The Fashion World's Five Most Over-played Albums

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Sep 25th 2008 By Elyse Sewell

The Fashion World's Five Most Over-played Albums

The typical fashion photo shoot is a confluence of disparate personalities -- and musical tastes. The hairstylist came straight from an all-night circuit party, and the E is still wearing off. The makeup artist is a 35-year-old mom who spent the early morning listening to hysterical toddlers crying and is down for anything besides the Spongebob theme.

The model may spend her club-bound hours draped over the DJ and therefore likes the latest hip-hop raunch, or she's a Baltic betty into the techno abominations of her homeland discotheques. The photographer enjoys a bit of Rachmaninoff, but he knows his responsibility to the crew: The "work" that we'll be doing in the studio demands little mental concentration, so we're all going to be bored and crabby unless music is pumping at full blast, all day.

How to please everyone? With what I like to call the musical lowest common denominator! Since the date of their respective releases, there has never been a moment when each of the albums listed below was not blaring from the stereo at some photo shoot, somewhere in the world. With my reviews, I present to you The Lowest Common Denominator Albums of the Fashion Industry.

Maroon 5, "Songs About Jane." How did we let this happen? Why do we live in a world in which caterwauling glans Adam Levine and his band have a record so successful that it has achieved Fashion Industry LCD status, and I've listened to it so many times that I can now sing every lyric? By the second track, I start looking around for swords to fall on. By the third, I'm removing my stiletto heels, inverting them upon the ground and collapsing on top of them to put myself out of my misery. Regrettably, no heel has ever been sharp enough. Luckily, though it seems like it never will, the disc does eventually end, and the CD changer moves on.

Click here for four more go-to albums.

Madonna, "Confessions on a Dance Floor." Ah, the true essence of a Lowest Common Denominator: Unassailably unobjectionable, yet so uninspiring you can't remember a thing about it after it's over.

Justin Timberlake, "FutureSex/Lovesounds." There is literally no one working in fashion who does not like Justin. The lyrics to the T.I. rap in "My Love" are part of the oath that models take when we're sworn in to the industry, and I've heard that hairstylists must pop 'n' lock when they apply for their government-issued blow-dry licenses.

Gorillaz, "Gorillaz." A classic! Nothing like Damon and Del to get the lip gloss flowin'.

Mariah Carey, entire oeuvre. This soundtrack may not seem very conducive to fierceness. It isn't. The only place in the world where the musical common denominator is so low as to include Carey is China. Modeling in China can be strenuous -- many outfits, long hours, no breaks, uncomfortable extremes of temperature -- and ten or twelve solid hours of Mimified slow-jams does not mitigate the unpleasantness.

That's why I never go to a shoot in China without an RCA cable and my iPod stocked with my own Lowest Common Denominator playlist. I choose it carefully: No Ghostface or Bad Brains, for at the first sign of anything abrasive or obtrusive, someone will go trotting over to the stereo and change it back to Mariah, and I'll be powerless to leave the set to change it back (no breaks: I wasn't kidding). My LCD playlist contains nothing too male-voice-centric (Modern Lovers never really caught on in China), nothing too slow, nothing overtly wacky or cartoonish (I discovered this one day in Guangzhou, when the photographer's assistant kibosh'd Beck's Guero during the title track). Gentle beats are best.

Dear reader, in this life, you never know when you may be suddenly transported to a fashion photography studio in the middle of Guangdong province with a full crew of Chinese individuals waiting expectantly for you to floss your DJ skills. It is with that eventuality in mind that I offer you this advice: Don't offend their sensibilities and put yourself in peril of a daylong Mariahfest! Rock them and yourself with my personal LCD playlist:

Ratatat, "Ratatat"
Pelican City, "Rhode Island"
RJD2, "Deadringer"
Kinks, "The Village Green Preservation Society"
Stereolab, "Mars Audiac Quintet"

Is the day over yet? What's that, you still have another 80 outfits to model? Rock on:

Manu Chao, "Clandestino"
The Busy Signals, "Baby's First Beats"
King Biscuit Time, "Black Gold"
Beck, "The Information" I hope for your sake that by the time this plays through to its boring second half, the job is done and you're limping homeward. Don't forget your RCA cable.