watson
Andrea Boccelli(sm)
Charlotte Church
Paul Potts
Andrea Giordano
Il Divo
Bond
All Angels

All second-rate (at best!), none would last a second in the tough real world of classical music and its strenuous demands (Boccelli only gets into the opera house via his dubious fame - would he have got aywhere if he and his cynical marketing gurus didn't play on his blindness - those closed un-seeing eyes on the front of every album cover!!). I loathe them all - especially when I know how many REALLY good young classical artists struggle to make a decent living.

It's all about money-making and worse than the frauds above are those stupid, cloth-eared people who lap-up the albums and feed the coffers of these fakes and their criminal record companies.

Rant over!

Answer 5

Doesn't this make you guys angry? Your taking the greatest music there ever was and combining it with Britney Spears. I heard Sarah Brightman take the brillant second movement of Beethoven's Seventh and brutalize it into some melo pop piece. I just recently saw his Seventh in concert and it is anything but melo (I've listened to it countless times before but you don't get the full emotion of any classical piece till you see it in concert). It is not melo at all. Beethoven was one intense guy and turning it into a pop song is like turing King Lear into a broadway musical.

Answer 6

Wow, so what you say is you like pop ballads and one classical piece. i'm no longer able to truly help plenty on the pop ballad front, yet in terms of track by way of Debussy, you need to attempt something else from Suite Bergamasque or possibly photos.

Answer 7

Don't even get me started on Il Divo. They're the biggest joke in the music world, to me, with the exception of Sarah Brightman.

Answer 8

No..... crossover is just pop music/rubbish/ear candy. It is all pretty people playing nonsense. "Britney Spears with a violin".

True classical music will endure and perhaps one day we will return to appreciating the music for what it is.

Answer 9

personally I don't like crossover music, but I think it's good start for some one who haven't listen to classical music, as long as that person try the real classical music, it's the only way it can help.

Answer 10

I don't see anything...