Somebody please explain why there are three musicians and 20 dancers on that stage?

well, the dancers can dance, right? so at least they are doing their job.

but yes, it gets pretty silly when the singer hits some kind of climax and the pyrotechnics go off, and the audience reacts as if the singer sang so good that stuff just exploded. they don't seem to realize they are applauding the guy who pressed the button backstage.

not every style does this, but pop audiences have grown to expect a spectacle that doesn't fit logistically with actual musical performance. so they decided long ago that they preferred lip-syncing with choreography over live music performance. honestly, they are still putting on a show, and there are people working very hard at it... just not at the musical elements that they chose to pre-record.

pop stars are sold as products.

in the most extreme cases: image decided by a stylist, songs written by professional songwriters and chosen by research with focus groups, vocal performance decided by a coach and a producer, edited after the fact by the producer and engineer, choreography decided by another pro, attitude decided by a PR firm...

...so going further down that road, eventually you get to the point where the "artist" isn't needed anymore... you can just use all the other people and program the performance of the "fronting musician"...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhYaX01NOfA

oddly, that actually seems to have live musicians playing along using a click track :)

it's not unartistic... there was still a choreographer, there were still musical choices made in the software... its just the delivery system that has been synthesized.

makes things easier, since she'll never grow up, never get fat, never miss a note, never go to rehab, never show up in the tabloids, never say no to the industry whims.

and in a way, more ethical if they aren't exploiting a real young musician...

so the audience has to decide if thats the future they want, or if there might be some value to having that live musical connection with a real human.

'cause the industry will sell whatever gets bought. and right now, a lot of people are buying the spectacle over the music.

There is a big difference between the "overblown" theatrical shows by Pink Floyd, Alice Cooper. David Bowie , KISS, Queen, Genesis, etc... and today's modern pop shows.

The answer is that today's music is not very imaginative and is very repetitive, with little real lyrical content, to appeal to the lowest common denominator of music fan. (not to say that classic rock hits were not repetitive...take Smoke on the Water, arguably the one of the most famous guitar riffs of all time!)

Of course, back then music was an auditory experience only. There was no video, youtube or TV concerts. You could be ugly as sin, but still be a star.

NOW, you have to be good looking, talent....meh....Of course many of them are good singers,but for some reason they all have to have a bunch of strippers and buff gay dudes, prancing around provocatively to hide the simplistic lyrics and weak single track vocals of the star.

Back in the day, you had a band...that's it...on a bare stage with their equipment. And they played. That's it.

I will NOT defend the 20 backup dancers.

Rick was a bit too harsh, though. Many times the singers ARE singing. The "musicians" ARE playing, but the music is weak and they feel they need to jazz it up with a bunch of choreography. But he is right on things like Super Bowl performances. Lip synced and prerecorded tracks, ala American Bandstand.

"Lipstick on a pig" - you still have a pig. MOST contemporary acts are made of poorly-composed music ("I wrote it all in a half-hour in my hotel room!!!" - yeah, sounds like it . . ) played by people with limited skills, who feel that they must somehow disguise all this with misdirections, sex, flashing lights, etc. Foam rubber fingers and big teddy bears, dresses made of meat, arriving in The Vessel, etc. - all sham. I will pay ANY amount to hear a true artist - a fine jazz soloist, singer in recital (singer plus piano - PERIOD) and many fine theater and classical artists. I have gone to some Vegas spectaculars because - well, it's Vegas. I love Cirque du Soleil - but in ALL those instances, there is legitimate talent, skill, and maybe in the case of the Vegas revue - nostalgia. In a recent documentary movie called, I think "Twenty Feet from Stardom" (not sure about how many feet . . ) one vocal agent said that NOW budgets called for ten grand for post-production *auto-tuning*. He was dumbfounded - he said for decades, you hired singers who SANG IN TUNE.

It seems that the general population is entranced by crap. Why? Because that is now what they are offered - and they believe the hype. How about the questions HERE that ask why we are *haters* when we respond incredulously to a question about "So - Lady Gaga is like just as good as "Baythoven", right??"

There is still respect for good music. My phone still rings - we are still playing the literature we WANT to play, where and when we want. We do not advertise for private students or for playing jobs. And we are not alone. If there are people who like crap - they can have MY seats, thank you.

Music business is not much about the music anymore it seems. There are some talents out there, but the blizzard of BS that gets shoved down throats of tasteless masses tends to bury artists. Janis Joplin would have a hard time getting a contract or even audition in this day and age. Sad.

Because no performers today are actually talented. The "musicians" are not really playing their instruments, the "singer" is not really singing, and the dancers are not dancing. The music is lip synced and the dancing is almost naked women pretending to have sex on stage. Modern music has gone to crap!!