Have any of you ever wondered how much of a role physical appearance/persona play in the music biz nowadays? I always hear how X is so hot and blah blah blah but you never hear of how talented they are. I personally think that appearance is the main driving force behind today's music; seeing all those rappers with their fake personas and fake life stories in their songs. Someone name me any musicians of today that are but ugly, yet still succeed. Never will we see highly talented uglies like Keith Richards, Geddy Lee, Iggy Pop, Steven Tyler, and Meatloaf. Whenever I see a thread about some rapper, you always hear people emphasizing how much weed they smoke, how gangsta they are, how fly they are, as well as their lyrics. I for one don't give a shit how a musician dresses, acts, or lives, I just care about their music.
You know how "video killed the radio star?" That's exactly the mantra that the record industry took to heart by the time they started mass producing boy bands and pop divas in the late 1990s. In the days of vinyl and cassettes, you were listening solely to the music and the talent they possessed. If a musician happened to look good, they were either pop stars or extremely talented guys/gals who got lucky in the looks department. Before MTV hit the airwaves, you weren't being judged on how you looked, but on how well you could perform. MTV begins broadcasting videos, meaning bands had a new outlet to exercise their creativity: the music video. So you either had your pop stars with their bright, colorful, optimistic videos of going to the dance on a Friday night, even though Daddy Lou Albano told you not to, your hair/thrash metal videos with dark colors, high contrast, crazy wipes, and (mostly for hair metal) sweaty, half-naked band members all up on each other changing the physical property of inanimate (or animate) objects with their rock while all the sexy girls in Spandex were miles away at a pool party. Then you had your new wave videos with all sorts of crazy mayhem (thank you Talking Heads). So we come to today's record industry, where your song is being played only because your record label is paying for it to be played, your concert ticket prices are skyrocketing ("because of piracy"), and your merch is ridiculously overpriced. So why do the musicians with legit skill usually hide in the shadows, settling for the respect of fans, as opposed to prettying themselves up to chase the limelight and fickle fangirls while losing any and all respect for their work? I think I just answered that question internally.
I don't know how to answer this without insulting some musicians appearance but I think things are coming around where appearance isn't as much of a big deal as it was. There have been some weirder looking dudes in music industry lately that probably would have been ignored solely because of their appearance before.