Do you need to be a performer with a big stage presence to be successful in the music world? I am split between two points of view on this one, since I have seen artists impeccably playing their songs without doing anything else, but winning the crowd nevertheless, and others deploying a lot of energy and charisma, giving back ten times what I expected and winning too,… or not.
Success can come from talent or charisma or both, but if there is none of them, it can be forced on the public by a lot of promotion, artifices, pyrotechnics, choices of outfits, and, unfortunately, it works very well. I don't think a musician necessarily needs to create a character as David Bowie did with Ziggy Stardust to reach a god-like star status, it has to be natural, coming from a personal idiosyncrasy, and if it sounds too calculated and forced, you can’t call it stage presence.
The decorum and outfit are a big part of the impression the band wants to make at first glance, and I have never been a fan of these pop stars going though ten costume changes during a show; from Madonna to Lady Gaga, there is a special brand of performers who will go to long lengths to prove they are entertainers first. But is it really stage presence or just pre-orchestrated choreography? There is nothing spontaneous in all this and the risk for the music to become an accessory when too much attention is given to costumes and other artifice, is very big. Sometimes, after watching some high-power pop stars, let’s say the Beyonce-type, I am let to wonder which one of the music or the stage show comes first in these people’s minds,… there are definitively examples of the stage show getting in the way of the music, and for me, Beyonce doesn’t have an interesting stage presence, and she is more a robotic performer doing aerobics than an artist.
Stage presence is not always about how energetically the person moves on stage, in any case, it should be spontaneous, unpredictable, personal, mysterious and why not, weird, bizarre, disturbing. That’s why I would never consider these rehearsed-to-death stereotyped choreographies as good indicators of stage presence, which also has little to do with the artist's use of costumes, light effects, confetti, pyrotechnics…
So who has real stage presence? Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips is certainly in this kind of business, the band is using a lot of tricks, giving the impression they are an arena rock band (but these tricks are just super cheap ones using mostly rubber balloons and fake blood) and the guy is crazy enough to come up with insane new ideas at each show. Gogol Bordello’s Eugene Hütz, Fucked Up’s Damian Abraham, Iggy Pop and Nick Cave are the obvious ones who come to mind right now, but this is not reserved for tall or larger-than-life guys, as I happen to believe that tiny Fiona Apple or PJ Harvey have an amazing and magnetic one… When it comes to stage presence, I want to be surprised, disturbed from my comfortable position or even provoked, but certainly not go through one of these pre-digested, pre-studied performances on steroids that always fall flat as the money making machines they just are.