I am following up on a recent post If I Were Starting a Record Label because a couple of friends experienced schadenfreude over how agonizingly difficult the last category was for me, i.e. Sacred Cow – A band or artist you sign purely out of personal love. In that part of the piece, I focused on the word “purely” as creating tension between the thinking (and dominant) side of my personality and my less expressed feeling side, which music taps into[1].
On further reflection, while the thinking/feeling dichotomy was there, I now realize the tension was more about the word “love”, in that I come at music in two ways: who I love (how an artist makes me feel) and what I love (artists in context or category). And that Sacred Cow category was tapping into both.
Re-reading my post, I see the who I love hit first as I immediately named names of artists whose music I LOVE: Dua Lipa, Jessie Ware, Katy B., and Adam Lambert. But I could only pick ONE and that’s when my Thinking side wrestled with how to decide. I did allude to the how when I wrote, “If I were starting a label part of the vision would be seeing some artists going from zero to hero.”
And there was the leap I didn’t realize I was making at the time. When I think about some of the historically impactful music labels, most of the great hitmen who were behind them were driven by what they wanted music to do.[2]
Norman Granz sought to bring down racial barriers in jazz. The Chess Brothers wanted to promote Chicago blues. Berry Gordy wanted his black artists to become “The Sound of Young America.” David Geffen started his Asylum label after not being able to get his management client Jackson Browne a record deal. Geffen then developed a reputation for signing artists who struggled to find record deals[3]. Whatever labels he presided over, Clive Davis made no bones about what he wanted – BIG HITS and BIG HITMAKERS.
Like them – and the only way in which I am like them LOL – I came to the topic of starting a label and the specific question of signing an artist purely out of love, with a very clear what I love about music in mind. And that “what” is how I eventually decided on River Iris.
What I love about music is seeing undiscovered and under-discovered artists get MORE discovered. That love is one part the fascination with a shiny new object and one equal (greater?) part, ahem, my infinite wisdom and extraordinary taste that has determined MORE people should be listening to this artist!!!! The breadth of my musical interests and the time I spend in this obsession of a hobby is inspired by this love of the undiscovered and under-discovered.
So, getting back to my who I love list of Dua Lipa, Jessie Ware, Katy B., and Adam Lambert, and with my what I love criteria in hand, I could decide who the band or artist I would sign purely out of personal love.
Well, Dua is off the list. She’s been quite discovered but it makes me happy that I was listening to her before she released her first album when she was relatively under-discovered, especially in America.
Jessie Ware is under-discovered IMHO as are many UK artists I listen to, which I find very frustrating[4]. But recently she had to add a second show here in DC and that one sold out as fast as the first, so I guess that means she’s now less under-discovered and getting the respect she deserves. It also makes me happy that she’s selling out bigger venues than the ones I’ve seen her play over the past ten years.
As the frontman for Queen, Adam Lambert is certainly not under-discovered. However, as Adam the solo artist, his career has been fine but hasn’t matched his prodigious talent. Considering Adam for my label is an emotional sacred cow thing going back to being astounded by him weekly on American Idol. Plus, he’s highly regarded as a wonderful human being and how much fun would that be to hang around with him and talk music? But again, he can’t legitimately be described as undiscovered or under-discovered.
OMG I LOVE LOVE LOVE KATY B! I wrote about Katy B.’s history of being underrated back in 2020 so she is definitely on my immediate list of under-discovered artists I love. And the truth is, I had a draft of the label blog ready to go with Katy B. winning the last category. So what changed?
Well, Jax from Season 15 (2015) of American Idol came to mind. She was my pick as the most likely to find success after the show. It took a while but in 2021 she struck gold with her single Like My Father and followed that with a Top 40 hit Victoria’s Secret. Where Katy seems to have found her level at 850K monthly Spotify listeners, Jax is on the rise, and at 3.8 million monthly listeners, she has slightly more than Adam. I love seeing Idolists have success. And if I had a label, I’d want to be part of that success.
But there are levels to this. Each of the artists above I initially considered does have some form of being discovered. While I experience great enjoyment from their music and derive tremendous satisfaction from their successes, the Holy Grail is the undiscovered artist. For my label I am watching reality shows to find another Adam Lambert (no chance of that happening), Jax, or Melanie Martinez. I’m discovering a teenage Kingfish Ingram on a remote side stage at a blues festival. I’m blown away by St. Lucia opening for Ellie Goulding. Or I’m mesmerized by fifteen seconds of a song by somebody named River Iris playing as bumper music on a podcast.
So in finally deciding on a sacred cow band or artist I’d sign purely out of personal love, I was looking for one artist that best fit the two objectives “I love their music” and “virtually nobody knows about them”. Who is the least of these whose talent deserves a bigger audience? A few came to mind[5] but it didn’t take me more than a few seconds to decide on River Iris for the reasons I gave in my original post. She is an ideal representative of what I love about music driving my label’s decisions about who to sign – seeing undiscovered and under-discovered artists get MORE discovered.
Incidentally, the definition of a sacred cow is “an idea, custom, or institution held, especially unreasonably [emphasis mine], to be above criticism. I can hear my finance team telling me how unreasonable I’m being for not signing My Girl Dua Lipa.
[1] Maybe just a coincidence but of the two friends that inspired this post, one is a dominant Thinker and the other is a dominant Feeler.
[2] I used the word “hitmen” quite intentionally as a reflection of how male-dominated the business side of the industry of music has been, and wondering how it would have been different if that were not so.
[3] Like a little band I like to call The Eagles and some cute girl named Linda Ronstadt, among many, many others.
[4] I have a reason why I believe they are too often under-discovered and I suspect my dear friend JL is going to want to who these people are and why.
[5] OMG I know my friend JL is going to want to know who they are, too!
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