I've disagreed with Tampa Tribune music critic Curtis Ross in the past, but watching him recently mock the misguided parents who worshiped at the Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus statue made me applaud him — and laugh out loud. Extra points to whoever decided to close the program with a snippet of the Frank Zappa classic "Montana." (The Webcast ran Thursday. Ross' segment starts at the 5 min. mark.)
Less than 24 hours after Ross went on air, the Trib ran a Hannah Montana advance with the headline "Pop Princess" on the cover of Friday Extra. Written by the newspaper's TV critic, Walt Belcher, the article's bereft a modicum of critical analysis or even an interview with Miley. What it does offer readers are words of wisdom from the singer's daddy, country music clown Billy Ray Cyrus. Oh, yeah, and there's oh-so-insightful quotes from some VP at Disney Channel, the factory responsible for masterminding the Hannah/Miley money machine.
The Friday Extra piece was crap; the type of article that makes anyone under the age of 30 swear off broadsheets for life. Instead of deconstructing a pop culture force like this Hannah creation, the Trib jumped on the bandwagon, uncritically celebrating her success and bemoaning the fact that there aren't enough tickets to go around for her sold-out show Monday. A more interesting approach would have been to ask: Is this children's TV star/pop singer worthy of the hype and the hell people went through to snag tickets? In the long run, does your daughter really need to have seen her fave of the moment in person — likely in a seat about 100 yards back from the stage?
In a daily newspaper climate where music critics are increasingly milquetoast and cute-sy, where shrinking circulation numbers often prompt editors to frown on provocateurs, Ross stood strong on this one, refusing to heap praise on the wildly popular child star regardless of what his employers thought would appeal to the majority of its aging audience.
Across the bay, St. Petersburg Times pop music critic Sean Daly bowed to the soccer mom set. Rather than examine the absurd lengths folks went to procure Hannah tickets for their little Veruca Salts — or evaluate the merits of Miley's music in any meaningful way — he pandered (albeit with a hint of snark) to these priority-challenged parents with a blog post that informed them they could battle for a freshly found "limited number of additional tickets."
Hannah-gate has made Tampa look foolish thanks to the idiots who wasted as many as six days of their lives touching that hideous Hannah statue to win tickets. As a matter of civic pride, every pundit in town should be screaming from the rooftops that not even a one-off concert by a back-from-the-dead Elvis Presley warrants such drastic, undignified measures. Behaving that foolishly so the little princess can see Miley Cyrus is borderline insanity.
Cyrus is a manufactured teen star unwittingly benefiting from a sinister publicity machine that targets young, impressionable children. As professional music critics, it's our duty to discourage parents from letting Disney bamboozle 'em into believing this is a must-see-at-any-cost event. It's disingenuous music designed to make millions at the expense of guardians lacking the stones and/or good sense to simply tell their children "no."
(On a side note, one has to wonder how healthy it is to thrust a 14-year-old like Cyrus into the national spotlight and have her maintain a hectic schedule that includes headlining arenas and taping shows for Disney. This craziness has led to tragedy on more than one occasion. Let's not forget, Britney Spears got her start at the Mouse House.)
Hopefully, Ross will attend Monday's sold-out spectacle and write a scathing review that echoes the comments he made on Thursday's Webcast. Daly will also probably be assigned to cover the Hannah fiasco. I'm curious to see if The Times' critic drops his famously nice guy persona and redeems himself on the Hannah issue with a write-up that speaks to the absurdity of it all. In a rare display of chutzpah, Daly went out on a limb (sorta) a couple months ago and slammed the latest touring edition of American Idol — even earned himself a slew of hate mail. So, perhaps the ghost of Lester Bangs will visit Daly between now and Monday night and bring out his inner curmudgeon.
But don't bet on it.
Daly already went on the record as being a fan in a recent blog post titled "Hannah Montana: I Like Her."
Creative Loafing has decided to pass on Monday's Hannah show at the St. Pete Times Forum. Placed in such a pathetic environment, I might lose my shit, bark vile obscenities from the press box, and get thrown out by a posse of beefy security guards. And I'll be damned if I get banned from the Forum and then learn Led Zeppelin's rumored tour is coming there.
This article appears in Nov 14-20, 2007.