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Comment by cryptica | Hacker News Reader

The worst part of this is that the artists which tend to get promoted have zero talent. You cannot compare popular musicians today from those in the 70s and 80s.

Actually there are very talented artists around today but it's impossible to find them... Takes a lot of searching on YouTube. I found some music on YouTube recently that blew me away but it didn't even hit 100k views... This extremely talented artist can't even feed themselves with that.

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The article touches on this, albeit briefly. Talent is no longer a requirement to be popular. Loud, novel - but also familiar -, and repetitive are all qualities that are favored over talent or skill.

I would remark that Johnny Cash's vocal range was something less than a whole octave. Yes, he wrote songs--some good--but I once walked into a bookstore playing an album on which he covered other people's songs. That was odd.

He grew up 'covering' old songs. His family sang together every night - he was very accustomed to singing everything he could. Wasn't a songwriter until later in life. Isn't the purpose of old songs, to be sung?

I guess today we regard some canonical rendition of a song to be the 'correct' one. Does that stem from the dying art of singing - folks don't hear songs except in their most viral form?

I don't think I consider songs to have a canonical rendition. However, I might consider a rendition of "Canzonetta Sull'Aria" by Britney Spears and Madonna to be 'incorrect', and this has less to do with their image than with their voices.

By all means, one should sing old songs, and for many purposes remember Chesterton's dictum that 'anything worth doing is worth doing badly'. But if one is going to market an album of X sings Y, it is well if X actually can sing Y close to tune.

To me, both Personal Jesus and Hurt are Johnny Cash songs now.

I agree. "Hurt" was written by a young addict (Reznor) but Cash's cover coming from a much older ex-addict was really quite moving.

What was the artist's channel?

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