Royworld - 'Dust'
Imagine, for a second, that you are Simon Cowell. Your job, the thing people actually pay you real money for, is to find entertaining ways to tell someone that something they have worked at, perspired over, dreamed about and desperately perfected is in fact not very good. They look at you with their pleading faces, eager to please, hopeful that you will have a kind word for them, and you have to kill that hope in a rather camp pantomime villain sort of a way. That's your job.
It's a strange job, because it demands a certain kind of performer. You would certainly never see a band like Royworld perform one of their songs on any of the shows which include Simon as a judge. And there's a really good reason for this, which goes beyond any idea of the band keeping their 'credibility' by refusing to take part in his reindeer games.
The real reason is it's fine to do something like the X-Factor with one of your own songs if you basically feel that music is fun, frivolous, sexy, light-hearted and impersonal. Simon will either like it or he won't, but even if he doesn't, his overbearing put-downs will be somehow easier to bear because he's 'only' attacking you on the way you look, the way you sound, and what your song is actually like to listen to.
If you put a lot of yourself into your songs - I get the impression that this is exactly what Royworld do - and created a kind of music which is not silly, and carries a lot of weight with it, and Simon said something like "I have always really liked music like this...BUT NOT ANY MORE", it would be like he's seen through you, to your ever-living soul, and dismissed it on the grounds that it is the wrong shape.
Also, putting Royworld before the Mighty Cowell would present him with a dilemma. They are a likeable band, a band who have a lot going for them, but they're also a little anonymous, and judging on this song alone, seem to bring a lot of drama in their sound but not a great deal of meaning. They're a kind of musical hot air balloon - nice to have around on a clear day, but not something you'd want to follow wherever it may go (and also expensive to maintain, full of wind, and not massively pointful).
Bearing in mind that Simon's two main judging thoughts are either "you suck, but I love you" or "you suck, my senses are appalled", he's going to struggle to put something as relatively complex as "you're OK, but don't put me on your guest list" into a suitably blunt one-liner, so it really is best for all concerned that middle-ranking would-be Killers-type bands keep well away from any of his franchises.
It really does work out better for everyone.
Download: Out now
CD Released: May 19th
(Fraser McAlpine)
Comment number 1.
At 16th May 2008, livingschoolgirl wrote:thank you
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