To be a successful artist, you have to be rather confident in your work. Yet some take that a step further and make a public image of that confidence and are subsequently labeled as arrogant or cocky. Cockiness is funny and it makes for good quotes, but it tends to distract from the actual art. Kanye West's braggadocio was charming at first, but his attitude has become increasingly as notable as his music, if not more. And there are the Gallagher brothers - the fighting twins who declared their goal to be the biggest band in the world and began knocking ever European band who was generating buzz among fans or critics. While they maintained success in the UK, Oasis' attitude did not sit well with US fans. KCRW programmer Nic Harcourt believes that the band rubbed a lot of influential people the wrong way, something which made the American music business reluctant to work with other UK bands. Latest in the display of cockiness are Razorlight, whose singer Johnny Borrell tells NME that his band is better than Arctic Monkeys. That is small potatoes, however, to Borrell's previous declaratio of being a genuis. "When I said it, I certainly felt like more of a genius than the awful bands NME were championing... And a lot of the bands around now are pretty average. So, if you ask me if I feel like a genius compared to them, then yeah, I do. . . . I feel like a genius more than most people, that's for sure."Whether or not Razorlight's second album will back up Borrell's statements is besides the point. A cocky persona gets attention quickly, but it is very one-dimensional. Once labeled as such, it becomes hard to convince the public of otherwise. In film and television, the most popular characters are conflicted, and have depth. The one-dimensional cocky guy tends to be the villain nobody cares about.
(BTW - is it just me or does that photo look like someting out of a Hot Topic catalogue accompanied by the words, "The Indieboy Look"?)
4 comments:
I'd like to order one of the black indieboy t-shirts, please. And a pair of those cuffed jeans.
tsk tsk tsk, Johnny Borrell - how quickly you've forgotten the resounding headbutt you received from Mr Doherty. Weren't so cocky then, were you?
People who try so hard to be different actually end up doing the opposite of what they intended.
So trite.
This new album had better be good, or he's in serious trouble.
"(BTW - is it just me or does that photo look like someting out of a Hot Topic catalogue accompanied by the words, "The Indieboy Look"?)"
It's not just you, but it took your bad self to put it so perfectly. Hilarious, as per usual.
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