talent – The Red Pen of Doom

Now, I enjoy bad music videos as much as any carbon-based life form on this planet. I’m a connoisseur of crazy.

There are different flavors, however.

Insanely Bad and Weird is far, far more interesting than The Quality’s So Low, You Have to Do the Limbo.

WILDER simply plumbs the depths of low-quality. We’re dragging a boat anchor on the floor of an ocean of garbage: terrible singing, horrible sound mixing, repetitive visuals, terrible dancing and extreme close-ups. It’s just a fiery train wreck packed with Nope.

Our second terrible video by WICKED WISDOM is an entirely different brand of bad. Check it out.

Polar opposites, right?

In the first video, we have an unknown singer toiling away with bad production values. You can understand the quality being bad. The budget was probably nothing.

In our second video, a famous actress–Jada Pinkett Smith–is performing on national TV with a band packed with professional musicians. They can play. She can sort-of sing while screaming, which is appropriate to the metal genre. Yet it’s still bad.

Most people won’t think less of the first singer. She’s not rich and famous, and she doesn’t do anything horribly obnoxious in the video. Maybe this is the first video she ever tried to do. We all can understand and feel for her. I actually would root for her to follow this up with something that actually rocked.

As for movie stars trying to be singers–and singers trying to be movie stars, and professional athletes trying to be either–there’s zero sympathy from the audience. You’ve got mountains of money already, 12-car garages full of Italian sports cars, bodyguards, stylists, PR agents–everything in the world. But you want more.

So unless they’re truly, truly world-class as two different things, a celebrity is risking a lot doing something like this. The audience expects a lot more from you. They’ll get a lot more pleasure in laughing at your mistakes and failures than seeing you succeed.

VERDICT

Movie stars and other celebrities should, as a rule, stay in their lane to avoid train wrecks like WICKED WISDOM.

As for the first singer, I actually root for her to come back with something better. Give it a go.

Who says classic music is boring?

These four women prove that technical talent can combine with humor. They could’ve played this normally, and nobody but music professors would care about the difference in the quality of the music. This way is just far, far more entertaining for the audience. And for the musicians, too.

I’d bet my house those smiles aren’t fake. Not a bit. These four musicians are clearly having a blast goofing off like this. Their joy is contagious.

Good on you, Salut Salon–thanks for being this creative and having the guts to be silly in a serious business.