LimeWire Music Blog

This week, Idolator posted a few articles about the latest issue of Blender, which features a decidedly unmusical cover story on Tila Tequila. Board commentators were, not surprisingly, shocked to see the basic cable sex-pot on the cover of a supposed music magazine, though Idolator contributor Robert Kemp wasn’t.

“The promise of images and words regarding music figures of estimable worth are hardly a guarantor of newsstand sales, and the type of reader that Blender would have been able to depend on a few years ago now fills comment boxes with invective along the lines of “OMFG, I can’t believe that they’re putting this creature on the cover” and “whatever happened to talent?” So why, precisely, should the big music mags do what pleases Idolator- and Pitchfork-niks? Why shouldn’t Blender, like MTV, appeal to people who like to watch strippers, cocktail waitresses, and goofball dudes debase themselves?”

The bottom line, of course, is what’s on Blender e-i-c Joe Levy’s mind. Rolling Stone, after all, has been subsidizing their musical content with broader entertainment and political features for almost as long as the magazine has been around. In fact, the most recent issue sports the cast of MTV’s The Hills on its cover (to accompany an excellent article, I might add).

The problem though, when music magazines begin putting actors on their covers over musicians, is that it signals a loss of faith in the music industry, and thereby damaging it further, when they should be trying to aid it. Sure, there are still plenty of other places for those so-called Pitchfork-niks to get their fix (like this very blog, duh!), but truth be told, bands, and the music industry as a whole, needs the support of mainstream media outlets too; most people still do their reading there. We lost MTV years ago, and, if anything, they’re only getting worse. What’s next, will radio station stop playing music?

Listen: I wholeheartedly support the cross-pollination of music with other media; I love the idea of smaller bands getting more recognition through appearances in movies and TV, like Cheeseburger in Grand Theft Auto IV. But, are things in such a state—do editors think so many fans have disappeared—that music alone cannot support a music magazine? No, and at the end of the day these magazines will have achieved nothing but their own demise (by way of endless pandering and marginalization) and the further crippling of an already damaged magazine niche (through sheer betrayal).

Call me an idealist, but I’m OK with that; music fans could use a bit of optimism right now.