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Carly and Eddie

9 Nov 21 | Re: The talent for transmitting emotion | Link-U-Post

Among the many current success stories of the super hot new wrestling promotion All Elite Wrestling, nobody has onlookers more agog than Eddie Kingston. Few had heard of him before last year, and no one expected this to happen, but the man is on fire. And where others stand out for their flashy moves or their involvement in layered, long-term storylines (which AEW is doing really well, by the way), Eddie is conquering through sheer force of personality. He's a fiery veteran, a wounded underdog, a self-sabotaging underachiever on his last chance, an everyman with his heart on his sleeve. All very compelling, but you can't just cook up a character like that in MS Word, you have to find the right person to play it. It's clear to everyone watching that Kingston is that person.

Reviews of Kingston's work often talk about his total commitment to his character: his ability to immerse himself in who he is so that every movement and glance in or out of the ring is absolutely what he's supposed to be. It's true he's very good at that, but don't think that's what sets him apart. His biggest asset is a rare ability to convey emotion. People are primed to read feelings in voices and faces, so you might think of everyone you see or hear as an emotion-transmitter. But if the average person is going around transmitting emotions like a walkie talkie, Kingston is a 5G mast. To look at him is to be hit by a wave of whatever he's feeling at that moment. Whether it's triumph, anger or his speciality, desperate disappointment, you're there with him.

So from there, of course I started thinking about Carly Rae Jepsen. It would be a very original, though wrong, opinion if I said that Emotion wasn't one of the best albums of the last decade, but it's only now that I'm able to put my finger on why. It's not so much that the album does the things that other pop albums do, a little bit better than they've managed to do them. It certainly has the songs and the production, but what puts it above the rest is something in Carly's voice, an Eddie Kingston 5G emotional effect that dishes out the feeling of each song in every syllable. The classic Carly delivery is wide-eyed and excited (Run Away With Me, I Really Like You) but she also does centre-of-attention-at-the-party (Making The Most Of The Nigh), crushed-but-still-ever-so-slightly-hopeful (Your Type), intensely in love (Warm Blood), breezy and gossipy (Boy Problems). I don't think any other singer could deliver all of those songs the way she does. Resist the urge to do Jepsen at karaoke, for you will fail.

I'm not sure if this emotion-delivery talent is much talked about. It's probably one type of charisma. Trying to think of other people who have it, the best I can come up with is Drew Barrymore. There's more than one film where her character gets her hopes dashed and does a crushed nod of acceptance that tells the whole story on its own.

Looking back on the '10s, it's interesting how pop was often built around a more robotic delivery that I suppose comes from Britney and then Gaga, and even Rihanna at times. Jepsen is the polar opposite; maybe Robyn would be the other example, but her range tends to be limited to somewhere between anguished and completely crushed. You could argue that wrestling has had a similar tendency - everyone's still somewhat in the shadow of the Rock, who would bluster over his feelings with insults and catchphrases, and Stone Cold Steve Austin, whose lack of emotion is right there in his name. Following them came the cold-blooded Randy Orton, the dutiful John Cena, and the bulletproof Roman Reigns. So perhaps it's time for a change, and if Eddie Kingston ends up Jepsenizing wrestling, that has to be a good thing.

Posted by TRUFFLE THE PIGLET at 22:29

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