The “Related Artists” Question
A few weeks ago a friend of mine – who is also a musician – posed a question to her Facebook friend: “Which other famous acts did she sound like?” Because I can never resist the opportunity to be a smart ass, I responded with “Def Leppard, Boyz II Men, and Frank Sinatra.” If you’re wondering, she sounds nothing like any of those acts, but while my original post was just for shits & giggles, it happened to inadvertently represent an important question: what does it mean when we say that one artist sounds like another one. If you’ve read a lot of local music publications – including this one – you’ve probably seen a lot of local acts compared to internationally famous ones. I know because I’ve done this myself; in my preview of Well Worn Boot’s show at Nietzsche’s this Sunday, I described the group as “Primus meets[...]