![]() Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the mode she established was standard for women pop stars – due not only to her huge commercial impact, but also to the influence of TV talent shows which gauged female acts in particular purely on technical terms: who was the most forceful who had the greatest range, the most acrobatic melisma. This doesn’t in itself make Jackson or Houston better than the Velvet Underground – whatever that might mean. Jackson and Houston sold in the tens of millions since then, people who sound like Jackson or Houston have cumulatively sold tens of millions more. And, as Eno didn’t mention, a few of those bands flourished, but most sold even fewer. It was Brian Eno who made the now famous observation that the first Velvet Underground album sold only 30,000 copies in the five years after its release (mind you, plenty of bands today would consider that a major success, which is another matter), but everyone who bought it started a band.
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