Justin Beiber, as apparently 3%* of the world population knows and obsesses over, is probably one of music businesses biggest money makers. His youtube videos have approximately 195 million views (I rounded up to calculate the total world population that have seen Justin Bieber movies), and his fans will pay $650 for a bottle of water he SIPPED and didn't like. Seriously.
how did I get on to this cultural phenomenon? I knew he existed, kinda, but I actually didn't know he really existed until I saw this funny news article. It actually started with a kitty, but then linked to the Huffington Post about the horrible things Justin Beiber fans do. For the entertainment of the masses, I will post the wonderful link here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/14/bieber-fever-the-craziest_n_609659.html#s97776
So, after reading this, I had to wonder,"What exactly does this little kid DO that makes him so famous?" In my quest, I searched the wild and tremulous Youtubes for answers, and lo and behold I found it. One time. I, in the spirit of the explores before us, clicked on the link.
And was horrified.
Like, seriously.
It actually isn't the voice. I myself am stuck, possibly forever, in tenorish baritonish land. It is not a nice place to be because I can't sing like Anthony Green (Circa Survive) OR hit low notes like solid basses.
It's actually because his music is horribly awful. I mean it's..... It's 4 chords minus the 4th chord. he manages to be a millionaire with 3 chords. I tell you I give the hat to the talent scout who said, "Ooh this little kid is gonna make me some money" and squeeze that bank until his voice cracks, which I hope will happen soon.
Until then, I will analyze him, and by him I mean his "music", and point out every thing he does that is wrong. Some of this I know through music and singing experience, some of it from stylistic view, and all of it to point out how these people are just piggy banks to the big music business**.
And I will do it with MOVIES!!!!
There is a actually funny argument going on between the lovers and haters of JB (I'm shortening up the name of this because it's too long to spell) on the youtube comments thread, though the grammar and intelligence is so low that you're GPA drops half a letter by the time you're done reading the first page. Like me forgetting the apostrophe in 'youre' or remembering how to spell 'opostrophe'.
Now onto simple structural analysis. The piece starts with the usual I-vi-IV-V structure and never deviates from it like a good little 4 chord pop song. You can argue the chords between each of the chords are also chords, but they add no significance to the piece, and are considered neighboring chords, which in fact do nothing, and therefore we don't count them, or at least don't have to count them. If you have no idea what I'm talking about look at the bottom since I put the super basic idea of theory at the bottom.
Here's a funny video about 4 chords if you haven't seen it:
Back to the song, it uses a standard verse/refrain and doesn't stop until the music video ends. I don't think I actually have watched more than the first minute and a half, since that's all I need to listen to before I know it's not gonna change.
This is him live. The funny bit, he only ever plays 2 chords. Ever. Listen and see it's true. Also his intonation sits a bit flat, not all the time but on larger leaps it shows. You'll notice it in this video and this next one too.
One, he seems to only have one song or something. two, notice his shoulders while he breathes. He scrunches them up, which is a HUGE musician nono. Not only does it give you less breath support (which I guess doesn't matter since he's all mic'd up and whatnot) but it also causes to make your body tense, which is not what you want. I'm 90% sure this goes with singers as well as clarinetists, but it definitely is not good. Gah the intonation isn't that good live, so at least he sings the music and isn't syncing.
I feel sorry for the kid. I mean he can quit if he wants, but I bet whoever owns his record owns him until he's 18, and any breach will allow them to pursue legal action. I mean his job is more the look than the actual talent. His pitch is okay, his voice is, begrudgingly decent, but really it's just because he's 'adorable' that he's making money. If you want adorable, this is adorable:
I think this cat should go into show business. If that isn't adorable, I don't know what is.
Oh, and I want a top-hat now.
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A quick example to get people to understand what the theory, chords have 3 notes based on the scale the chord is in. Let's take a C Major scale:
C D E F G A B (C)
Now when you number the scale, which are called scale degrees, you get:
C D E F G A B (C)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 (1)
This is usually in Roman numerals, but they line up better if I use Arabic numbers.
For each scale degree, there are three corresponding notes that are in the scale, and that makes a chord. If you want to be smart you can call it a trichord, since there are also tetrachords, decachords, etc.
*The percentage of world population was based of the amount of people who watched the video rounded up to 200,000,000 and world population. Is it 7 billion now? don't remember.
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