To be fair, Id say that a lot of people who buy pop records do like it. I mean I used to buy it more than I do now and I liked it at the time but I was no sheep. Pop musicians ARE musicians, its just that in general they don't have many strings to their bow - they tend not to write or play instuments. The voice is an instrument after all (even if it isn't so great in some cases).

but they don't create...

miss c,
to be a musician means to have an understanding of music. You will here from many many professional instumentalists (as i have) that when they have worked with a vocalist, the vocalist little to no *musical* talent.
Like I said before, the ability to sing is like the ability to walk, just not so common.

I can walk, but i can't run like an Olympic athlete.

anyone can learn to sing... the same way anyone can learn to draw... some people just have to practice harder...

Well actually, they DO sing so that is a form of music (dear god, Im beginning to sound as if I like them..). Thats not to say its anything special, but there are always exeptions - Christina Aguilera, Mariah Carey for instance. I consider myself a musician too and I don't think that there is set standard of rules to say whether you understand music or not. I sing, write songs, play guitar and piano but I can't read a note of music - some might say that I don't understand music because of that. But what is the definition of understanding it? I love creating and listening to music, it is my passion and life - thats the nearest I can think of to 'understanding' it. Im sure a lot of pop stars feel this way, and lets face it, they have to have talent of SOME sort of talent to make it. Thats not to say that Im a fan of that kind of thing, I believe it to be vastly overpublised and unoriginal and I don't think they tend to have as much talent as certain other types of musicians.

By that logic anyone can learn to play the guitar, and anyone can learn quantum physics. A skill is a skill, regardless of what that skill actually consists of. TALENT comes from when someone gets good, and this doesn't allways blossom. No matter how much practice I get, I will never, ever paint to the same level of skill as Monet, I'll never ever sing as well as Jeff Buckley and I'll never play like Jimi Hendrix.

Professional instrumentalists are (usually) going to have a better understanding of "music", in the sense of timing and notes etc., because they have to work some external apparell. A singer may not have complete control of their vocal chords, but in general it takes less preparation and less actual manipulation to make the sound they want. This is how I see it, anyway.

I also disagree with an earlier point: It can take as much dedication to learn how to sing as it takes to play an instrument. It just depends on how dextrous you are with a certain part of your body.

What we have to remember is that what makes music something truly special is what can be done with it.

I hope that you can all understand what i mean.

If you listen to baroque music, you will often hear some exceptionally beautiful sounds. It's often incomprehensible to imagine comming up with it. The composers of this music were people with 'musical' understanding and VISION, musically.

Today, such musical genious is a rarity. Radiohead are a great example of people (or certain members of the band) with understading of music. They exploit music to exceptional degrees. This is exactly what pop stars and the less talented can't do.

What I said at the start of this post, what makes music truly special is what can be done with it. Radiohead understand this. Their music shows that special quality.
Britney (maybe I'm over-using her as an example, but then she is probably the popiest icon you can find) doesn't understand how music can be used and many vocal talents don't.

Thats where you can draw the line on a musician and an performer.

I'm more a performer than a musician. I've done a fairly high level exam for classical guitar. The exam i did was for a 'performance'. So I think that i can safely say that i am, for sure, without doubt, officially a performer. While I have had my hand at writing music, I wouldn't go as far as to say I was a true blue musician. The music that i have written does not have a great deal of elements that would make it 'good' music. (And I know that its hard to say music is good because of different tastes and such... but sometimes you just can't say something is bad.)

That not to say that having written music makes you a musician but just that there's more to being a musician than most people seem to think, in fact, I don't think most people even think about what a musician is.

What most popstars do is sing a melody. Melody is music in its simplest form (i guess percussion really is but then percussion has evolved and is now a bit more than banging two stick together). There's not a lot to melody. Even if you have never played an instrument you'd probably be able to make a melody. While alone, melody can be interesting, but this often isn't the case. A few posts earlier I said something about taking the backing track away from a pop song and seeing if it would make it to number one. I was trying to point out that it was the exactly this (the backing track) that often made a song interesting and fun to listen to.

We need to understand that singing something is, more than making music, performing music. And the ability to perform music does not make you a musician.

Musical genius (like any other) has ALWAYS been a rarity.

Yes, without a doubt.
But my point was on performers. Performers don't necessarily have to have a musical understanding, especially in the pop music scene. They do however need butts and boobs (boobs apply only for females).
And some people do need to try hard to be able to sing, but do u really believe that the vocal popstars that we see on MTV and stuff are those that tried hardest? Nope, not me anyway.

men needs boobs to be stars just as much as women... the man boobs are just expected to be flatter and more muscular... do you think soundgarden would have gotten big with their 'jesus christ pose' video if cornell had a pot belly? or if he was super skinny?