I was in CVS last week, perusing the magazine rack, when I came across something that genuinely scared and saddened me. I had fought the urge to discover new ab-attaining, lady-sexing secrets in this month's Men's Health, ignored the breaking story of Obama's gay lover (secret bedrooms in the White House!) and gone straight for an old standby: Rolling Stone. Now, in recent years I have found myself somewhat disappointed in RS's overall output, but I still appreciate some of their artist profiles, editorials and album reviews.
I picked up what I took to be the current issue. On the cover, there were three all-too-familiar faces: Nick, Joe and Kevin Jonas. The first time I saw Disney's golden boys draped across Rolling Stones August 2008 issue, I reacted with shock and dismay, and I was in plain disbelief that but a year later the Jonas Brothers had once again made the cover of the most famous music and culture magazine in the world. As I opened the magazine, things went from bad to worse. Instead of finding the usual advertisements, table of contents and articles, I found myself staring at page-after-page of Jonas; an entire issue of Jonas to be exact.
I paused. Surely I had made a mistake. I had picked up what I thought to be Rolling Stone, when in fact it was this month's Tiger Beat or Teen People. Nope. I was in fact holding a Rolling Stone Limited Edition Jonas Brothers Special Issue.
I thought for a second of all that Rolling Stone represented: Hunter S. Thomson and the birth of gonzo journalism; Lester Bangs; Annie Liebowitz. For the last forty years, Rolling Stone has taken the nation's cultural pulse. I could not help but feel that I was holding in my hands the tangible embodiment of the end of an era.
Okay. I admit I'm being melodramatic and perhaps unfair to the Brothers Jonas. But there is something that definitely bothers me about "JB," as they are known to their legions of internet fanatics. The Jonas Brothers are certainly not the first megastars who owe their success to a well-executed marketing plan. But something about the Jonas Brothers phenomenon feels altogether too calculated. Frankly it seems to have worked too well.
With the Jonas Brothers, Disney has created a brilliant marketing machine that plays perfectly into the minds of today's tweens. Their music sounds rock n' roll enough; while they are pure-pop, they still play guitars! Their lyrics are filled with cute clichés about young love and harmless fun. They look cool and they sport safe versions today's trendiest fashions: leather jackets, scarves, skinny jeans. They are funny, charming and attractive. And they do it all while maintaining a perfectly non-threatening image. They wouldn't run off with your daughter, at least not before marrying her first. (I wonder if a promise ring would have helped Elvis explain those hips…). Most importantly, the Jonas Brothers are spoon-fed to our nation's youth from every multi-media angle.
So of course it works. If I were ten, it would work on me. The Jonas Brothers aren't much better or more interesting, musically or image-wise, than the first bands I listened too. The difference is, of course, that I got to find those bands on my own. I got a chance to really discover rock n' roll, to discover music. I fear that kids of the YouTube.com generation might be denied that privilege.
So do the Jonas Brothers really have talent or are they simply pawns of an evil corporate marketing scheme? I don't really know. But their overwhelming success has made me fearful that the next generation of Rolling Stone covers won't be birthed in the basements, garages and nightclubs of America, but in its corporate marketing labs.
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Charles Laubacher is a sophomore who has not yet declared a major. He can be reached at charles.laubacher@tufts.edu
