Article from Remedy issue 5 by Remedy's Farhana J.
This project was a social experiment to see how powerful branding and the media are. Also to see if the music industry is as fickle as people say it is. Is image given more importance than real musical TALENT?
Well, in attempt to answer this question, I created a girl band in 4 weeks who looked the part but didn’t actually sing! Presenting Diamante…
First I started by finding three other girls to join me and form what would look like a girl band. After doing a lot of research on other bands, I arranged a couple of shoots with the girls in the typical girl band style. Then with a little bit of Photoshop work, we were ready to go!
I decided to call the band ‘Diamante’ as we were a fake girl band and diamante is a fake diamond, clever ay?
Within days of producing a website, myspace page and facebook, we were getting offers from producers to sing on peoples tracks, and even perform at live gigs! The scary thing was, no one knew what we sounded like, no samples or tracks by the band were on any of the pages as they didn’t actually exist! All the pages solely consisted of images of the band and a brief introduction that read:
“Diamante is the hottest new girl band to hit the UK. Having already taken Europe by storm, the four girls, hand picked from across the globe to create the ultimate girl band, are now set to dazzle the Brits. Farhana, Tala, Rishika and Ese are the incredibly talented ladies chosen from thousands for their unique styles. Diamante's musical style is very versatile with influences from each member’s hometown and pop culture. 'There's something on the album for everyone' says lead singer Farhana from the UK. 'We decided to take a risk with our UK debut single and have chosen to release a garage remix' says Tala from Lebanon. Rishika from India continues, 'it's a funky track that proved to be very popular with our fans across Europe'. Ese born in Uganda adds ' the track is a tribute to a group that we all admired whilst growing up, we know you'll love it as much as we do!”
As shocking as the results were, I’m not claiming that this is clear evidence that the music industry is fickle, just maybe something that we should think about and question. As a society, are we promoting looks and not any real talent? Do we look up to people for their talents or people who are just look the part? What are we getting out of it?
Some of these manufactured bands and artists are being idolised by people, young girls and boys wanting to be like them, mimicking what they do, how they dress and behave, without thinking. It’s always important to question who and why you look up to someone.
At remedy we believe in promoting people with real talent not just looks, and it’s their talents and achievements that make them so much more attractive.
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