Ok now, if you've been following this blog, you know that I have this thing about the quixotic quest for the world anthem.
This all started when I got obsessed with Michael Jackson.
I got interested in Judith Hill, because she was in the movie "This is It" and because she sang MJ's song "Heal the World" at his memorial service to an estimated audience of 1 billion people.
That's really a lot of people. It boggles the mind.
But that appearance was the kind of thing Michael Jackson hoped for with the song. MJ had a vision of the whole world getting together and singing a song all at once, just like he saw people in his audiences singing together. He hoped his song might bring peace to the world.
He achieved incredible market penetration with "Heal the World." When I was on the Michael Jackson fan boards, shortly after his death, a fan from Sri Lanka told me that that song was in public school music text books in Sri Lanka. That's hard for me to wrap my mind around, but he was that good as a performer, as a composer, and as a generator of buzz for himself. People even as far away as Sri Lanka, and absorbed in their own civil war, noticed and promoted that song.
MJ once said that he did not understand how strange he seemed to people. I don't know if he understood that he was generating buzz by being strange, but it did work that way. The stranger he was, the more publicity his work got, and the more successful he got.
They do say that in the entertainment industry there is no such thing as bad publicity.
We later learned that Judith Hill got offers for recording contracts, because of her appearance in the memorial service, but turned them down because she didn't like the idea of making money off of Michael's death.
I'm pretty sure he would have told her to take those contracts, had he still been able to communicate with her. First, he liked her. Second, he would have liked that she sang his song to 1 billion people. That's what he wanted for that song, like I said. He always said that he never cared about music or commercial success. These things were merely means to an end for him, the end being to get the world to sing and dance together. Her taking that contract would have been advancing that goal. The money would not be relevant.
We saw that dream of the spreading of dance in the "This is It" movie, where they had dancers doing the drill dance spread through computer enhancement to appear to cover the world.
Michael chose at least 3 young female singers -- at least that I have heard of so far -- to feature in "This is It," the stationary O2 tour. These were: Lady Gaga, Charice, and Judith Hill.
Lady Gaga got really huge at least in part because MJ's choreographer, Travis Payne, said he had had a conversation with MJ, shortly before MJ's death, where MJ told Payne to pay attention to Gaga. Payne responded that he followed MJ's instructions and realized that MJ was right and later went to work with Gaga. He was probably involved in her work getting a more polished and professional look to it.
Charice was promoted by Oprah Winfrey and David Foster, but has seemingly had a more modest success, despite making a huge international splash at the beginning. I feel that this is her own doing. She changed genre from power ballads to R&B. She was loved for her power ballads and has never really caught on as much with R&B. Also she has repeated changed her image. This is common with child prodigies. Often, as adults, they no longer want to do what they were famous for as prodigies. Charice remains an MJ fan, BTW, and has performed his "Earth Song," several times.
Judith Hill could have been big, too, after that memorial service, but she turned it down. She's a classy lady, but classy doesn't always cut it success wise.
Still, I always remembered her. She so seemed to embody what MJ hoped for in writing "Heal the World". She's mixed race. She's beautiful. She's creative. She wrote such a nice song about MJ's death. In my mind she has always been linked to my quixotic quest.
To me, mixed race people are a kind of peace symbol just by their very existence.
I'm a mixed person myself, because my father's ancestry was Jewish and my mother came from a long line of WASPs -- a bit like Josh, who has similar mixed ethnicity. That mixed ethnicity was a very big deal at the time my parents got married, because my mother's father was hugely anti-semitic. If he hadn't died prematurely due a smoking induced heart attack I likely would not exist. Being a melting pot kid and believing that the melting pot is part of the way to peace is a significant part of my identity.
MJ was mixed race also. His father was part white, having light skin and light eyes. His mother was part Cherokee.
I don't 100% know why my obsession with MJ switched to an obsession with Josh Groban. At first blush they don't seem like that similar of performers.
MJ was a counter tenor. Josh is a baritone. MJ was one of the best dancers who ever existed.
Josh doesn't like to dance. He claims he isn't good at it, but Ellen DeGeneres said he *was* good, so I don't know what to believe. He seemed to do pretty well with that Double Dream Hands dance in Ohio on the STY tour.
