Record Sales

It is sad that we can judge a person’s success by the number record they sell and then compare them based on those sales to masters of the past. I got on this thought when I saw that Mariah Carey surpassed Elvis Presley in #1 hits. I could not name 1 single Mariah Carey song and so far only 1 person I have talked to about this was able to barely remember 1 song. She has not impacted or changed music in any way other than adding a high pitched squeal into her vocal style. She has not influencing tons of people like Elvis, Led Zeppelin, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Elton John, Nirvana, The Beatles, Merle Haggard, George Jones, Hank Williams Jr & Sr, The Bee Gees, Prince and the list goes on and on.  Yet with the internet (obviously not available back in the past) her 286,000 internet downloads the 1st week of the songs release has catapulted her past Elvis. Many other artists have impacted music in way that Mariah Carey will most like never do. The same goes with Carrie Underwood. She is a fantastic Singer and a charming attractive young woman but is not changing music or impacting it anywhere near people like Patsy Cline or Tammy Wynette, Reba Macentire or Shania Twain. They all put a huge fingerprint onto the definition of country music. Carrie Underwood has and most likely will never steer Country music in any new direction. yet her record sales are killing those of the one who have. It is all due to the fact that back in the day an artist had to work hard at getting know. That hard work weeded out the casual singer even if talented. They had to go from show to show, town to town and radio station to radio station peddling their music. This hard work turned them into MORE than a singer or songwriter. It gave them credibility and their enduring presence helped direct a genre. With only 500,000 copies of an album. now it can be announced that a new artist is up and coming. You put her cute smile on a popular tv show and BOOM 50 million people see her all at once. Then a week later you announce a new album (tossed together in a month, with top paid studio musicians) and BEFORE the album hits the shelves, it is platinum. iTunes and online ordering can allow a song to go gold and then platinum in literally hours as opposed to the years it took in the past. Hell, we can popularize a prostitute on the news and people will buy enough of her song recorded the night before to give her a gold rating. Good or bad doesn’t matter in this day of lightning fast connectivity and instant access to anything. I know there is no other easy way to measure someones success than record sales. I wish we could compare them by year or decade so that the comparison is relative.