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Thursday, October 09, 2003
What the hell happened to Lauren Hill? Well, this Rolling Stone story gives a pretty damn good answer to that question. Here, for instance, is just one of the issues she's dealing with:
At the same time, Hill's love life began to get really complicated. For years she'd been clandestinely dating Jean. Their relationship started long before he married his current wife and continued afterward. But Pras says, "I think he was kinda, like, playing with her emotions." Uh, yeah. And the Jean issues played out in other ways, too: It was critical that on "Miseducation," Hill was credited as the sole auteur. "That was why she had to be seen as doing it all herself," says someone familiar with the sessions. "To show, 'I'm better than [Wyclef]. He's getting credit as the genius in the group. I'm the genius in the group.' " Of course it did! But...argh. And then connect it with this: A friend says Brother Anthony taught Hill that "she should be whoever she wants to be, because she doesn't owe her fans anything. God didn't create us to be beholden unto people and entertain them. God holds us to be the people that we want to be." (Can someone send Lauren a copy of Candide, please?) It is sad, in part because it's so typical, so expected an arc after the hardcore weirdness of dating your married bandmate and the married son of Bob Marley. But it's also sad because it's such a clear case of being unsatisfied with what's clearly a substantial amount of talent. What actual need was there for her to pretend like she made the whole album all by her lonesome? What point is there to not giving the musicians co-credit? (And who the hell doesn't know by now that you always watch out for that, because it'll come back to bite you on the ass?) It doesn't make the music any better. It's just a person who was blessed with beauty and a great voice and (according to many) great songwriting talent who somehow thinks this isn't enough, that she needs to be able to do everything. And it's sad that our critical standards are such that we value this kind of thing to the detriment of the actual music. Cause Brother Anthony is wrong--we're not just supposd to "be the people that we want to be." The person I want to be spends a lot of time sitting on the couch watching TV and eating pizza. But that's not what I'm working toward (except in some very vague long-term sense), partially because it would drive me a bit crazy, but partially, too, because I recognize that I, like everyone else, has certain talents and interests that can be of use to other people. So why not do that? The music, Lauren, the song: that's what matters. Fuck all your bullshit. And man, get yourself some help that doesn't involve people who've made up their own religion. (discussion here.) |
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