It was only later that I learned that Josh's first voice teacher was Seth Riggs, who was also Michael Jackson's voice teacher. Arguably, Josh's early singing style was in some sense not so different from MJ's.
I can't say that I'm nearly as impressed with Josh's current voice coach, as Josh's high notes seem to be deteriorating. Tho the frustrating appearances of croaked high notes could also be because Josh is failing to recognize that his voice is deepening with age and failing to transpose songs accordingly.
Also, MJ was strongly influenced by classical music. He often said so. At first, I couldn't hear it in his music, but now I can. There is a complexity and subtlety to the multi-layerd nature of MJ's music that is classically influenced. The classical music influence is much clearer in Josh's music, but that is something they have in common.
Also, there is something similar in the pain Josh projects when he sings and the way MJ did. I guess a lot of popular performers are like that, projecting a lot of pain in their performances.
When I first got obsessed with Josh, I tried to interest him in my quixotic quest. I asked management to pass him a letter at the first concert I went to, the BWB concert at the Schubert in New Haven. I've posted that letter on this blog. When I got on twitter, I asked him to sing "Heal the World." These things did not seem to pique his interest.
I gather that Stevie Wonder has somewhat this same idea that MJ had, that the right song could save the world. Josh said that Stevie asked if they could write a song together, saying it might save the world. Josh said that he never called Stevie back. He said that it was because he was too shy, because he was so much in awe of Stevie that he wouldn't be able to work with him.
I blogged about this before, also. I've been very frustrated by Josh's refusal to get together with Stevie to write a song. David Foster tweeted a picture of himself working with Stevie in the recording studio. I told Josh that he ought to try to join them.
I never know how much of his twitter Josh actually reads -- quite a bit, probably not everything. He hasn't ever said, though, that he's moved off his fear of working with Stevie. Very frustrating.
I guess Josh doesn't think that a single song could save the world. Maybe that seems too pie in the sky to him. Surely, if he thought there was even a slight chance that this could work, he would be able to overcome his fear, because of the potential benefit. He does at least know that music can save children. That's why he has a charity called "Find Your Light" that gives musical instruments to struggling youth arts programs. If music can save individual children, why couldn't it save the world?
Maybe he hasn't been quite big enough to see the power of music -- and dance as well, of course, since he seldom dances. I have watched that DVD of MJ's Bucharest concert several times. The crowd there was beyond amazing -- and the concert was broadcast to 500 million people -- a truly earth shattering event. Perhaps if Josh had been standing in front of that crowd, the way MJ was standing in front of that crowd, perhaps Josh would have come to believe, as MJ believed, that some spiritual transformation was occuring in the audience, a spiritual transformation that might spread, that might heal the world.
Josh has expressed gratitude that he's not that big. He would hardly want the kind of life that MJ led, a prisoner in his own home for his entire adult life, imprisoned for his fame. MJ often lamented his lack of a childhood, but it seems to me that he lacked an adulthood, because of his imprisonment.
As I pointed out in a previous blog, Josh's refusal to call Stevie is like his initial refusal to go to that rehearsal with Celine Dion way back when, when he was 17, and David Foster bullied him into it; but, in a way, it is also like Judith's refusal of those recording contracts after MJ's memorial service. They're similar in that way: classy, modest, not quite certain of their own viability as public figures, and, as a result, shooting themselves in the foot.
So, when I saw Judith Hill in a couple of TV appearances singing backup for Josh, I noticed immediately. I wrote about it on FOJG. I wrote about it on Bad Grobanites. I tweeted about it. I deplored that she was only singing backup. I thought she deserved more.
Almost immediately after I wrote that stuff on the bulletin boards on Josh's websites, Judith announced that she was going to perform with Chris Botti, a friend of Josh's.
Was there a connection between what I wrote and those events? It could have been coincidence, but not necessarily.
