Alicia Gatto: Rebel or Schmebel?

In September of 2007, the story broke that YouTube indie music sensation Marie Digby wasn’t all that indie at all.  She’d been signed by a major record label for quite some time before seemingly finding innocent fame online.  Digby was accused of astroturfing — feigning a grassroots campaign — and the backlash was huge.

Now another singer, Alicia Gatto, has launched a new web site with the help of a successful series of YouTube trailers.  Save Alicia positions Gatto as a wall-busting rebel on the music scene.   It offers the premise that Alicia has been held captive by her management company (presumably so they can force her to create uncool music for The Man), but she is now breaking free, using her feisty rebellious spirit to shine a light onto corporate controlled media.  Or something.

No, I don’t believe I’m supposed to take the captive thing seriously.  I do believe, though, that I’m supposed to take the rebel thing seriously.  That I’m supposed to see Gatto as a music maverick who intends to build her success without the help of corporate media, and expose said machine for what it is, all while being aggressively true to herself.

I ain’t buying it. 

You don’t become a rebel by shouting “I’m a rebel!” And you certainly don’t become anti-corporate by commercializing your anti-corporatism.   The site comes off, ironically enough, as the just type of thing a major label would do to launch a pseudo-rebellious rocker.  The “evidence” portion, supposedly full of scathing examples of Big Media’s shady shenanigans, mostly links to outdated rumors that never panned out.  The alarmist page with since-misproven warnings about MySpace seems especially silly, considering Gatto’s heavy use of her own MySpace Music account.

The music isn’t bad.  You can only hear one song(!) on Save Alica, but the MySpace page has a couple more, and her “rocktronica” is pretty good.  It’s sort of like if Bjork and Amy Lee had a talented-but-slightly-less-interesting-than-either-of-them child.  Not earth-shattering, but highly listenable. 

But unfortunately, Save Alicia isn’t about the music.  There aren’t even music videos, beyond a technologically clunky presentation of the content already on YouTube.  What it does have are three qualities sadly all too typical of just about any youth-targeted artist’s campaign – flashy but vague online teaser promotion, lots of skin, and absolutely no mention of the artist’s real age.  Some rebel.

Diversity, indie music, new business models — these are good things.  Artists like Terra Naomi have proven you can build success online…with your music.   But with a gimmick-heavy site and a desperately in-your-face image, Gatto is guilty of the same hype machine used by the conglomerate-controlled music labels she attacks. 

I don’t think The Man is losing sleep over this one.