Selling Millions on a Sour Note

These should be the best of times for the music industry powers who churn out the youth pop that now calls the tune on the radio and at record stores.

But take a closer look: Some of those same executives are smiling through clenched teeth, and there’s a dejected slump in their shoulders as they push home their wheelbarrows of cash.

That’s because they can’t believe their ears--or even plug them to block out the music coming from those CDs they sell. You see, privately they can’t stand much of the stuff.

Whether they were raised on Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Marvin Gaye or the Clash, these music-fans-turned-graying-music-moguls are simply not ‘N Sync with the glossy pop product of today.

“They don’t like the music, they don’t get it, and they’re horrified that people like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera are becoming stars,” said Jeff Pollack, a programming consultant for more than 100 U.S. radio stations. “It drives people who have been in the industry absolutely nuts.”

For those grumblers, it’s about to get worse.

On Wednesday, the music business elite gathers in Los Angeles for its grandest annual fete, the Grammys, and more than a few in the audience will roll their eyes when the Backstreet Boys’ “Millennium” is announced as a contender for best album, or when best new artist nominee Spears takes the stage to perform. Sales success is one thing, but taking home a trophy for music excellence is another.

Even Grammy chief C. Michael Greene--who defends the Backstreet Boys and praises them for “singing their asses off”--conceded that he takes pause when Grammy nominations go to hit pop acts that seem created by savvy studio producers, radio airplay and record-label promotion.

“When it comes to totally producer-driven acts--and I use the term ‘acts’ instead [of artist] purposely--I don’t like to see them receive a lot of Grammy nominations, honestly,” said Greene, who is president and CEO of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences. And are there acts among this year’s nominees that fall into that category of inorganic, producer creations? “Oh yeah, lots of them,” Greene said, although he declined to cite specific names.

To some sullen ears, commercially successful music today is the worst it’s been since the fallow days of pre-Beatles rock, when Fabian and Frankie Avalon turned vacuous songs into gold records. “It’s just as bad,” said Howie Klein, president of Reprise Records. “And I don’t know that we’ve hit bottom yet.”

Others, though, dismiss the naysayers’ chorus as elitist and shortsighted--not to mention vaguely familiar. To Jim Guerinot, manager of the Offspring and No Doubt, it evokes memories of watching another lightweight teen pop act make its U.S. debut 26 years ago this month.

“In 1963, my father was 42 and thought the Beatles were a complete waste of time, total junk,” Guerinot said. “It’s the same thing. For 42-year-old men to look at the music enjoyed by 11-year-old girls today and try to judge its validity is unfair and out of context. . . . The guys that do it should look in the mirror. You have turned into your dad. You have arrived. This way of thinking is nothing new.”

Others, however, say there is something new afoot. Roy Lott, president of Capitol Records, sees “a dramatic change from the years before” in the pop product of today, a change driven in large part by an audience hunger for music based more on rhythm and studio effects than ever before.

Lott pointed to the performers on the recent American Music Awards and the fact that “you could count on your hands the number of live instruments onstage” as an indication that past priorities on artists’ live playing skills and lyric craft may be giving way to a new ethos.

“Is that a good or a bad thing? Or just a different thing? If we think it’s a bad thing, are we being snobby?” Lott asked rhetorically. “But if you compare the pure pop of today to the pure pop of the 1960s, I think the music today is far more sophisticated.”

Still, asked to scan a list of the 50 top-selling 1999 releases, the executive was hard-pressed to select one of them as a future classic, a disc that would be remembered for years. “Honestly, I don’t know if there is a must-have album on that list,” he said.

The exercise raised another question in his mind: “Where are the poets today?”

Said Lott, “One reason you don’t see a lot of them is, clearly, rock ‘n’ roll today is not what it was 10 years ago. If you were raised on Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne and that kind of rock ‘n’ roll, well that’s not rock music in the year 2000 and you have to accept it. Not every generation can have a Bob Dylan.”

Cynical observers say it’s nothing new for pop music to sink in quality. The music business machinery, like a car with bad steering, veers again and again toward the quick hit or novelty instead of music that takes risks or strives for more artistically.

All of that is a familiar refrain to Carlos Santana, a 30-year veteran of the recording business who enjoyed his greatest commercial success in 1999 after being largely written off as a viable prospect by many in the industry.

The guitar hero compares the music output of the entire industry to a mixed bouquet of contrived “plastic flowers” and more artistic “real flowers”--and adds that watching an album like his “Supernatural” buck that trend is “like seeing a rose coming out of a concrete jungle.”

The teen pop explosion, he said, is bad only because the windfall of album sales creates a industry fervor to find the next big act, even if it’s one of questionable artistry.

“When they say plastic and synthetic and shallow, it’s because a lot of people are creating this cookie cutter: ‘Let’s create three Britney Spears or four Backstreet Boys,’ ” Santana said.

“We all know that with that music four or five years from now you might get one Ricky Martin out of it, one person who transcends the bubble-gum, window-shopping, flavor-of-the-month thing.”

There’s no doubt that good, even great, music is being made today. Many of the two dozen music business insiders interviewed for this story pointed to recent albums from Beck, Rage Against the Machine, Mobb Deep, Tom Waits, Ani DiFranco and Moby as proof of 1999’s artistic heft.

