You’ve seen this before. When an attempt to accomplish something backfires completely, an artistic endeavor flatlines so obviously, when an effort falls so short of victory that it might have been less humiliating to save the energy and not attempt it in the first place. You know, like Tom Cruise playing a samurai. Or a Paris Hilton reggae album. Or everything George W. Bush has ever done (quick, libs! only a few days left to blame him for EVERYTHING THAT GOES WRONG IN LIFE). This phenomenon, once encountered, will create shame amongst one’s allies, derision from one’s enemies, and a vague sense of vicarious embarrassment from can be summed up in a pithy single syllable : fail. In some especially pathetic cases, the phrase “epic fail” gets some play.

The ways we react to good old fashioned fail in media reflects the complex ways we react to in life. Sometimes, there’s a certain element of gratitude that it isn’t us in the spotlight screwing up. Sometimes, there’s anger and outrage at having our time wasted. And other times we ignore it altogether, which might be the worst case scenario for those who make a living of media attention. But sometimes fail isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. We don’t always mercilessly mock everyone who screws up anything in life, unless we’re major league assholes. We understand that sometimes in life, there are mitigating circumstances that make failure excusable. Whether we think about it or not, the same things come into play in music.

Example. I have no idea what the hell Bakhtawar Bhutto was smoking when she decided to make a rap song:

but she must have pissed off enough for him to hook her up with the bad bad for whatever reason. Maybe I’m from the old school, but I don’t think you pay tribute to an assassination by committing a crime against humanity. Then again, how hard on her do you wanna be? She’s not a professional. Oh, and her mom got shot in the face last year. Stuff like that is tough for the funnah.

Likewise, if someone fails spectacularly, but at least shows a willingness to get outside the box and try, the fail is a little nullified:

If you fail in pursuit of an artistic vision:

Or if you simply don’t have enough talent for anything better to be expected of you. You can’t squeeze any lulz out of a Special Olympics athlete falling down, or a midget not being able to dunk, or Chingy releasing a shitty CD. It’s like yelling at someone in a wheelchair for not running fast enough. Can’t do it.

So, I’m left wondering what category of failure to place Chris Cornell’s most recent video in. And no doubt, there’s some failing going on here : Cornell spends 4 minutes crooning moodily over a beat Timbaland must have scraped off the bottom of his shoes in 2006, and 75% of the song is just… him repeating the chorus over and over. It’s bad enough for a man his age to rip off Justin Timberlake, but sounding like a Justin Timerlake C-Side is just… ugh. Really, the only question in my mind is : is this a regular fail? An epic fail? Is it somehow mitigated because he’s working outside of his comfort zone? Or is it worse because Cornell is a relatively talented musician who should know better than to foist bullshit like this onto the public? The logical way to figure it out, I think, is to briefly ask what makes a failure in the music world especially revolting to fans.

First is a record that insults the audience. The economy sucks, money’s short, and nobody wants to feel like they bought into a musician’s get rich scheme or a calculated strategy to stay relevant. It’s tough to buy a Jessica Simpson country album when everything from the twang on up is manufactured, and she’s only in on it because her little sister is outselling her on the pop charts. Nothing good can come of it. Does Scream reach that level of cynicism? Eh. Maybe. The allure of working with Timbo and automatically selling a stack of CDs was probably there… but then again, a new Audioslave record wasn’t going to be a slouch commercially, either.

Another easy way to get your fail on is to raise expectations so high that they’ve got no chance of being met. Sometimes the media’s kind enough to do this for you (see Vampire Weekend), and sometimes the artist does it for themselves, promising the best record ever for years and Duke Nukeming themselves into the fail files (see Chinese Democracy). Third, an album that shamelessly leans on past glories. Few things sadden me as much as having the followup to a CD I liked being…. an exact copy of that CD I liked. It’s not fair to lump Cornell in this group. Maybe his own fans were hyping themselves up, but there wasn’t much hype in the larger muysical world.

Also, this might be a peanut butter and pickles thing : two great tastes that taste like ass together. It’s not hard to dig into the pages of history and pick out collaborations that make the Maserati TC look like a work of genius. Scream in particular, feels more like Sting and Mary J. Blige butting heads than some all star mashup like Swagger Like Us. A good collaboration should play to everyone’s strength – if you’re Chris Cornell, you want something that sounds cool in the background while you go YEEEEEAH in the chorus and awww in the verse. This one muddles them both and makes them sound generic. If there’s a case to be made for big time fail, this is probably the place to do it. Sometimes along the way, somebody should have said : “Cornell and Timbaland? Really?”

In the end, I think if you’re going to decide how bad Scream is, I think a great deal of it depends on how much (or little) you like his material in the first place. If you’ve got a certain amount of love for the guy, you’ll eat up everything he does wirth a spoon, and if you’ve got just a little less, you’l excuse it as a temporary misstep. All the mitigating circumstances for failure in music are based in sympathy and empathy, the ability to but yourself in their place, and the extenuating ones are based on being tonedeaf, arrogant, blind to your surroundings. The idea that music is subjective isn’t a new one, but it pops up here again. If you’re expecting greatness from the guy, you might decide this little diddy is an epic, inexcusable failure. But if you were expecting Audioslave, then, well… anything’s an improvement.

Tags: Audioslave, Bakhtawar Bhutto, Chingy, Chris Cornell, epic fail, fail, failure, George W. Bush, Justin Timberlake, Mary J. Blige, Maserati TC, Paris Hilton, Sting, Timbaland, Tom Cruise

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 10th, 2009 at 7:04 pm and is filed under Echo Chamber . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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