Not All "Legends" Are Legendary

One thing we have established over the years is that words are important. They are the way we define the world, and agree how to share the experience of life. Without words, we have no way of conveying what is happening in our minds, or what we believe the world is trying to tell us. Words are the currency we use to not be completely isolated in this life, so when words get misused, it feels a bit insulting to the entire human race.

Not that I want to name names, but last year I received press releases promoting the new album from Ronnie Romero. I'm quite familiar with him and his work, so I didn't need to read the whole of it, but the headline caught my attention. It alerted me to the upcoming album from "legendary singer" Ronnie Romero.

I'm sorry... what the actual fuck?

The word 'legend' means something. Legends are the people who endure through time because they have made an impact with their talent. They are the ones we will be listening to for the rest of our lives, the ones who will eventually cash out and sell their catalogs for hundreds of millions of dollars.

Ronnie Romero is not a legend.

The whole of his career has been spent toiling in the European metal underground, releasing countless albums of provided songs for the Frontiers label, with different groups of people playing behind him to give the impression is isn't just cookie-cutter results with various colors of food dye put in he same icing. Romero had a brief window when he fronted Rainbow, but that was for a few pathetic comeback shows, and one song that disappeared from memory as soon as it was released.

Let me pose a question to you; When was the last time you heard people out in the world talking about Ronnie Romero? I'm guessing the answer is never, because even among the rock and metal communities I keep abreast of, his name only seems to come up as the prime example of label over-exposure. I cannot point you to which project or album he has been on is the keystone, not because no one can seem to agree, but because I'm not sure anyone still listens to any of them.

To the best of my knowledge, Romero has never been on a 'hit' song or album, or anything the general population could have ever heard. At one point, he even boasted that he amassed his legendary career in half the time as most artists. Yes, because he over-saturated the market with his voice, and was recording anything the label put in front of him. It's easy to make a lot of music when all you have to do is show up and sing what they tell you to.

But he is not the only one who gets sucked into this vortex of lies. Some time before that, I received a press release touting the return of a 'legendary' rock band that had been missing for years. Curious, I read to find out who this was talking about. As it turns out, it was The Calling. If that name sounds familiar, they're the band who put out the song "Wherever You Will Go" twenty years ago. That was, in fact, their only hit, and from their only album.

I'm sorry, but a band with one notable song, and even without a catalog of deep cuts they can claim fans love, is supposed to qualify as legendary?

Barney Stinson was the chief purveyor of legendary in pop culture, and there came a point where the other characters had to tell him "if all nights are legendary, no nights are legendary." And that is the crux of all of this; if we talk up the mediocre, there are no words left for the truly great. If Ronnie Romero or The Calling are legends, what does that make Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, and the like?

I know people who do PR are tasked with trying to get the attention of cynics like me, and they have to bend the truth sometimes to do that. There is a huge difference between spin and lying, and too often it feels like I am being fed lies to gaslight me into thinking I'm the only person not seeing the massive success all over the rock world.

And just as an aside, I will mention this. I skimmed through Romero's album after getting my guile up, just to see if things had improved. It was the same bland music he has been delivering his whole career, but there was one interesting bit to take note of. The press release that came with the album mentioned a remarkable cover of a classic song... that wasn't on the version they sent to me.

Is it really too much to ask that we talk about people in the proper terms? If we want to go down this road, we can point out the reality of math, and how almost everyone we talk about here is unknown to 99% of the people on the planet. Is 1% the new mark of being legendary?