Then, almost immediately after that, Judith was appearing on "The Voice." I still feel frustrated that she didn't stay on longer. I think she made a mistake in that last number she did, which was a Gaga style number that Judith didn't quite pull off. She isn't afraid to dance, unlike Josh, but she's not Lady Gaga. I am still remembering hearing on Judith's website, several years back, an excerpt of some very beautiful madrigals. I think if she had done something historical/classical like that, it might have carried the day better -- but I'm a pop/classical crossover fan, so I'm not entirely objective. It does seem like country musicians tend to win these TV talent shows more often than other genres in general. Melanie Amaro, who did power ballads, was a bit of an exception.
Something that frustrated me about Judith was that she did not keep fans updated on twitter. She was doing some touring to Asia and Latin America, but she never tweeted photos of her travels, even tho I asked her to. I signed up to be on her mailing list, but never got any updates -- tho I failed to check my spam folder, so it's possible I missed something. Still she seemed singularly uninterested in keeping in touch with her fans.
Coincidentally with Judith's appearances with Chris Botti and on The Voice she suddenly started keeping her fans in the loop, tweeting frequently and also posting on Facebook. Someone obviously told her that if she wanted to succeed she had to network with fans, so she shaped up.
Now she's appearing with Josh Groban on his next tour and double billed.
I'm really pleased about this. I wonder if somehow what I wrote had an influence on subsequent events. I'll likely never know.
I think Judith is a good match for Josh. They both have a soulful style of singing, though they tend to go for different instrumentals. Judith appeals to a somewhat different audience and hopefully will broaden his appeal. Josh's touring band for the ATE tour has been notably lacking in female presense, as I've blogged about before.
Also, when I started my Josh Groban obsession, I was strongly influenced by excerpts from the "Awake" DVD that appeared on YouTube. The "Awake" DVD featured an extremely diverse set of performers. The music was, of course, also intriguing, being a fusion of various earlier types of music, and extremely beautiful.
I saw the result as fusion people performing fusion music. Josh also used to tweet fairly often about liking to fuse different types of music. This was sort of connected in some way with my quixotic quest -- an urge for unification.
At the very least, I can hope that this re-infusion of diverse female presence will help make his tour more interesting. He should realize that most of his fans are female. While we like to listen to a sexy young man singing, that does not mean that we have completely stopped being interested in women and the advancement of women.
Certainly, she is of interest to Asians. Asians are fascinated by people of mixed Asian ancestry. She's been to Japan several times already and has performed on Chinese TV. Maybe, if she's touring with Josh, they'll get to Asia. Who knows?
And, back in the back of my head, is this idea that Judith Hill's appearance could be some kind of positive step on the direction of my quixotic quest.
Then, I suppose, being something like Judith and Josh, I feel like I'm not really good enough to play this sort of role in public events or to have my dreams come true. And many people have dreamed of world peace before, without its coming true -- though the UN says that, despite our perceptions of ongoing war, war is in fact becoming less frequent world wide, which they take partial credit for. (They don't seem to notice the importance of an effective world anthem, though. They have a song that has fallen completely flat, and that no one sings, and they fail to see the need for another that would be more accepted.)
In the mean time, I also asked Connie Talbot to sing "Heal the World," and she put it on her album. She had asked people what they wanted her to sing, so I put in the request, and at least one person seconded it. She's really a fine, young performer, and she did go sing that song in China, which is very important. Asians are big music fans.
So, sometimes it feels like I am making a little bit of progress on this quixotic quest.
I'm certainly looking forward to hearing Judith Hill perform. She sang with MJ the last day he was alive. I still regard MJ as a sort of prophet, someone of more significance than merely a successful performer. I feel that he passed some kind of energy to her, by singing with her like that. I hope she might have become some kind of deputy, in a way.
I never got to hear him perform. I only got interested in him after he died. I hope, maybe, to get just a bit of his vibes this way.
And, maybe, there will be some more progress on the quixotic quest.
Oh my, but this is a long blog! I guess it's fairly amazing that anyone reads this stuff. I am grateful that some people have said they enjoy what I write. My purpose here has been largely to blow off steam, but I'm glad that someone enjoys reading it -- tho I can hardly imagine anyone enjoying reading this long thing.
Oh, well. At least google is so generous as to allow me to post all this stuff on line.
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