Quote:
Originally Posted by Corsaire
There are exceptions, but I think that, in general, what makes a music album (a movie, a TV show....) appealing to the masses is about 75% marketing and hype and 25% artistic/entertainment value. You could convince the masses to buy UEDS tomorrow if you wanted to. You could convince the masses Alizée’s has reinvented herself into a really relevant artist and that UEDS is a great achievement. You can sell Celine Dion and Madonna all you want or you can make them disappear in the background. You can make Lady Gaga one day and break her the next day. The entertainment industry can create any hype it wants to. The entertainment industry decides what it wants to sell to the people and not the other way around.
....
|
I think an important factor you left out is reputation. Surprisingly, the French people didn't seem to give Alizée any credit for the success of her first two albums. They seemed to think it was mainly if not all due to MF.
So with Psych, Lily was more or less starting off with no reputation, like a new singer that comes along and some good marketing could have led to much better results for this album, but with UEDS, she now had a reputation, one apparently the French people were not impressed with and I think no amount of marketing would have made much of an impact on the sales of this album.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Corsaire
I beg to differ. I think that Alizée/MF/LB could have run this operation for at least 10 more years if they had wanted to. They could have kept the sexual titillation going and all that was really needed was an adjustment to the lyrics (less juvenile) and some other minor details to be worked out. Apparently, Alizée wanted to explore other avenues, but I wouldn’t reject the possibility that MF/LB could have offered Alizée some other type of image that she didn’t want to be a part of.
....
|
I don't think the music MF/LB wrote had to be titillating in order to sell. Look at the song Tempete. I think it's one of Alizée's most beautiful songs and there's nothing of a really sexual nature in there. It's a song about Napoleon and there are several other songs that aren't of a sexual manner, at least not on the surface. Lou ou Toi, A qoui reve une jeune fille and Amelie m'a dit are all beautiful songs, proving at least to me, that they didn't need sex to sell.
But maybe this was a direction MF didn't want to go in, didn't want to do damage to the reputation she had created for herself.