CHANGING PERCEPTIONS

managed to catch siti nurhaliza’s concert at the royal albert hall on astro yesterday. i have made it a point to catch it on tv because although the concert is available on vcd, i can’t buy it because i have made a public statement that goes something like this – “mati hidup balik pun aku takkan beli album siti nurhaliza! ”… eheh.

you must be wondering – if i don’t like siti that much, why bother watching the concert? well, first and foremost that statement was made 4 years ago (i was still in uni at that time). also, at that time, siti nurhaliza really did suck. and I was very adamant and clear about my opinion of siti nurhaliza then. most of my friends knew about this, but very few agreed with me. now, i just don’t go around hating people for no particular reason.. but i thought that she sucked because:

1. she lacks personality – OK, maybe this is asking too much from a local artiste, cos most of them either have no personality or bad personality. but to be bestowed the title “penyanyi no. 1 negara”, i have certain expectations that needs to be met by the title holder. i LOATHE it when an artiste answers a question like she picked the answer from a bm textbook. macam pramugari punya jawapan – very politically correct, very automated. another good example if this species would be that akma from af3. sebijik macam siti.

2. she does not make full use of her influence in the local music industry to improve the industry – take her music videos for example. if there is one singer who can afford to make big-budget, expensive, high-quality music videos, it would be her. financially it would be too risky for other singers because their cds don’t sell as good as siti. but what did she do? it took her almost 5 years to come out with a decent video clip (i personally think that Percayalah was the first music video that can be considered as acceptable). in addition to that, she decided to make her ‘good’ music videos in indonesia! now, i don’t care how economically viable it is to make the music video in indonesia as compared to making it in malaysia, but if we keep going to indonesia to make music videos, how do we expect the local music-video making industry to develop and attain economies of scale? again maybe this is not feasible to other artistes, but she can AFFORD to make such sacrifices (after all, she kept on mentioning in her awards acceptance speech that “siti buat ini semua untuk industri muzik kita”. pleaseee – i beg to differ). the worse part is that even after attaining the superstar/diva status, she could still come out with humiliating, shot-in-a-hotel-suite music videos (just watch “lagu rindu” for example). have you no shame, cik siti?

when i say this to my friends, many of them would rush to siti’s defense and say that it may not be her decision to do all that. it’s her recording label. fair enough. but she could’ve switched to a different record label. but nooo, she kept on renewing her contract with the chinaman company year after year... (ok i’m sounding a little racist here, but i can’t help it. to me, you should work with someone who actually cares about the industry and not just a businessman whose only objective is to turn the singer into a cash-making machine and grabs every opportunity available to use her to make money. i guess that somehow explains the substandard music videos huh?)

3. i used to frown at the fact that she comes out with a new album almost once every 9 months or so. i just don’t feel that it’s fair for the other artistes. you see, for the industry to grow best, u need healthy competition. Other artistes need to be able to sustain their career in order to give siti competition. new up-and-coming acts need to give sales figures that can be seen as “profitable” for them to be given a chance to record a second album. but as we know, the malay purchasing power in general is not that great. if someone (who likes siti and a few other artists)can only afford to buy 2 albums a year, he or she can only buy siti’s albums in the end. Although he or she also likes some other artistes, he or she cannot buy the other albums because of the restricted purchasing power. when this happens, other talented new acts won’t be able to continue their journey in the music career because their albums don’t sell that well eventhough the fact is a lot of people actually liked their act. tapi sebab duit dah habis beli album siti, jadi lah macam tu. Does that make sense? I think so.

4. her dress sense can be horrendous at times. and she kept going to that michael ong guy (she still goes to him I think) why so? i have no idea - i guess it will remain as one of the great unknown mysteries of the world…


although my near-hatred feeling (near-hatred ke full-of-hatred ? :) ) towards siti nurhaliza were very much alive at that time (believe me, i’ve had dreams of talking to her one-on-one, pointing out to her the dumb things that she had done. in these dreams, i made her cry ;) ), the feeling somehow died after a while. perhaps it’s because she started winning less and less awards (i don’t know why, but i just hate invincibility in people… i just don’t think it’s fair the other contenders. among other people that I also hate – tiger woods, valentine rossi, michael schumacher ). from near-hatred, it cooled off to neutral. however, after watching her royal albert hall concert, i think i have grown to respect her more.. i may even like her a little bit now (oh no!). for what it’s worth, i think what she did was admirable. sure, i think she should have spoken a bit more english during her concert, and some of the things that she wore did not match the songs that she sang when she was in them. but it took a whole lot of courage to do something like that… it must have been nerve-wrecking, even for a super-duper-diva like her (btw, i don’t think kak pah would agree with the super-duper-diva title  ). but she managed to pull it off gracefully (or at least SOMEWHAT gracefully)

but of course, me being myself, i have my reservations on the whole royal albert hall (RAH) concert thingy. here are some of them:

1. i just don’t know why did they keep promoting her as the second asian singer to have had a concert at the RAH? Should that be considered as an achievement? don’t you PAY the RAH people to have concerts there? if they’re trying to point out that the RAH people are actually very particular with who can have concert at their place, why don’t they tell us who are some of the singers who had wanted to have a concert there?
2. why did they hire that fazley guy to organize the whole concert? i would never engage someone who once decided to wear the same style of outfit ALL THE TIME (remember those ugly odd-coloured suits he used to wear when he first started singing?) as a way of self-branding to manage your big debut in the UK. sure, he’s smart and stuff, but you can’t be smart at EVERYTHING… personally, i think that he’s smart, but he’s not very creative.
3. i don’t know for certain, but i sure hope that the programme book was good and descriptive enough. because if i were one of the mat sallehs at the concert, i would like a brief synopsis of each of the song that siti sang. she sure didn’t offer much info to the audience in her performance.

maybe what she has done is still not enough to make me eat back what i said 4 years ago, but i have to admit that i see her somewhat differently now. and i wish her all the best. but what i wish even more is that she would stop making “self-degrading” music videos… ok siti?

hope everyone had an enjoyable raya… mine was OK… i’m still on raya leave btw ;)