Got to post about a topic that I thought about for the last few days, but did not have the time or thoughts to really discuss.
I feel like I am looking at this whole 'True' circus, very much from the outside and with quite a bit of amazement.
I am not typically a dance music listener and within electronic music, which I often like a lot, the EDM section was usually the one I had the least bit of connection with. I love soaring vocals set over a drum beat, but would traditionally lean more towards a rock sound ala Queen, for example, rather than the more disco/funk oriented one that Adam or Nile are producing.
But I love Adam, and he loves dance music forward and backwards and so I have gotten to expand my horizons over the years.
Now, here comes a DJ, embedded in the EDM /house music culture and its ideas about what music should be, what role a DJ plays, etc. The whole notion of seeing the DJs as a full musician, rather than a lover of music who plays tracks, the level of musical talent vs technical skill that goes into the production of electronic music, is mostly quite new to me.
In the same way, I see throngs of people, who come to all this from the other side.
They are used to the electronic feed, listening to it for hours. They do not ask who the artists are behind the sonic drip, but rather show an interest to bathe in the richness and layers of overwhelming sound, use it to relax/numb their minds and to allow them to enjoy the feeling of a dance community, their world of expression or flight, whichever it may be.
Avicii makes them open their minds too, and quite a bit at that. They get introduced to soaring vocals, and while some are electronically altered, the natural voice in its variety, is very much in the foreground on this album. How may young folks have so gotten used to the generic pop autotune sound, that they are actually not open to the sound of a natural voice anymore? Kind of like a child who only plays with Barbies and finds a regular baby doll ugly or 'thick'. Or a boy who watches too much TV and sees only the beautiful women on the shows he watches and cannot relate anymore to any natural face in his own surroundings.
Avicii now places this album in front of all these 'autotuned brains' and asks people to come along for the ride. I can see from comments made by Avicii fans, how this is actually demanding for them. Both the variety of musical styles and genres as well as the various vocal and instrumental sounds, seems to be challenging and at times jarring for them, when to me, this is a relief from the monotony of other sounds I find in EDM.
It is an interesting experiment, and we will see whether Avicii will alter his fanbase with this album or whether his previous fans will come along for the ride. If they do, their ears get opened to vocals. That is a tremendous achievement and will open the doors for other bands and musicians to bring stronger vocals to their music too. That would be fantastic for Adam overall.
I am not too concerned, and hope others are not either, about how much Adam's name is paraded around within the EDM community now. They are not buying this music for the vocalists, they are buying a sound. Here we have Adam as the musician, who is helping to create a sound, it is not his name in the foreground. Obviously, if this were all that Adam were doing, that would be different, then he would only provide his vocal services to music of others. Not that this could not be a career also, but it probably would not be a good fit for Adam. But clearly, this is not the case, so there is nothing to worry about.
I see Adam's participation in this in a different way:
a) I believe that Adam himself has not yet found his sound or musical style. He is still experimenting. And with this collaboration, he probably learned a lot and got to try out something new with two artists who come from very different backgrounds.
b) He finally has a soaring vocals over electronic beat track that is high on the world wide charts, where the discussion is about the music, and totally removed from the personal debates that otherwise always grab the spotlight with him.
c) He is, as discussed above, influencing musical perception of vocals in general and hopefully this generates a wish for more vocal realness in much of music. That would be wonderful
d) This hit will provide an income stream. Adam has song-writing participation rights, and he is the vocalist. So any album sold, any LMD single sold across the world, any play on radio or other medium results in income. He may not need dimmers for his home anymore, but maybe he could use some dimmers for a future A3 tour.
It is all good. And I don't think that pushing Adam's name to the foreground artificially should be our main goal. Where it organically occurs, sure, but forcing it onto an EDM crowd that does not care one hoot about who is who, probably makes little sense overall, and might just annoy folks.
In the music business, Adam is already recognized by many, and a few more will wake up with this round. Adam is again part of a new and experimental movement in music and I love to be part of the ride.
Thank you so much Craazyforadam ![]()
Your essays are so great. When I read them I have to use a dictionary because English is not my native language. I always enjoy your posts but this one was so good. I have same kind ideas about Avicii and Adam. I'm 68 years old grandmother and grazy for Adam as you are
This was so good:
"Avicii makes them open their minds too, and quite a bit at that. They get introduced to soaring vocals, and while some are electronically altered, the natural voice in its variety, is very much in the foreground on this album. How may young folks have so gotten used to the generic pop autotune sound, that they are actually not open to the sound of a natural voice anymore? Kind of like a child who only plays with Barbies and finds a regular baby doll ugly or 'thick'. Or a boy who watches too much TV and sees only the beautiful women on the shows he watches and cannot relate anymore to any natural face in his own surroundings."
I have listened to LMD over and over again and I love it : Adam's great soaring vocal and Nile's great guitar
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