ability != talent

For the uninitiated, the symbols “ != “ in the title, when used together, are a programming operator that means “Not Equal To”.  The title tells you kind of where I intend to go, but I should forewarn you, gentle reader- this entry is probably one of my most opinionated offerings, and you should take it worth a grain of salt.

Years ago, the late, great jazz bassist Charlie Haden made some statements regarding artistic integrity.  (I tried to find the quote on the internet, but failed to do so.)  Basically, Mr. Haden did not cotton to artists taking money for art, because it cheapened the whole experience and corrupted the noble expression made by an artist.

While I find that the ultimate end of that statement to be a little naive – we all need to make money to live – there is some truth in it.  In fact, there’s a lot of truth in it.

In days gone by, for an artist to be successful meant a lot of work on their part.  Practice, practice and more practice and then the application of that practice were commonplace.  No artist would ever have thought to watch a 5 minute video on something and claim to be an expert- not just from the standpoint of there were no 5 minute videos to watch, but because just doing something by wrote and imitating others is not a personal statement.  Audiences of the day were keen to pick up the lack of depth that comes from efforts like this, because they didn’t have a constant barrage of “new and improved” whatever to try and take in.  People like John Coltrane and Miles Davis would push the edges of what they did by trial and error.  This didn’t just happen in jazz circles, either- the whole Rock And Roll world did it, too, and McCartney, Lennon, Jagger, Plant, Page, Beck and more would reinvent themselves by listening to others and then applying it to what they did, rather than to become the others.  Record companies rewarded this kind of forward thinking by putting money behind the projects and inventing marketing campaigns to move these folks into the spotlight.

No, it wasn’t perfect.  Lots of artists ended up losing their shirts in the deal through corruption and bad contracts – some died penniless, too.  I had an occasion many years ago in Nashville to engineer on a session with the great Dee Murray, the bassist for Elton John.  Murray had played on all John’s early hits like “Philadelphia Freedom” and “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” – and at that time, he was living under a freeway bridge along I-65 near Berry Hill.  He didn’t even own a bass anymore, and I had to lend him mine for the session.  He was brilliant during that session, but he was also very sick and had absolutely no money or a way to get the care he needed.  I bought him lunch and dinner that day (the first “meals” he had had in almost a week, he said) and gave him a couch in the apartment I was renting at the time to sleep on for 2 nights.  Dee suffered a massive stroke about 3 months after that session and died without so much as two dimes to rub together.  While it would be easy to blame John for Murray’s plight, it wasn’t all his fault- the label insisted that John make changes in his band several times over his career, and John wasn’t in a position to refuse.

But, I digress from the point I’m trying to make.

Today, the “machines” that propel an artist forward are in place way before the artist is found.  If you remember the Brady Bunch episode where Greg becomes “Johnny Bravo”, you remember that the only reason he made it was because he “fit the suit” and the producers really didn’t care if Greg could sing or not.  In the movie “Rock Star”, Mark Wahlberg becomes “Izzy” of the band Steel Dragon largely because of the same reason.  Yes, those are fictional accounts, but nowadays it is common practice and quite real.

Technology has had a hand in this paradigm shift, too.  Anyone with a computer and Garage Band is now a “producer”, and fairly decent sounding tunes can be made with absolutely no one playing any instruments at all.  Singers who can’t sing are autotuned to get them into pitch – something that wasn’t possible 20 years ago.   It’s very common for players who do actually play on tracks to have played together with other players they’ve never actually met.  (That has happened to me so many times, I’ve stopped counting the occasions.)

So what the heck does all this have to do with ability not equaling talent?

I wanted to try and give context before going into what I’m getting at.

Let’s take the strange case of Justin Bieber.  Bieber was “discovered” by Ray Braun, a “producer” who was looking through videos on YouTube for new talent, and stumbled across him accidentally.  He was impressed enough to sign Bieber to a record contract based on those videos.

STOP RIGHT THERE.

Ray Braun signs someone because he accidentally stumbles across a video of some kid?  Oh, sure- I’ll bet there was at least one meeting between the two of them to find out if the kid could do what was on the videos- maybe.  Let’s say that did happen.  What are Braun’s qualifications for knowing what constitutes talent?  Who else has he worked with?  What else has he done?

(In the not-to-distant past, to get signed to a record label took a lot of work- showcases, gigs, try-outs, refusals, schmoozing- and many, many talented bands never got them at all.)

Turns out that Braun founded his “record label” to promote his son.   Did his son have any talent?  Probably not- can you name his son?  I bet you can’t.  Braun saw dollar signs, and Bieber bit.

Bieber can play drums (fairly well, actually) and guitar (if you like nothing but barre chords) and he can dance (quite well) and his singing voice is so-so.  His real appeal to Braun was no doubt his looks.  Braun’s marketing department pushed only a few of those things and hired “songwriters” (people with GarageBand that know how to drag and drop) to “write” (read: program) songs for him, but Bieber didn’t actually write them.  (How do I know this?  If you look at the song credits, they are listed as “Words and Music by xxxx, yyyy and Justin Bieber” – whenever the artist is listed last, it means they didn’t write it- they bought it.)

What this means is that it was never about Bieber’s talent- it was about his ability and availability.  The talent is in the marketing team that saturates the marketplace.  If you want “talent” in this equation, it starts and stops with Braun, but I wouldn’t really call it that.  I’d call it "a seized opportunity". (There probably is talent in being able to recognize when to do that.)

And, since the market is saturated, the audience just assumes that there is something to this equation.  People who don’t know better automatically assume that since this kid is everywhere, that he is “talented” and lack the critical thinking to think otherwise.  (yeah.  Lack of critical thinking ability is something of a trigger for me.)  It doesn’t even matter if it’s good press or bad press- it’s just press, and you eat it up.

In recent days, I’ve gotten into several “debates” with people online about what constitutes talent, and more than a few of them have confused “ability” with “talent”, and they aren’t the same thing at all.  When I offer them my side of it, they rail against it, because they think I’m calling them stupid because they can’t tell the difference.

Let me be clear: I am calling them stupid.  Because they are.

The very second that Mr. Bieber becomes not-popular, he will be jettisoned regardless of his so-called talent.  And, when he’s jettisoned, the press will have a field day and everyone who was a Belieber will say things like, “Yeah.  I knew it.  He was a flash in the pan.”  But they didn’t know it, and they didn’t admit it, and they are about as talented at discerning these things as Mr. Bieber is without his autotune and without his marketing machine.

Don’t confuse “ability” with “talent”.   This is actually a little more important than you might think- it doesn’t extend just to art.  It extends to many more important things.  Take the POTUS race we’re in right now- Mr. Trump has ability in the form of a marketing machine that pushes him forward, but no talent where it’s gonna count in being a statesman.  Mrs. Clinton has ability in the form of being able to say the right thing at the right time, no talent where it’s gonna count in having integrity with the US citizenry.  This confusion has brought us nothing but problems in the recent past, and if we can’t identify this when it comes to something like art, music and dance, then we’re gonna have real problems discerning this difference on anything important.  If you are one of these people that watches “The Voice”, “America’s Got Talent” or “American Idol” and truly believes that you are seeing talented people, then you are part of the problem.  If you are one of the people who actually cares about what Kim Kardashian, Caitlin Jenner or any other reality show celebrity has to say about things that matter, you are part of the problem.  (Personally, I think that if you watch reality TV, you shouldn’t be allowed to vote.)  The people you are watching on these shows have the ability to get on a show, but no talent to make the world a better place.