You know the old saying, that there's no such thing as bad press? That may be true, but there's another that warns it's possible to get too much of a good thing.
Such is the case with blogging. Malcolm Gladwell would be wise to add a chapter to future editions of his book "The Tipping Point" to examine how bloggers latch on to certain bands and ride them into the ground. In this case, Coolfer is talking about how bloggers fervently, religiously post about certain bands and musicians. And keep posting. And keep posting. And other bloggers follow suit--maybe to keep up, maybe as a show of hipness, maybe to be part of the clique--and then the diversity has been sucked right out of the blogosphere.
Worst of all, the list shows our short attention spans. Remember Interpol and The Strokes? No longer flavor of the months, the bands have been demoted to the "what have you done for me lately?" scrapheap. Or maybe it's just that the two aren't favorites of "The O.C."'s music director.
10. Death Cab For Cutie. This is understandable. It's a popular band. It's a band favored by people in that young, college-educated demographic that has given birth to so many blogs. People are passionate about this band. Yes, it's all very understandable, but it's still an over-blogged band.
9. Morrissey. Good ol' Moz. Every uttered word was dutifully reported by the British press, and sometimes by the Yanks, which was then enthusiastically passed along by bloggers. The hype was unbearable well before his album was released. Upon its debut, only professional music critics declared that its place in history belongs snugly secure smack dab in the middle of the Morrissey bell curve. Bloggers, either blinded by fanaticism or afraid of going back on their pre-release buzz or genuinely in love with the thing, announced it as the comeback they had all longed for. Let's be honest...was it really worth all that fuss? A #9 rank might seem high for such criticism, but even a bad Morrissey album is better than most bands' better albums. Thus, I'll recognize that it wasn't all overkill.
8. Ashlee Simpson. Like Coolfer used to say about Courtney Love, just ignore her and she'll go away. (And look how well it's worked. Love's antics are tired and nobody's paying much attention any longer.) So she had a backing track on Saturday Night Live? So her sister is an airhead? Must she be such a topic of conversation?
7. U2. They had a CDR of their new songs stolen. They came out with a branded iPod. They played a free show in Brooklyn next to the East River. U2 has been a constant blog topic. A breather would be nice, but with their virtual box set coming out soon on iTunes, the band is going to claim more bandwidth. Good thing they're relatively old, otherwise we'd probably hear a lot more about them.
6. Joanna Newsom. It started with a few blogger fans. Then Ben Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie spoke of his love for her music, and all hell broke loose. Now the Joanna Newsom bandwagon is one of the most crowded on the Internet. There's also an equally vocal faction that think her voice sounds like a train speeding through a curve at Union Station. Combine the two and you've got a very heavily blogged woman.
5. The Killers. The band's buzz started with bloggers, but as soon as the band hit the Top 40 they seemed to have lost a bit of their appeal. As I've mentioned before, playing a 45-minute set merits no positive buzz, so maybe it's no coincidence that the blog hype died down as soon as most people could reflect on their tepid live show. Live by the blog, die by the blog.
4. Danger Mouse. In terms of music, Danger Mouse was way overblogged. Had the guy never stole the Beatles' music, had he gone the DJ Shadow route and created incredible music with samples from relatively unknown songs, Danger Mouse would deserve the hype. Taking (without permission) the music of the world's most beloved rock band and adding a cappella tracks by one of the most popular rappers of our time isn't an impressive feat. It would have been hard to make music people didn't like. The David-vs-Goliath battle that ensued turned him into a cause celebre, and for this he justly received a good deal of publicity. But it will be short-lived, for Lawrence Lessig isn't in the music PR business. What does 2005 have in store for Danger Mouse? The same thing 1997 had in store for OMC and 1993 had in store for Right Said Fred.
3. Franz Ferdinand. This is a tough one, because I believe Franz Ferdinand deserves every bit of blog hype they've received, even if the hype has pretty overwhelming. Their debut album gave rock music a shot in the arm. It sounds good after dozens of listens, and it'll sound just as good in 20 years. There's a difference between living up to the hype and not exactly meriting the hype (see above, see below), but in terms of volume this is definitely an over-blogged band--and Coolfer is as much to blame as anyone.
2. Ted Leo. Coolfer really likes Ted Leo, but it's impossible for a guy to live up to this much hype. If I didn't already know his music, had I not already seen him play live, I probably would have shied away from giving him a listen out of Not even LeBron James has this much to live up to. The constant blogging probably would be more appropriate if his latest album was one of the year's best. No, it's not even the best of his career. Better production made it a more polished album, but the songs don't knock the ball out of the park. It's a stand-up double, maybe an error-assisted triple.
1. The Arcade Fire. If I knew anything about programming I'd hotwire my web browser to erase the words "The Arcade Fire" until about mid-year. This is a band that has captured the hearts of not only bloggers but the NY Times and all who have seen them perform live. People have been whipped up into a religious fervor, and for my tastes they're being a far too evangelical about the band. I want to read about The Arcade Fire one more time about as much as the average Manhattanite wants to be approached by a Bible-toting Ralph Reed. Enough already. Give it six months. In due time the chatter will die down, just as it did with Interpol, and the Strokes before them. The "best album of the year" accolades will have passed, people will have moved on to hyping another fresh face and we can enjoy their music hype-free.
Music Groups
I'd like to think that I know of and have heard of a lot of bands--even if I don't particularly like the music. I'm exposed to a lot of music every day, from all kinds of genres...but I completely missed Kenna. Nobody ever said to me, "Hey, you've gotta check out this record." Nobody ever asked me, "Do you know anything about this guy Kenna?" Considering the crowds in which I run, I'm honestly shocked that Kenna escaped my attention for this long.
What Gladwell meant is that experts are able to put into words why they do or don't like something. They have the vocabulary and the experience to judge in ways that non-experts cannot. (Much of the book is spent explaining how experts need only a split second to make a judgement about something.) Gladwell explained that the market research conducted on Kenna's music is a poor way to predict consumers' judgements on an artist like Kenna. A short clip of a new style of music might immediately excite an expert, but a typical listener would probably give it poor feedback. Also, people don't listen to short clips of songs. They listen to whole songs and whole albums. Only an expert can tell is a short amount of time if Kenna is any good or not. (A parallel would be something from the same chapter. Coke changed its recipe because Pepsi was beating it in taste tests. 
As any record store owner will tell you, and as Don says often, catalog sales are critical for retail. When labels jump from one one-album wonder to another for short term gratification, there is no back catalog to sell to customers.
