I am quite certain we are all well tired of diaries talking about how much money the Republican National Committee spent on Sarah Palin's clothes. And about how much Cindy McCain's attire costs.
So this is offered purely in the spirit of fun, and because it's a rare chance to dish in public.
Please jump with me as we discover the true (and there's no irony in that word choice) cost of clothing a star.
I have spent the last 21 years on the sidelines of the music industry. One day, a decade or so ago, I was driving around rural Tennessee looking for thrift shops with a woman who was an art director at one of the major labels (she still is, lucky gal), and for some reason we started talking about the ridiculous budgets that got spent on album covers.
This was the topper.
In the 1990s, the art budget for a greatest hits compilation -- featuring no new tracks -- for an established female artist (and, no, I'm not going to name names) was a cool $500,000. Half a million bucks.
I can no longer remember if the photographer's fee was included in that line item, or separate; I do remember that his/her fee was a cool $100,000, PLUS expenses (film, assistants, sushi, whatever).
That $500,000 included clothes, make-up, first class airfare for the artist and her entourage, fancy hotel rooms for the week of the shoot (I believe it was a one-day shoot, but it might've been two), etc.
Now...in the real world, that's what is spent to image a star, and the RNC means to make of Sarah Palin a star. Not simply for this election, but beyond, for Carl Rove saw in her a rising and powerful figure before John McCain chose her.
Shifting back to the recording industry...the silly things are: (1) Either all or half of that $500,000 spent on the cover was recoupable (charged to the artist); and (2) Typically greatest hits packages signal the end of an artist's relationship with a label. That or a live album is the death knell. Major label contracts were usually for seven records, but actually that was a series of two-album deals with options residing solely in the hands of the label. The seventh album was either a hits package, or a live album, to be followed by the deletion of the artist's catalogue or, very occasionally, a long and contentious negotiation of the artist's next deal.
(In this case, the artist had already left the label, which may explain the ridiculous budget; and the album went multi-platinum, so everybody probably got paid.)
So. That's what it costs to cloth and package a star. While it loses hockey mom cred (or does it? who wouldn't love a $100,000 shopping spree?), and while it distances the McCains and the Palins from the average Joe Sixpack Plumber, in the end it's as vapid and forgettable a digression from the real issues of this political season as is the music of the unnamed star whose foolish ego led to this diary.
And I suspect the music industry has modified its rules somewhat.