So I really think MTV needs to debut a liquor lesbian duet between Katy Perry and Amy Lee where they snog by the end. See, poor Katy Perry was asked by Steppin’ Out magazine who she would want to kiss. Her singing about how she kissed a girl and all. Katy Perry told Steppin’ Out that she would like to recreate the Madonna and Britney Spears kissing moment from whatever awards show that was at. She wanted Mily Cyrus to kiss her at the Teen Choice awards last week. Okay, I just Googled to see why I remembered the Madonna lesbian kiss being a threesome and to see what awards show it was at. The answer is the VMAs and the kiss was Madonna kissing both Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. How does Christina Aguilera get left out of that? But I digress.

So anyway Katy Perry said she wanted to do a stunt like the Video Music Awards one with Disney’s Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus. Miley Cyrus’ peeps issued a public response to this idea which can be distilled down to “ew, gross, no.” In more detail, Teen Choice Awards host Miley Cyrus told E Online’s Marc Malkin that “[Katy Perry] sang on my record. So I think she’s kind of getting back at me, because she was doing harmonies and backgrounds.”

Okay, that was kind of unintelligible, but Miley Cyrus is only like fifteen-years-old. But Katy Perry is still left with the problem of who to do a lesbian publicity stunt with now that Disney’s teen queen rejected her advances. According to my usual primary source for pop culture factoids, The Jesus Blog, Katy Perry found “that because singing about Christ did not bring riches and fame she has decided to sing about sensationalism and pull publicity stunts in order to be known.” Yep, you heard it here first (unless you read The Jesus Blog or are, ya know, very informed about Katy Perry), Katy Perry started off as Katy Hudson, singer of Xtian pop rock.

Now I have no problem with it if someone like Christina Aguilera or Alanis Morisette is initially marketed as wholesome and virginal and later marketed as more mature and maybe a bit dangerously slutty. That is just growing up. I think it is egregiously inappropriate to market very young girls in overtly sexual ways (Yes, I’m talking to you, Billy Ray Cyrus!) But it is pretty normal for young girls to grow up and for artists to evolve over time. All that makes sense.

But when Xtian artists like Amy Lee of Evanescence or Katy Perry sort of cross over into gothic and bi-curious markets, they tend to dilute both. Amy Lee can sell diluted darkness because she seems, to the uninitiated or overly gullible, to be coming from a gothic place. Amy Lee is the methadone of goth. Katy Perry can sell homophobia because she seems, to the uninitiated or overly gullible, to be coming from a sexually adventurous place. Katy Perry is the arsenic of sexual adventure. So I think Katy Perry’s peeps need to get with Amy Lee’s peeps, put together some sort of Ani DeFranco meets Coal Chamber mash-up, and have the two supposedly edgy artists make out to it. Lesbian kiss publicity stunt problem solved!

I used to watch music videos and just feel the mood they were trying to evoke. I’d believe that the peformers really were that cool. It was all so sexy and exciting. I just wanted to pass through that TV screen into a cooler and more passionate world.

Given that I kind of did manage to live my life so that I got to pass through the screen to the other side, I actually only got cable television because I was offered a really good deal on getting it with a cable modem. Time Warner Cable recently bought out Comcast, who I think bought out RoadRunner, and maybe AT&T was in there somewhere. I didn’t totally follow all the transfers and my cable bills literally did not have a return address on the envelope for a while because the changeovers were so hasty.

The upshot of all of this is that I recently had a channel line-up re-shuffle and it is easier for me to TiVo lots of music video shows, fast forward through stuff I don’t like, and still get to enjoy lots of videos I do like and might not have come across otherwise. Music videos used to be one of my favorite forms of entertainment and one of the only types of television I would watch. My college had a room in the student center with a gigantic projection TV and a friend of mine (who had a first and last name which were surreally both slang for penis – he was even more surreally named after his father) and I used to sit there and watch MTV on it, missing stuff we were supposed to do because we were just going to stay until the good video came on. When I finally had access to a television with cable and a closed door, I wasted no time finding which shows had the highest preponderance of rock videos I found worthy of self-pleasure.

