[Cooney]

While I certainly know it isn't true you have to do R&B or hip-hop to succeed here, I can certainly understand why she might get that impression from afar.

Look at the young female artists who get the most airtime, and whose work is best known in France - Rihanna, Beyonce, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears... they all end up sounding pretty much the same. The stuff that gets played on TRL (MTV being the one television station in existence that can be received anywhere on the face of the Earth) is generally either R&B or hip-hop stuff, or bubble-gum pop. On my occasional forays there, I don't recall a lot of rock, jazz, metal, alternative, or other styles. Maybe some emo stuff here and there.