But none of those artists’ albums were among the top 50 sellers for 1999, with Rage Against the Machine’s “Battle of Los Angeles” the only one that came close to or topped 1 million in sales. Of the 10 best-selling 1999 albums, only TLC’s “FanMail” and Santana’s “Supernatural” enjoyed wide critical acclaim.

Many music fans frown on the 1980s as a musical era, but even in that decade albums from the Police, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Peter Gabriel, Prince, Paul Simon and others managed to become huge commercial hits while also resonating on artistic levels that branded the music as important and lasting. Much of America still knows the lyrics to “Every Breath You Take”; will that be the case with Aguilera’s “Genie in a Bottle” a decade from now?

Some of the decision makers interviewed said Lauryn Hill’s 1998 album “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” was the last hugely commercial album that was also a “must-have” for serious music fans and a work that will be remembered as a watershed music moment. A few said Santana’s “Supernatural,” the heavy favorite at this year’s Grammys, might also qualify by those standards, but most were less charitable.

“It’s a real good album, but most people know the attention he’s getting is more for his career than for this particular album,” said one music label chief who asked not to be identified. “This is not a five-star album by any means.”

The pop music business bottom line is, of course, money, but the perceived lack of lasting music has cast a pall over the industry culture, even in a time of flush sales success.

“Business-wise, I couldn’t be happier. The albums are flying off the shelves and selling to our key demographic,” said Scott Levin of Musicland, a national chain that reported an eye-popping 53% surge in profits in 1999. “But personally, it’s pretty sad. I don’t know that there’s a song here that people will know all the words to in 10 years.”

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Even artists enjoying tremendous success today sense a decline in pop music that matters or stands the test of time. One of them is singer Darren Hayes of Savage Garden, an Australian pure pop duo that has sold about 14 million albums worldwide and scored its most recent No. 1 U.S. single earlier this month with “I Knew I Loved You.”

“I’ve gone through a phase of late where I’m very frustrated with the scene today because it’s lacking in substance and sincerity,” Hayes said. “I don’t know that a lot of the music today will be remembered, and as a songwriter that really saddens me. . . . I love music, and when I see something like Lou Bega’s ‘Mambo No. 5’ at the top of the charts, I get frustrated. I ask, ‘Why?’ And I keep waiting for it to get better.”

History suggests it will get better, a likelihood that everyone interviewed agreed on. Some pointed to the Beatles’ shaking up a shallow pop era with their arrival in the early 1960s, or the way Nirvana’s blistering assault on the charts ended the reign of “hair band” heavy metal in the past decade.

“I’m very optimistic,” said Klein, whose Reprise Records roster includes Eric Clapton, Neil Young and Green Day. “It’s a cyclical thing. As bad as something gets, that’s how good it can be.”

To answer the question of “How bad is it?” Klein offered the metaphor of a nation with a bad head cold reaching for easy relief.

“There is music that gets right to your soul, that changes you and astounds you,” Klein said. “Then there is music that is just tissue that you blow your nose in, and that’s OK, because it’s good to blow your nose, you to need to and it feels good.”

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What are the factors that have landed pop music in its current state--be it good and misunderstood or just plain bad?

The biggest blame, most insiders agree, should go to radio. The mergers and narrowing music formats in the medium have turned the pop radio airwaves into a wasteland by some estimations. Airplay still drives music sales and popularity, so a criticism of pop music must start with radio, some say.

“Radio has failed us, and the marriage between music and radio is over,” said the recording academy’s Greene. “We’ve never had greater music being made in this country, I truly believe that. When you say pop music is lacking, what you’re really saying is pop radio is lacking. . . . If you take time and go into record stores and clubs and you listen, especially to young kids making music, the stuff is miraculous.”

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One other factor repeatedly cited is the changing nature of today’s recording community. In pop, R&B; and hip-hop, the producer--more than the songwriter, sometimes even more than the artist--has become the central cog to success and putting a distinctive stamp on a song.

The layered soundscapes and high polish on songs such as “Genie in a Bottle” and the Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way” were, to many ears, more integral to their success than the vocals or lyrics.

Veteran record producer Rick Rubin, who has worked with artists as varied as Public Enemy, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Johnny Cash, called Swedish producer Max Martin “the biggest and most successful artist of the year” for his work with the Backstreet Boys and Spears. While Rubin praised Martin’s craft, he said the industrywide trend may sometimes undermine great, unique music.

“What’s unfortunate is when different artists start to sound the same and they seem completely interchangeable, with no point of view and it’s all about the production,” Rubin said. “I don’t like the trend of non-writing artists. Dylan and the Beatles came along and made it cool for artists to write their own stuff, and that was a good thing.”

But Rubin added that there are “no rules” when it comes to making music, and that keeping one’s ears--and mind--open is far better than judging the present against the past.

“I saw Britney Spears on the American Music Awards show and she was the best thing on the show,” he said with a wry chuckle. “It was innovative and great for what it is, and people don’t want to admit that. . . . It may not last through the years, but it’s hard not to like it. It’s funny, though, the stuff you want not to like, that’s the stuff that sticks in your head.”

Grammy Awards

* Day: Wednesday

* Where: Staples Center

* TV: CBS, 8 p.m.

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Times pop music critic Robert Hilburn contributed to this story.