This comes from a comment I left on a friend’s post about Corey Feldman’s performance of his song, Go 4 It, on The Today Show.

Let’s just say… the public, on the whole, didn’t like it, and Feldman knows it. As an artist, myself, that risks negative and positive reaction (or, no reaction) by releasing stuff online, I have a lot to say about this. This is the comment as I posted it, warts and all, with very minor edits (to strip out the references to my friend’s Facebook post):

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Now, more than ever, it’s so easy to put together your own art projects and release them to the public. You don’t need an editor, or a producer, or a record deal, or a publisher to tell you you need to do these things to make your end “product” better, more professional, better understood, etc. You can just do it.

As a result, a lot of crap gets released.

But when you’re an artist of any sort, at any level, you’re basically putting yourself out there, no matter what level you’re at. Not only are you showing everyone what you think you’re good at, your ideas and your interpretation of your ideas, but you’re also showing everyone your mistakes and lack of skills. Even Spielberg does that when he releases a movie (anyone remember the working camera after the EMP went off in War Of The Worlds? Tom Cruise brought it up, but Spielberg insisted no one would notice it).

When you have the money, and you’re a celebrity, you can bring more attention to your stuff. So, if your stuff is crap, more people will be exposed to it whereas on the “lower” level, people usually weed out the stuff they don’t like with relatively minimal bashing (keyword: relatively).

Some people have a better objective opinion of their work. Even though “all artists hate their work”, there’s a part inside the artists that release stuff that is just confident enough to show their work anyway because they know they have a certain level of competency.

The problem with people is that if they don’t like something – while some will legitimately criticize it – most will bash it and insult it. And if you’re not a high-level player – and Feldman is not a high-level musician or music performer – it can be detrimental to an artist’s development of the craft and their desire to do any work at all.

(And in Feldman’s case, with his childhood abuse and mental trauma, I’m sure the public beating didn’t help any)

His song wasn’t horrible. It wasn’t great by any means, but it was competently put together (generically speaking, it had a beat and you could dance to it). He doesn’t have a great voice, but he can hit notes and emote, which is what at least half of rock singers do. I’ve heard worse music in every genre. He can’t dance. He’s awkward on stage and looks like he’s free-dancing in the moment without any skill. But at least it was honest, and I’m sure we’ve all seen pop singers flail about on stage “dancing”, but they sure as hell can’t dance.

I’m wondering if, on a different show, with different staging and camerawork, his performance would’ve looked better. Say, Saturday Night Live, where awkward and weird performances look better simply because of the staging and camerawork.

As a celebrity, he should be used to, or at least expect, such a negative public offering along with any praise. And he can choose to acknowledge the negatives and positives or not, and he can choose to keep doing what he wants or not (right now, he can’t get out of bed).

Easier said than done if you let emotions rule you.

Was the public bullying him about his performance? I don’t know. Could the public be less assholes about stuff like this? Yup. It’s one thing to bash the thing you don’t like in the privacy of friends. But once one does it in public, that’s just being an unnecessary asshole. Bashing something is not the same thing as having a legitimate negative critique.

However, I’m pretty sure there’s no way to get the public to stop being a collective asshole. And this is something artists of all levels have to learn to deal with. Which sucks, but it’s a reality. Artists that let the public get to them don’t get any work done.