In his 1974 song “Chelsea Hotel #2,” Leonard Cohen remembers an intensely personal moment between himself and his lover Janis Joplin. He describes the moment just before their parting:
You told me again you preferred handsome men
But for me you would make an exception.
And clenching your fists for the ones like us
Who are oppressed by the figures of beauty,
You fixed yourself, you said, “Well never mind.
We are ugly but we have the music.”
The intensity of the feelings expressed conveys a truly desolate moment of parting for Cohen who was looking back on the moment several years after Joplin’s death. The consolation of having music seems barely adequate for either Cohen, or Joplin who at first tries to foist the ugliness onto Cohen before admitting her own sense of being unattractive.
And, indeed, no matter how we feel about these singers, we have to admit that they’re really not very attractive, especially not when compared to the megastars of today. They could both have used rhinoplasties to correct their overlarge noses. Cohen could have used a brow lift to correct his tired, brooding expression, as well as a facelift to smooth the deep frown lines around his mouth. By today’s standards, Joplin’s prematurely old face, bespeaking the depth of her emotion and the hardness of her lifestyle would certainly have been treated with laser skin resurfacing or injectable fillers. Her narrow, unfeminine eyes might have been addressed with blepharoplasty, and she would certainly have been encouraged to receive breast augmentation.
In contrast to these very natural, very earnest figures, today’s most popular musicians regularly appear on magazine covers and lists of the world’s sexiest people. Speculation constantly hovers around whether they have or have not had cosmetic surgery, and not just the women, but the men as well.
Now we wonder whether the music industry has, as Tom Petty suggests in his song “Joe” from the album The Last DJ, intentionally sacrificed the quality of music to get young men and women artists who are easily manipulable, and selling its customers a package rather than a product.
I think it is impossible to say whether a cause-and-effect relationship exists between increasing attractiveness and decreasing musicality, but I would definitely say that I would rather look at most of these musicians than listen to them.
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