It’s no wonder Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse have drug problems. They’re so bloody addictive.

(From top - Amy Winehouse; Feist; Lily Allen)

Ok, sidebar note here. I don’t do musician reviews. I can’t. I barely enjoy writing music reviews. They don’t make any sense to me. When I read drivel like “the lyrics seem inspired by the artist’s own past strife, a cathartic journey measured in equal parts of angst and copulation” I get dizzy. Either you enjoy the music or you don’t. I don’t care about the musician’s journey. I’ll save the introspective analysis for myself and evaluate the work on broader terms, using criteria like…hmm, oh, I don’t know, whether I liked it or not.

It may be a little late to jump on this particular pop culture bandwagon, but being such a patsy of record-label commercialization, I’m sure someone has saved me a seat. I just wonder who I’ll find first; Richard Branson waiting to shake my hand or Noam Chomsky itching to spit on me.

About 6 months ago, this girl I sort of fancied sent me an mp3 of someone called Lily Allen. She said it was English-folksy-jazz-nova with a slight dance beat and that I’d love it. Not being one who regularly embraces female artists (unless their boyfriend isn’t around) I didn’t think much of it. Well, let me qualify that. I make a distinct distinction between the titles labels “artist”, “musician” and “singer”. Yoko Ono? Artist. Norah Jones? Musician. Victoria Beckham? Singer.

Smile - Lily Allen

I love female musicians but I have trouble even tolerating female artists and singers. They’re either trading off their sexuality or their lack of it. Every single is accompanied by a dance number seemingly choreographed by the understudy crew of Grease or a pretentious unplugged guitar solo that is only striking for its incredibly short shelf-life in my mind.

Long story less long – I loved it. Fast-forward to me today – I’ve just downloaded Lily Allen’s album “Alright Still”, Feist’s album “The Reminder” and Amy Winehouse’s album “Back to Black”. Three entire albums by three female musicans, and I’m loving them all. I got ballads. I got jazz. I got beats. I got smoking lyrics. I’m thrilled to my core and, again, bless the iGods for their bounty.

1234 - Feist

You know what’s scary? It almost didn’t happen. By the slight misdirection of a single fluke, I might’ve never even heard of these musicians. Why? Well, I’m terribly, terribly lazy. I mean, sure, one Lily Allen song was great. But am I supposed to download her entire album, listen to 11 potentially nauseating tracks just to discover they’re not iPod-worthy? Of course not.

This is why I term myself a patsy of record-label commercialization. Before, when an musician needed exposure and public recognition, her managers would book concert tours in malls and other similar-sized venues, film music videos for heavy rotation on MTV and MuchMusic, and of course push radio stations to play their singles over, and over, and over…

I don’t go to malls anymore. I hate music videos. Radio? Ha! And I’m not alone. My generation has mostly given up those iconic 90s traditions in favour of the Internet and…ok, just the Internet. So what does an exec do if he wants to reach me and my peers? He puts the music on TV. Smallville, Entourage, even House – I’ve downloaded great music because I’ve heard it first on those shows. I think it’s a terrific medium. I’m not distracted from my enjoyment of the show – in fact, the music often adds rather than detracts from the plot – and I don’t have to change any of my entrenched behaviour to be exposed the new music.

In fact, I got turned onto Amy Winehouse and Feist from advertisements. I saw this killer song on the new iPod video Nano commericial, did a little research and voila, I got Feist’s “1234” plus the other album tracks on my iPod (sidebar note: most of the other tracks suck). Then I was watching an Internet ad for the new season of House and heard Amy Winehouse’s song “Rehab”. Love it! Commercials for things I actually will buy download.

Rehab – Amy Winehouse

Obviously my system is not perfect and I probably do miss out on a few musicians who I might dig, but frankly, if the alternative is to sift through tons and tons of noise baggage before I can find the few good pieces, the choice is simple. I’d rather be ignorant than bored.