"Now, If It's Pronounced 'Ar-TEEST', That Might Be A Different Story...."

Here's a bone I'm fond of picking.

The use of the term "recording artist".

Admittedly, on that subject, any can of debate worms opened on the subject is immediately subject to a possible fair point being made that "artist" is a subjective term.

Subject to argument, as it were.

That said, I suspect I would have a grand time preparing, and presenting, the case that there are, lurking amidst the mist, haze, smoke and/or mirrors that cloak any garden variety singer in the glow of "artistry", some pretty obvious criteria required to entitle one of those said singers to be referred to as an "artist".

One of those, if the court please, being in possession of a depth and/or breadth of not only talent, but an ability to offer diversity in the expression of that talent.

Dumbed down for the mass culture translation:

Britney Spears, for example, is a gifted singer, but one twenty minute session of back to back to back hearings of any five of her last fifty or so songs and the term "one trick pony" inevitably crowds its way to the front of any average frontal lobe.

Put another way.

Anyone can pick up a brush and smear some paint around on a canvas.

It don't automatically make you Picasso.

Now, on this day that celebrates our independence and freedom, I'm ready to concede that anyone has the freedom to call themselves anything they want anytime they want.

Not to mention sticking a feather in a cap and calling it macaroni if that floats your Bill of Rights boat.

As for my own freedom of speech, let me just offer this.

"Artist" should be a term only bestowed upon someone meeting the same level of criteria that we expect when calling someone a "hero"....or a "leader"...or a "pioneer".

A criteria of the aforementioned depth and/or breadth of talent combined with an ability to offer diversity in the expression of that talent.

For example...

Almost fifty years ago, this song, and the lady singing it, spent a very healthy number of weeks in the number one slot on the pop music top ten of the day.



Some forty years later, this same lady applied her breadth and/depth of talent to a project far removed from the pop song recording process.



Now, I'm not a devotee' of Petula Clark, per se.

But I'd offer that these two performances, nearly half a century apart, could be offered as proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Ms. Clark deserves to be called an "artist".

At this writing, Katy Perry? Gaga? Justin Bieber?

Not so much, no.

That said, fair is fair.

The day that Steven Tyler bags the Tony Award for his standing room only performance as The Phantom of the Opera is the day I shut the hell up.