Singers Are Worthless

I don't know if you've heard, but Whitney Houston died last week. It's been reported that she may have been broke, or near broke. There's a possibility that she didn't have a lot of money because she was doing crack cocaine for the last 20 years. But another reason that Whitney Houston didn't have a lot of money is because she never wrote a song in her life. Not one. Not a single lyric. Nothing. It's a quite a feat, really.

The people who are rich from Whitney Houston's songs, and getting richer right now, are the people who wrote them. And deservedly so. Because no matter how great Whitney was, "I'm Your Baby Tonight" could've been sung by Mariah and it would still be a good song.

I didn't really think about this until I started to watch The Voice this season. And The Voice represents something very interesting in the "find a great singer" genre. It's different than American Idol. Whereas American Idol purports to go all around America to find previously undiscovered talent, The Voice goes all around Los Angeles looking for already discovered talent.

The people on The Voice, for the most part, have careers. Or used to have them. They've been signed to record deals, they've gone on tour, in short, they've made it into the system. And the system rejected them.

We're through the looking glass here, people. We've gone through all the singers in the country, and we're somehow going back through the old ones again. Why can't America understand that we're over our singer limit? We don't need to find anymore! We're all good. It's the equivalent to Hollywood desperately searching for more people to come here and write a screenplay. It's unnecessary and counterproductive at this point.

There was a great moment demonstrating this the other night. A kid came out on The Voice and sang an Usher song. Despite the fact that he sounded EXACTLY like Usher, none of the judges turned around. Finally, Cee Lo hit the stupid button on his chair, saying "I think they're pulling a prank on us and it really is Usher singing".

That's why he turned around. Because it might be Usher. And none of the other judges turned! Usher might've been behind them and they still didn't know if that person was worthy of keeping on the show.

Because, you see, it doesn't really matter. It could've been Usher. There are lots of people who can sing like Usher. So many, in fact, that the other judges didn't even turn. Singers are a dime a dozen. So maybe it's time we stop looking for them. Please? Cause I really hate these awful shows.