Interviews/CITY Magazine

## 2010/2011

*Main article: CITY Magazine*

 **Interviewer** | Eddie Brannan

### Transcript

Once there was a Record Industry, composed primarily of Records Labels. Record Labels scouted bands, signed them, recorded them and then released their records to an audience that they built and developed through press, marketing and tours, all underwritten by t he Record Labels (although of course it all came out of the artists pockets ultimately). Then the internet happened, and as social networking sites and downloads replaced its entire *raison d'etre*, the Record Industry nearly went into the trashcan of history.

Nearly but not quite.

After the purges, downscalings and bewailings, the *sturm and drang* of an industry seemingly in its death throes, the music business appears to have recovered its footing somewhat, and adapted to its changed environment. And for every artist like John Mellencamp and Metallica, both railed against the effect the internet was having on the music business, there are many bands who have embraced change. Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails are among the prominent names who adopted new relationships and models, and for less well-established groups the changes allowed for greater creative freedom and a tearing down of the walls surrounding access to the system.

Damian Kulash, singer for the bank OK Go, wrote an article for the *Washington Post* that summed up the feelings of many artists. "Both as a musician and as a music fan," he declared, "I've always wanted to see the best and most exciting musical ideas rise to the top. But we all know the story of the music business: Success is bought more often than earned. Smart money looks for low risks, so the safest, blandest music attracts the most investment, and only the safest, blandest music makes it to the airwaves and the shelves... for decades, the industry contentedly made its way to the bank... The past decade of the music industry is as clear an example as you can find of what happens when the depth of pockets, not the quality of ideas, is the arbiter of success. Now that the big record companies have made themselves obsolete, bands such as mine can make a better living without their help than we can with it."

But of course the major labels, Sony, EMI, Universal and Warner Brothers (known collectively as the "Big Four," are still in operation, despite their "obsolescence," so clearly they've found a way to keep going, and perhaps two young artists, one New York based, and one in LA, are a good example of what that is. Natalia Kills is a young drama-school girl from the north of England reinventing herself as an Angeleno vixen, and delivering a Gaga-esque electro-dance pop. Theophilus London is a Caribbean kid from Brooklyn who oozes downtown hipster cool and has a fanbase and wardrobe to match. His sound is a kind of stripped down electro-rap-funk-pop. Both are MySpace alums, both dedicated members of the Twitterati, and both maintain content-rich-multimedia sites. They both exude indie-as-fuck from every pore with their online fanbases and word-of-tweet gigs. Get this though; quiet as it's kept, they're both signed, and to major labels at that.

I met Kills at Norwood, the private members club on 14th St. that distinguishes itself from Soho House by its arty pretensions. She's adorable, and not simply for the fact that she goes about in Halloween get-up every day, usually some take on a nymphet Droog (what's not to love?), but also and mostly for the sheer determination she brings to her transformation from child actor to Bradford to Gaga II. Her accent, as she herself notes, veers mid-sentence from Northern lass to all-American, and she seems to be in some degree of denial about the length and success of her background as child actor, and the depth of her education as such, preferring the tale of a runaway who found herself through music to the reality of being something of a child prodigy (the youngest ever, at 13, to receive a London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art Gold Medal for acting). All's fair in love and pop though.

[Paragraphs about Theophilus London]

And for Kills, who moved to Los Angeles [...] close to the music business, which she [...] -ily based there in this music-video-or [...] "see-it-to-believe-it") business, the boo- [..] her her initial velocity was, again, the [...] demo... and put it on MySpace, which [...] place to be, and I got to be MySpace [...] Unsigned Artists with a song I made called [...] bouncy, Ke$ha-esque number]. Overnight Perez Hilton found it and wrote about it on his blog [...] million plays and 60,000 fans overnight."

Next scene: meetings with record labels [...] producers who scout and nurture talent [...] with Timbaland and Justin Timberlake [...] Will [I Am, of the group Black-Eyed Peas] it was totally different. He's not concerned with a lot of the things that most music industry people are. It's all creativity and it's all or nothing. And I feel he recognized that in me...and wanted to nurture that" And so she signed, to a label called Cherry Tree. Martin Kierszenbaum, head of international A&R at Interscope, heads up Cherry Tree (the label's name is an allusion to the fact that his surname is close in sound to the German for cherry tree) and the house focuses on artists with potential for significant growth (Robyn, Far East Movement and Sting are labelmates; Lady Gaga is an alum). Cherry Tree is a subsidiary of Interscope, which is a division of Universal Music Group, which as we know is one of the Big Four, a major Record Label.

As part of her development as a recording artist Kills has been shooting episodes of a noirish, graphic-novelish drama called *Love Kills*, as part of an ongoing effort to build and develop her relationship with her online audience. "I think, for the last few years the visuals have been about showing a cool lifestyle rather than a didactic and artistic opinion within a visual, and a brand for people to be a part of." She sees her music as "an opinion, and identity," and builds her visual persona around that, as a kind of brand extension. The episodes are viewable through her own site and hosted, of course, by YouTube.

[Paragraphs about Theophilus London]

This is a theme common to both London and Kills, it seems. Their fans want and deserve to get a fuller picture. Their aesthetic, is reflected in the music, of course, but to get grips with that it helps to know all of these other things about their creativity too, or at least that's what London and Kills both believe. It's a uniquely personal kind of engagement that these artists have with their fans, very much one born of peer-to-peer social networks. It's what I meant by the new indie. Not independent (and certainly not in these particular artist's cases in the traditional sense of the independent label), but individual, rather than a brand or product. That's what's wanted by they and their people who come to the shows and buy the music, or maybe don't come to the shows but watch them on YouTube, and maybe don't buy the music but stream it from MySpace expect.

And that's what all of this comes down to, of course; the countless people on the other end of the internet connection, the fans. All of the YOUs and MYs on the internet are there because of this new indie, the universal individual, who makes all the decisions and calls all the tunes. [More about Theophilus London]

"As always, it's the people contributing to the culture on a ground level who are calling the shots," says Elliot Aronow, co-founder/creative director of RCRDLBL.com, and online record label that offers all its downloads for free. "As a young artist, you still want the DJs, promoters, hustlers and heads talking about you and your work. Social networking makes that easier but I think it's always going to be about rocking a crowd, throwing a great party and having the right shoes. And all that stuff takes place in real life." Oh, that's IRL to you.