Changing Perceptions

I consider myself a fairly avid fan of Carrie Underwood. Wasn't a huge fan during her Idol run, but her charm and intelligence in the interviews after her win last year really won me over, and when her album came out I was doubly impressed that her vocals had improved markedly over her Idol days; I even went to her first headlining concert this year in January in Portland, Maine, and I had never traveled to see anyone in concert save Clay Aiken. Great voice, lovely young woman, but somewhat reserved and awkward even in front of an adoring crowd. My associations of her are basically lookswise, a innocent fairy-tale ice princess sort of girl; singing-wise, probably the heir apparent to Faith Hill as a sweet, blonde, pretty, big country-pop ballad belter.

And then today I saw this picture of her:

And suddenly my mental image of Carrie and her future in music shifts dramatically. Maybe she's going to go an entirely different direction than that which I had previously imagined. Instead of sweet and innocent, she now looks hot and rocking. Wow. I'm now wondering if it's possible that she's going to go after the massive Shania Twain audience of being more entertaining, saucy attitude-driven music with a hot look. She has a long way to go in stage presence but she's come so far in so many ways that it's no longer out of the realm of my imagination that it could happen. But I would have never thought of it without seeing that picture.

So if a mere picture could make me rethink about what Ms. Underwood is capable of in her career, I can only imagine the seismic shock that two minutes on TV with a brand new look is shifting musical expectations of Mr. Clay Aiken.

In a related tangent, today at the bookstore I was leafing through the book, Blink , which presented some thought-provoking theories on "first impressions," why sometimes they're right on and other times they're dead wrong. The author presented a case of an aspiring musician who was raved over by music industry executives and live audience alike, but couldn't catch a break because of marketing research, as callout on snippets of his songs were terrible. Basically, what it came down to was that the execs and the live concert audiences could see a slice of the whole package of what the artist presented and loved it, but when they broke his music down to sparse pieces of information, it translated poorly because the testers had the wrong slice of information. This case was presented as analogous to the Pespi/Coke taste test. Pepsi (the sweeter drink) consistently rated higher on sip tests but when people drank whole bottles at home they preferred buying Coke because of brand image and a flavor that held up better when you had to drink a whole can instead of just sipping a taste. It's all very interesting.

There was also an anecdote that I found particularly provoking; that of an art collector who dissects art so much that it's difficult for him to judge what appeals to him after so much analysis that he would have the art locked away for a while and covered in black and then some time later would suddenly uncover the art and instinctively judge based on that flash reveal whether the art was really good or not so great, and then go with that piece of information to decide whether he ultimated wanted the piece or not. Sure made me think a lot of Clay's dramatic reveal after months of nothingness. Here he is, presented in 3-D, judge for what you see in front of you and not based on all your preconceptions that have faded away. I wonder if the people at Strategic Artist Management have read Blink? LOL.

Tags: Carrie Underwood, Clay Aiken, Blink, perceptions