When Rich People Decide to Make Music
Warning: Contains non-anti-capitalist sentiments
Frank Harte, an Irish musician and musicologist, once said:
“Those in power write the history, while those who suffer write the songs.”
Yes, some of the most important innovations throughout the history of music have come from the disenfranchised, from Bach to Biggie.
But what happens when those in power write songs? Because while there is certainly truth to Harte’s adage, another truth is that plenty of music has been made by people who show little-to-no signs of suffering. Imagine what Harte would have to say about someone like, say, this person releasing an album and becoming a DJ:
On the most recent episode of The Skip Button, I did a deep dive into Paris Hilton’s music career, and asked if people were right to delegitimize her album, Paris, as well as her lucrative DJ career. In the name of objectivity, I tried to judge her music outside of the context of her incredibly privileged, highly exploitative life and career. From this forgiving angle, Paris is actually not a half-bad pop album; it’s a convincing if totally unnecessary review of musical trends that were dominating the mainstream in the mid-2000’s (this might actually make it a better album than the equally eclectic JC Chasez album, Schizophrenic, and you know how much I hate to admit that).
But the more I listened to Paris, the more I started to ask myself some heavy questions, like: how did my life get so derailed that I found myself listening to Paris Hilton’s 2006 album for the 12th time on a Tuesday afternoon? TBD. The other question I had was not if Paris’ music holds up when viewed under an objective lens, but should Paris’ music be viewed under an objective lens? Should those in power receive the same critical treatment as those who suffer?
This question seems to pop up every time a celebrity decides they want to make an album. Shaquille O’Neal, Seth MacFarlane, and Scarlett Johansson are just a few examples of people who had no shortage of wealth and influence long before they released any music. It always seems to make us skeptical and uncomfortable. Why? I believe it’s in part because we can’t help but think that maybe these people weren’t capable of making good music without the aid of fame and fortune. Now that they have the overhead and influence to make a marginally successful album, why the hell wouldn’t they? We’re fine with people being rich and famous because they make music; should we be ok with people making music because they’re rich and famous?
I think Rich Juzwiak, who was nice enough to be on the Paris episode, tried to answer this in his recent review of Paris’ album for Pitchfork when he said of the project “It’s a concept album whose concept is: What if Paris Hilton made an album?” In other words, the album offers nothing but an expansion of the vapid universe Paris had been creating and cashing in on since 2003. Are music critics supposed to ignore the privilege she flagrantly dangled in front of us along the way? Am I really supposed to give this album a chance, knowing full well it’s by the same spoiled heiress who already made millions just by saying things like “That’s hot”?
I feel like the answer should be “no”, but that would mean assuming that her music is inherently lesser before even giving it a chance. That sort of runs counter to my whole “thing” here on The Skip Button, so I’m going to need a little more convincing.
People’s refusal to give albums like Paris the benefit of the doubt seem to be based on two assumptions:
People like Paris have never suffered and
People who haven’t suffered can’t make good music
If these assumptions are true, it might explain why Paris made songs like her hit single, “Stars are Blind”, a rip-off of Lord Creator’s “Kingston Town”. If she’s too privileged to conjure up her own artistry, she might as well steal someone else’s, right?
But I think we might need to take a second look at those assumptions. Now, before people get too worked up, these assumptions are of course rooted in a legitimate struggle; “eat the rich”, et cetera, et cetera. However, like all theories, we need to acknowledge the exceptions. This, I imagine, was the purpose of This is Paris, the YouTube documentary that, in part, details the emotional, physical, and sexual abuse Paris suffered throughout her life. I’m not going to sit here and say everyone should watch the documentary (let’s be honest, I mainly watched it to give off the impression that I actually do research for this show). However, I did find it hard not to sympathize with her as she relayed this history of abuse, which she suffered at the hands of Provo Canyon School - a boarding school in Utah where she was repeatedly beaten - as well as ex-boyfriends like Rick Salomon, who coerced her into making a sex-tape and then released it after their breakup (as Juzwiak correctly pointed out, today this would be called “revenge porn”). Is the whole documentary just propaganda used to make a past-her-prime celebrity more sympathetic and exciting? Lil’ bit. But at the same time, I had to kick myself for all the times I made fun of Paris for things she was clearly a victim of, like the sex tape. I had to kick myself for thinking that Paris had never suffered.
