I don’t know if Gretchen fell by the wayside because her appeal wasn’t sexy enough. I’d blame the music there.

And Miranda Lambert is a gorgeous girl. If you ask me, she has the perfect image for country music. Cute but healthy and normal. Nothing fake. Give her time as far as album sales. Quality will win out in the end.

As for Melissa, I won’t argue that she has a great voice, but I will argue that country music needs more variety – in all areas. However, let’s save this argument for a great artist…

Exactly. Throwing up Vince and Wynona as examples of singers who made it in spite of their looks is no longer relevant. Time have changed since those two were burning up the charts. In the last 5-8 years there is no female multi-platinum, award winning SOLO artist who is overweight or less than average looking. Zip, zero, zilch. Matt C said it up-thread about the audience being interested enough in the first 3 minutes to invest further — well in this YouTube/Facebook/MySpace celebrity blog saturated world, the fatties and the brown baggers can’t capture the [i]buying[/i] public’s attention anymore.
The men get much more of a pass on this. Ain’t that right, Kenny?

Ask Miranda. If she were thinner and more magazine cover worthy, she would have several number one hits and a multi-platinum record by now. It’s not the material — it’s her mass appeal. It’s the same reason why, in spite of her label’s desperate attempt to sexy her up, Gretchen has gone by the wayside.

It isn’t right, it isn’t fair and the net effect is that we will likely never again see truly unique artists who have the power to leave their influence on generations of coming acts.

As far as Melissa Lawson goes, her main audience isn’t gonna be males… so maybe suburban moms will like that she’s “one of them”. I remember reading that girls liked Gretchen because her looks weren’t “initmidatingly” good. In other words, girls wouldn’t have to worry about their boyfriends gushing over Gretchen.

That being said, just look at the number of modern country albums that have the artists face/body on the cover. Looking at some of my bro’s rock/punk/alt albums, not ONE of them have the band’s pictures on the front (most are art). Go figure. Image matters.

Funk is right. I don’t base my judgments of artistic merit on physical appearance, but we’re talking about more than that with Melissa Lawson: we’re talking about her ability to become a commercially viable country artist, and, like it or not, both artistic and physical traits are important in this regard. It’s perfectly acceptable to comment on Melissa’s weight in a conversation concerning her prospects for success as a major label recording artist.

It doesn’t. It affects the general public’s ability to watch them in a spotlight for 3 minutes or 1.5 hours. Or it affects the public’s willingness to invest that first 3 minutes.

Did you ever hear the song “Video Killed the Radio Star?” Don’t blame The Buggles. Blame MTV.