"The whole format of entertainment that I did seems to be fading away. The music business of today is completely different when you see the videos and the music"
About this Quote
Nostalgia is doing double duty here: it is grief, and it is a quiet bid to be remembered on his own terms. Bobby Vinton is not just saying the industry changed; he is naming a specific kind of performer and platform that once made his career possible, and that now feels like it is dissolving. The phrase "whole format" points to an ecosystem: radio programming built around crooners, variety-show circuits, a singles market that rewarded vocal personality and romantic sincerity over spectacle. When that infrastructure disappears, it can feel less like an evolution than an erasure.
His wording is tellingly external: "when you see the videos and the music". Seeing is the giveaway. The complaint is not only sonic but visual, a recognition that pop has become an image-first medium where branding, choreography, and hyper-edited storytelling can carry as much weight as melody. For an artist whose appeal was largely intimate and voice-centered, the ascendancy of the music video and later screen-native platforms rewrites what counts as talent and what counts as a hit.
The subtext carries a generational sting: the rules have changed mid-game, and the new ones do not reward the old virtues. "Completely different" is both diagnosis and self-defense, a way to explain distance from the present without admitting irrelevance. It is also a subtle critique of gatekeepers and incentives: when attention is the currency, the music business stops selling songs and starts selling moments.
His wording is tellingly external: "when you see the videos and the music". Seeing is the giveaway. The complaint is not only sonic but visual, a recognition that pop has become an image-first medium where branding, choreography, and hyper-edited storytelling can carry as much weight as melody. For an artist whose appeal was largely intimate and voice-centered, the ascendancy of the music video and later screen-native platforms rewrites what counts as talent and what counts as a hit.
The subtext carries a generational sting: the rules have changed mid-game, and the new ones do not reward the old virtues. "Completely different" is both diagnosis and self-defense, a way to explain distance from the present without admitting irrelevance. It is also a subtle critique of gatekeepers and incentives: when attention is the currency, the music business stops selling songs and starts selling moments.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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