To be 100% clear, none of this has a goddamn thing to do with her music career, a career whose method of handling trauma, if it has one, is burying it under more shades of pink rather than expressing any emotion that might be rooted in it. It’s also worth saying that suffering and privilege are by no means binary, and there is obviously no shortage of people whose voices are in much more need of amplifying than Paris’. However, to say that people like Paris don’t suffer at all is an assumption that doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny.
But is there any legitimacy to the idea that there’s a correlation between suffering and artistry?
If this correlation exists, it can’t be one-to-one. After all, plenty of privileged celebrities have released albums that are far more artful than Paris: Shaq-Fu: Da Return solidified Shaquille O’Neal as an MC worthy of respect; Seth MacFarlane’s music, if a little contrived and haughty, has rightfully earned five Grammy nominations; Scarlett Johansson’s solo album, Anywhere I Lay My Head, is lackluster in its execution, but far more ambitious than any music Paris ever made.
A noteworthy difference between these projects and Paris is that the intention feels much different. Anywhere I Lay My Head, for example, seems to exist in part as a way for us to understand Johansson in terms of something other than her acting career (Hey Scarlett, if that’s true, now might be a good time to drop a new album). Paris, as Juzwiak points out, does the opposite; the album doesn't give us an alternative to Paris Hilton’s image as a privileged elite, it doubles down on it, offering a version of her that is just as spoiled and self-interested as anything else she’s ever done. This comes through not only in the album’s songs, but also in its execution.
While I ultimately liked Paris more than I expected to (“Screwed” slaps), one thing that really bothers me about the album is how little Paris seemed to care about it. This is pretty blatant on songs like “Fighting Over Me”, where the process seemed to be: have Scott Storch make a killer beat, get verses from two bona fide rap stars, and give it to Paris so she could lazily sing four redundant lines and call it a day. She didn’t exactly seem insistent on putting in 101%. And why should she have? What was she going to do if she didn’t, go broke? Hah!
The reason she could put in so little effort is because she had all the money in the world to hire the best songwriters, producers, and marketers so that, regardless of how hard she phoned it in, the album would still be successful. I get why that seems a little sketchy. However, it’s worth asking: is this any different than what all major record labels do for any of their artists? Isn’t that same kind of money being shelled out for Dua Lipa’s album? Or The Weeknd’s? Or Cardi B’s? After all, “I Like It” was a song designed by the CEO of Atlantic Records, who selected and paid for the sample, gave it to one of his rising superstars, and partnered her up with two bona fide Reggaeton stars so that the label could reverse engineer a hit. Kinda sounds like “Fighting Over Me”, doesn’t it?
This is obviously a messy comparison for several reasons. For one, while Cardi certainly has plenty of leverage in the music industry, she is also disprivileged in many ways Paris is not, like race (the same, by the way, can be said about Shaq). The other problem with this comparison is that we have access to music Cardi B made before she got rich and famous, so we can be pretty sure she doesn’t exactly need all that capital to make successful records. My point is, if we’re going to let our feelings about capitalism effect our taste in music, let’s try to be honest with ourselves about where that starts and ends.
Look, there’s no doubt that the success and, indeed, very existence of Paris’ album was due in no small part to the power she had when she made it. However, so many of our pop idols are in a position of power simply by the fact that they get to be our pop idols. If we discredit Paris’ music solely on the basis of her power, where does it stop? At Scarlett? At Shaq? At Cardi?
Ultimately, we can’t pre-judge an album by the privilege of it’s creator. We can, however, judge an album by how the creator’s privilege affects the end result. Is Paris Hilton’s album little more than a collection of half-assed songs made only to benefit her brand and bank account? Yes…
… But I didn’t know that until I actually listened to it.
