Paris for Album of the Year?
This is the one and only time that Paris Hilton’s name will actually be printed in this magazine. Yes, this is actually a review of her album, and yes, I am making the claim above. 
P. Bradley Robb
It should be known that I have a strong dislike for that certain faux-tanned socialite that somehow managed to find her way off the island of Manhattan. I personally consider her a hack at everything she has ever attempted, let alone accomplished, up to and including breathing. I have gone as far as to edit her name out of any subter article she might have found her way into, always replacing Paris Hilton with [talentless hotel heiress], this article being the obvious exception to the rule.
In fact from her ghostwritten book to her heavily producer-influenced “reality” television show to her sextape, there isn’t anything that Paris has done that could even be considered good. Paris Hilton has somehow managed to betray the laws of physics at every turn by always failing upwards. Or more accurately, with each endeavor, Hilton has managed to drag the world down to her level, robbing each giving medium of any culture that it had previously clung to. To put it bluntly, Paris Hilton made Fox look more trashy, and this is a network that launched with Married With Children and created Celebrity Boxing.
The general population caught on to Paris’ distinct lack of talent shortly after she appeared on the pop culture scene, but this didn’t stop the powers that be from capitalizing on this hatred. Much like Andy Kaufman wrestling women, Paris became the villain du jour. Warner Brothers tried smartly to capitalize on that hatred by making it no secret that she both stripped and died on film in the weeks prior to the release of 2005’s House of Wax. Warner Brothers would simply allow people to see what they can’t seem to get in real life, the grizzly death of Paris. Of course, the ticket sales didn’t follow, but you can’t blame Hollywood for trying.
After somehow dragging down the Manhattan fashion scene (no easy task, mind you), television, the internet, magazines, tabloids, porn, and the book world, Hilton only had one major medium left – music. And why shouldn’t see? In Paris’ world, she was a peer with the likes of Lindsay Lohan and Hilary Duff, neither of which were singers yet each of whom have platinum certified albums. And Paris had worked hard to become a brand, a one-woman empire on the level of Martha Stewart only less scary and more sleazy. What followed was perhaps one of the most expensive and public vanity projects in history.
Hilton bought herself the best album that money could buy, corralling talent in the form of a dozen or so songwriters (including Barry Gibb via a sample) and seven producers. The fact that Paris Hilton couldn’t actually sing mattered little. Brittney Spears has made extensive use of voice altering software for almost every single since “Oops!… I Did It Again” and showed that her target audience cared less for music than they did for the image. Sony had made a bundle off of this demo, pitting two of their artists against each other (Spears and Aguilera) and filling the gaps with two more (Jessica Simpson and Mandy Moore). These artificial feuds proved a billion dollar market – the tweens and early teens would pay to support the artists they liked regardless of the output. More recently, Universal has been playing the same game, flooding the market with three very similar artists, Gwen Stefani, the Pussy Cat Dolls, and Fergie, and creating an artificial sense of competition in a field where there actually is very little. Why should Paris be any different? After all, she was already a brand, and having a recognizable face is the largest hurdle in the marketing puzzle. Anything beyond that is just album sales. The fact that she couldn’t sing could be covered up as easily as Brittney Spears, and since Spears was off breeding, Paris might as well borrow her market share.
So, Paris made an album, an album that became the most important of the year as soon as it was complete. The album was, and is, and always shall be, terrible. Despite all the money thrown at the project, despite the songwriters and producers and liberal usage of Auto-Tune, the album redefines fake, devoid of anything close to emotion. The album is as vapid and unrealistic as the name that adorns its spine. And none of this stopped Warner Music Group from snapping up the distribution rights, nor did it stop Billboard placing the album at number 6 for the week it launched. The album sold more than the original 150,000 copies pressed for the United States and broke the Top Ten in almost as many countries as it went on to sell over half a million copies in the four months since it was released.
Most surprising, was how some of the reviews played ball with something that was so obviously fake. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of All Music Guide called the album “shockingly good.” Chuck Taylor of Billboard commented that it, “[s]ounds like Miss Paris could teach top 40’s superstars a thing or two about melody.” Entertainment Weekly stamped the album with a B, noting that Paris was as deserving as Ashlee Simpson, Jenifer Lopez, and the Pussycat Dolls of pop star status, and while acknowledging that we might hate her, urging us not the let that “keep [us] off of the dance floor.” Even Rolling Stone showed their age. While they bashed the album as sleaze in the purest form, they still gave it three out of five stars, half a star less than they gave the new Jay-Z and half a star more than the new Tenacious D.
What these questionable reviews, whether they are glowing or full of hatred, show us is just how important this album is. It is not important because it is good, rather it is important because it is so very bad. This is an album that made no attempt to hide how fake it is, how much work Scott Storch put into the production, or how far the limits of Auto-Tune were pressed. Yet, this album fit right into the bulk of today’s pop music, making cozy chums with sudden peers like lip-synching little sis Ashlee, with the burlesque-turned-modern-Monkees the Pussycat Dolls, with multi-threat starlets who aren’t content merely destroying one medium, but must instead spread to others like attention starved parasites. These truly are Paris’ people, these are her peers. But unlike every other medium that Paris touched, she didn’t drag the music industry down any further, she simply highlighted how far this once artistic medium has fallen.
Paris’ album really is no worse than Fergie’s, and probably deserved the three stars that Rolling Stone gave it. 2006’s Paris showed us the tragic state of the modern mainstream not by being measurably worse than everything else, but by being just as bad. Paris showed us a music industry where the almighty dollar fills the hole left by true talent. Where sex might sell, but sleaze sells out. Where anything, even the live show, can be fixed in post. Where all it takes is a size 0 dress and Auto-Tunes to create a star. Paris marks a point in which the major labels must make a decision: either do away with pretense of talent and art, or actually start pursuing it again. I sincerely hope, for the children of course, that they opt for talent in the future.
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“subter: Album of the Year!”
To paraphrase Baldrick, “Irony? That’s like goldy, only made of iron?”
Someone chop off Brad’s fingers so he can never convey such poisonous thoughts again.