the truth of pop

#1

#2

#3  and #3

or at least a truth - an industry of child labour, child exploitation, child abuse

there's no business like show business #4

there's no business like show business #3

like Drake she became a star by singing about stardom

now stars in the umpteenth remake of A Star Is Born

with the orrible Bradley Cooper, who at least appears in this character to be toning down his irrepressible male energy

there's no business like show business #2

from Circus, the follow-up to self-reflexive metapop digi-glam frightmare spectacular Blackout


but still discussing fame and its costs

this song apparently incorporates "glam-rave" elements

then she became the queen of Vegas, the world capital of show biz

her life is a cabaret

there's no business like show business #1

meta commentary about stardom and its costs by a group I once described as The Associates of emo (so therefore not without a glam tinge)

that was about and circa "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" - whose melodrama and overripe video I enjoyed

not so keen on their more recent stuff (less band-oriented, heavily infused with musical theater, ) but me and my daughter (big fan) are going to see Panic! At the Disco in a month and half

auto-tone

"What we have with digital culture now is a strange hyper-ordinariness. People done up to the nines but it isn't like Bowie where you're playing with abstract aestheticisation. It's a normative model: perfect teeth, skin tone. An utterly conservative artificiality... A normalisation of photoshopping & cosmetic surgery: a wash-back from digital, people's anxiety about their appearance is measured by the standards of a depressing normativity. Neuroses & dissatisfaction are highly productive & useful for capitalism: they can be sold to endlessly" - Mark Fisher

aka digital subglam - use of pixel-by-pixel control of the image in postproduction digital intermediate zone, to sand down skin into porcelain perfection, erase spots and blemishes, whiten teeth, supergloss hair