Word: emi
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...haven't lost her as a vocalist. On July 18, EMI Records will release Dreaming of You, a half English, half Spanish pop album that was completed after Selena's death. The CD will undoubtedly bring her music to a far wider audience than she ever had when she was alive. That should not be surprising. The music world has long been fascinated with performers cut off in their prime; death, the old saying goes, is frequently a good career move...
Today, advances in recording technology have given record producers an even greater ability to finish up the work of deceased performers, to remix, remaster and rejigger unfinished recordings with digital precision, and, via aggressive '90s marketing, to sell them to the public as authentic. In December, EMI will issue a Beatles boxed set with several new tunes, at least one featuring the voice of John Lennon, who died in 1980. Previously unreleased tracks of Lennon's singing are being combined with newly recorded vocals from the three surviving Beatles. On one cut of Selena's new album, her Spanish vocals...
...what really ruffled the monks' cowls was EMI's insistence on holding them to a contract the Benedictines had signed 30 years ago with Hispavox Records, which EMI later bought out. That agreement entitled them to only a flat $1,500 per record, though a small royalty was added later. "The monks say they were paid legally," says musicologist Alejandro Masso, who produced their new album, "but they also say they could have been paid more elegantly." "Ridiculous," responds EMI executive Steve Murphy. He asserts that the monks have received "substantial" royalties in excess of $40,000, adding that Buruaga...
Though Chant sold 6 million copies worldwide and grossed more than $50 million for EMI Records (whose stars range from Sinaad O'Connor to Digable Planets), Laurentino de Buruaga, the group's choirmaster, complains that the monks have earned a paltry $40,000 from it--hardly enough to patch the leaking roof over their medieval cloister. In response, the monks have followed the example of secular recording stars from time immemorial: they've switched labels. Their new CD, The Soul of Chant, was released last month by Milan Records, a smaller classical label...
According to Buruaga, Chant was a disenchanting experience for the monks even before it soared on the charts. First, EMI blundered by putting a painting of brown-robed Franciscan friars on the CD's cover instead of black-robed Benedictine monks-the ecclesiastical equivalent of putting a Yale man on the cover of the Harvard yearbook. Then, as Chant's sales took off, an overeager EMI executive flew to Silos to talk to the monks about a follow-up album. Suspicious of the machinery of stardom--and the private helicopter whirring overhead--the monks greeted the exec through a peephole...