Rant #1,843: Sing a Simple Song

I don't watch the Grammy Awards telecast.

I can barely remember the last one I watched. I think it was the one that Sylvester Stewart, a/k/a Sly Stewart from Sly and the Family Stone, appeared very briefly on a few years ago.

He had a white mohawk and looked like he had was done for before he started.

I think that was the last one I watched, so it has been some time since viewing one.

And I did not watch the latest edition of this brown-nosing music event, either.

But I found a little tidbit of something interesting related to the Grammy Awards, so I figured I would share it with you.

Legendary guitarist Carlos Santana, who has won a few Grammy Awards himself, actually had the audacity to say to Australian journalists that Beyonce did not deserve to win the Grammys she was up for over Adele because "she is not a singer."

He finally said something that I do believe many of us already believe, but when it comes out of Santana's mouth, people listen.

He went on to say, "With all respect to our sister Beyonce, Beyonce is very beautiful to look at and it's more like modeling kind of music--music to model a dress--she's not a singer, singer, with all respect to her."

Listen, it is not just Beyonce. Singers today probably can warble, but they don't really sing, in particular I am talking about female singers.

They do a lot of vocal gymnastics, but do they really sing, and can you actually call them singers?

It is all style over substance today.

With all the talk of equality, when a female singer comes out showing half her body to the audience with low cut outfits, she is not showing off her voice, she is showing off her body.

But look, it is her body, and if she wants to give the world a peak at what her significant other sees at regular intervals, heck, that is her choice.

But it does not make her a singer, because she is taking the focus off of her voice, and putting it on her bosom.

And with the big production numbers that they use, and with much of their supposed "live" music actually pre-recorded and lip synced to, the focus is clearly off their voices.

I, also, do not consider Beyonce a singer, nor do I consider just about every contemporary female singer a singer.

They all went to the Whitney Houston school of warbling vocal gymnastics, but are they really singers?

I consider Aretha Franklin a singer.

I also consider Petula Clark a singer.

Heck, I can't stomach the thought of her, but I consider Barbra Streisand a singer.

The song was the centerpiece for them; they were the conveyance through which the song was delivered to the audience though their vocal talents.

These others, the Beyonces of the world, the Madonnas of the world, are not singers.

They use vocal gymnastics to give you the impression they are real singers, but please, don't put them in the same league as Franklin, Clark and Streisand.

Look, Beyonce and Madonna fill the bill for what we consider female singers today. They fit the music that they sing, and they have done very well doing just that.

But they aren't female singers in the true sense, at least in my mind.

In my mind, they are pretenders, poseurs, fill in the blanks warblers who really can't sing themselves out of a paper bag.

And it took Carlos Santana to say what a lot of people have thought about Beyonce for a long time, but wouldn't say anything publicly because, well, you don't knock the current queen of music.

But Santana did.

Good for him, although you just know that there will be a backlash, he will say he was misquoted, etc.

I can see it coming.

But stand your ground, Carlos.

You are absolutely right!