One of the absolute best music blogs for recommendations is Crazed Hits, a site which mainly gives news of when US record labels have signed new acts, but also shares tips about new acts which are getting a lot of buzz. Usually I haven’t heard of any of the acts on the site beforehand, so I was very surprised to see someone I was familiar with, but had totally forgotten, on the site yesterday: Ross Copperman!
He was one of the recommended unsigned acts, yet he has already been signed to RCA in the UK, and released an album and two singles. I love the way that his MySpace tells the story of his absolutely disasterous career in such a positive light:
“His first single ‘All she wrote’ hit an amazing 38 in the UK charts which is quite an achievement for a new artist. This release was soon followed by the release of ‘Welcome to Reality’ his debut album in UK. August saw ‘Found You’ released and hit the UK charts and Ross got on the road to support Mcfly which went extremely well. Now with an album and 2 singles released in UK under his belt and a handful of some of the most intimate and special gigs played, Ross has now gone back home to America to push his album release over there and to begin writing another. The road to success continues…”
In translation: His 2nd best song only reached 38, then his best song missed the chart completely. He toured with one of the UK’s biggest acts, and still no-one cared. He did some gigs and nobody came. He decided to give up and go home.
I shouldn’t be so negative, though – I actually really loved Found You and All She Wrote. They could have been great boyband singles, even though Ross was more of an adult contemporary act. McFly was a very odd choice of band to support. 13 year olds would have no interest in this kind of music. Regardless of how he was promoted, and although a lot of people would have loved his music, I understand why he wasn’t successful. His songs are very mum-friendly, but even the mum market is heavily regulated by the cool police these days. Ross wasn’t acoustic like Damien Rice or retro like Duffy. He just had good songs, but how do you market that if they’re not trendy good songs? It’s very difficult.
Now he’s got several new songs and is getting some attention in America, but since Found You isn’t on his MySpace at all and All She Wrote is right at the bottom, it seems unlikely he will be using them to gain success. Which is mad, considering all his other songs on MySpace are distinctly average. I will keep an eye out for him and hope that he does well (perhaps can even come back to the UK with his head held high) but I’m sad to say I’m not optimistic at the moment.