My new Time Warner Cable line-up includes a couple of MTVs and VH1s and CMTs, and the delightful relative newcomer FUSE. I should be in heaven, but I have trouble stopping the negative ideation those video channels evoke in me today. The problem is that I have too much of a sense of how the sausage is made and I’m discomfitted by a lot of their cooking methods. I see a video with some teenage boy singing about how wrong it is to beat your girlfriend and the song is catchy enough and the boy is okay-looking and has a nice enough voice which works for the material. But I can’t stand the pretense that some teenager wrote the song.

Cablevision Systems Corporation, the corporate parent of FUSE, has sports holdings which account for nearly 20% of their revenues. I wish music understood teamwork like the world of sports does. Sports fans know and understand that, while some people are really standout stars, there are a number of positions which need to be played and the coaches get airtime too. If someone gets too flamboyant in drawing attention to themselves, they can get penalized for showboating. In the world of music, there is this desperation to pretend that the lead singer just came up with everything. Unfortunately, the product is so manufactured that a lead singer who really can come up with his or her own songs, style, and message is likely to be buried and ripped-off and asked to change, but never played by the music video stations. A headstrong artist is a pain in the ass and nowhere near as desirable as a compliant and good-looking youth who can sing and dance and sign contracts which offer a low percentage.

And I can’t stop myself from thinking about how the singer doesn’t understand the words he is singing. I can’t stop myself from thinking about contract law. I can’t stop thinking about how roughly seven companies own most media in America. I can’t stop thinking about how the music industry’s response to YouTube was not to offer kids in Peoria the video-directing opportunity of a lifetime, but to offer those talented kids in the boonies the opportunity to line the industry’s pockets for nothing. I can’t stop myself from thinking about how many talented musicians I know, who will never get a real chance, precisely because they are the whole package, in an industry which has come to prefer people who can fit snugly into small roles.

And then I find myself wondering about a band like Evanescence. The band has sold more than fourteen million albums worldwide and they tend to be marketed somewhat as a Gothic band. I’ve had some interaction or other with someone from most bands which are marketed as Gothic or industrial or deathrock or anything along those lines. If I haven’t, then someone I know has. Either I or someone I know will have interviewed someone from the band, partied with someone from the band, had sex with someone from the band, or at least shown up at a nightclub and had a conversation in line for the bathroom with someone from the band. But nobody I know has ever mentioned having anything to do with anyone in Evanescence.

Dictionary.com defines the band’s name as “to dissipate or disappear like vapor” and the Gurl.com top interview in a Google search for amy+lee+evanescence+interview explains the band’s name as “The word Evanescence means to dissipate like vapor, it puts an image in your head of like a ghost/specter that isn’t really there.” The Gurl.com interview has no interviewer credit. So I watch videos late at night and I finally start wondering if Evanescence really exists in any man-in-the-street sense of what a band is or if some enterprising producer for the surreally-named Wind Up Records just made up the whole thing to, you know, wind up the public. And sell fourteen million records. Which is a lot.

The question is, if Amy Lee and Terry Balsamo don’t really write Evanescence songs, don’t pick out their own clothes, don’t have the personal lives claimed for them, or maybe don’t even speak English, does that make their performances less enjoyable for their audience? If it does reduce the pleasure, does that mean it is good and reasonable to hide the origins of the music and the performers? Is it okay to lie, if it makes listeners happier? Is it still okay to lie, if it makes listeners happier, but the lies mean a genuine struggling band, who tells the truth, can not compete?

Someone, please tell me you have met Amy Lee from Evanescence and she speaks English like a goth girl from Arkansas. Someone, please tell me how to block the part of my brain which wonders if Evanescence is a hoax, when all I really want to do is watch some cool videos.