Americans love them some feudings. It’s a way to drop all that pesky sense of community and togetherness and really single out our individuality. It’s a chance to pick sides on some arbitrary issue and run to the nearest comment thread to change the malleable minds of every Internet user. Lately the feuding between celebrities has been nothing short of amazing, and sweetly enough for us, it seems to have only been the beginning.
Last week Sinead O’Connor exchanged heated pleasantries with Miley Cyrus about comments she had about her desire to be controversial – just like O’Connor was in her heyday of head shaves and papal insults. O’Connor wasn’t impressed, and wrote an open letter to the pop princess, warning her of the industry shit storm she was about to drive into.
Miley got livid, so stoned and livid. She lashed out at the iconic “Nothing Compares To You” singer, and the awaiting gas met the readied flame. The marketing managers wet dream of feuds began and took nasty Twitter turns as Cyrus called out O’Connor – likening her to that wackadoo Amanda Bynes – and O’Connor lambasting Cyrus for being an unknowing prostitute of legendary proportions.
But the smoke from that squabble faded this week, and seems to have overstayed its welcome in the media focus. The revived O’Connor, however, had more to say about the music industry in general on a Friday night appearance on Ireland’s “The Late Late Show” – specifically about how Simon Cowell and Louis Walsh (the Irish version of Cowell) are bastardizing the industry.
I think the important thing to say is there's a certain alarm that needs to get rung and I know there are a lot of musicians around the country and around the world that will agree, music is being murdered, rock and roll is being murdered.
The power of rock and roll to change things, to move people, is being murdered by all of this worship of fame, 'Pop Idol,' 'X Factor,' all this stuff. People like Simon Cowell and Louis Walsh – who doesn't even know how to burn a CD as of the last time I saw him – deciding what records should sound like, and deciding who gets to be famous and who doesn't.
So long as O’Connor’s ramblings stay coherent and hit on exactly what most exhausted music fans in America are thinking, we’ll proudly represent team O’Connor. Even though her time in the spotlight is over, we can’t help but hope that she starts some sort of musical revolution with her borrowed fifteen minutes she’s received lately. Or at the very least convince Miley to put her shirt back on.
Leave a Reply