Popular Culture Review 30.1
when they were depicting the urban poor or racialized characters . Singers like Tucker and Carus tended to perform in one place on stage , moving little and using their faces and hands for emphasis . They laid emphasis on telling a musical story clearly and loudly so that even those in the back of the house could hear their words . 24
Around the turn of the century , however , the direct appeal began to change the way singers performed and , as it did , to transform popular music . The growing emphasis on the performer inspired composers to make their work less narrative and more personal . Instead of songs telling stories about others , composers increasingly used the first person . Singers who were selling their personalities naturally presented the music as expressing their own feelings . This encouraged publishers to link vaudevillians more fully to the songs they produced and after 1900 , they were paying them to have their pictures on sheet music covers . The song-writer , Irving Berlin , who was just emerging as one of vaudeville ’ s premier composers , said that it was no longer necessary to tell a story in songs and he wrote lyrics in the first person , so that the singer “ talks directly to the auditors .” 25 This change reflected the growth of celebrity , personality , and a vaudeville performance culture that rested on the “ direct appeal .” Female singers , one vaudevillian explained , used to “ depend upon tonnage to put them across . Those days have slipped into the discard . Now patrons want to see and hear [ performers ] ... who can sing .” 26 Authenticity was achieved by “ naturalizing ” the delivery and making the song more personal and this individualization , paradoxically , enhanced the song ’ s marketability . All this resulted from the critical shift in the singer ’ s role from storyteller , where the real identity of the performer was erased , to a melding of the performer ’ s emotions with those of the character in the song .
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