here must be something in the water but regardless the reason it is tough not to miss the sharp uptick in the number of orchestra press releases coming in using the adjective that shall not be named…the b-word…beloved.
If there’s a better example of old school “greatest-art” era promotional jargon that needs to go, I can’t think of one. Consequently, the time has come for a field-wide embargo and to that end, I’ve started the hashtag #BanBeloved at Twitter and encourage everyone to meme the living daylights out of this one.
I kicked it off yesterday with this one:
Every time an orchestras uses the word “beloved” in a press release, god kills a kitten. #BanBeloved
— Adaptistration (@Adaptistration) July 31, 2014
Keep the ball rolling with your own tweets; if you come across a B-word PR point it out with the #BanBeloved hashtag; you get the picture. If everyone chips in it shouldn’t too long to extract the B-word from our collective PR vocabulary.
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“Beloved” has been used so much that I don’t notice it anymore, However, what about “legendary” for a musician who is not only still alive, but under 40? Why not say famous, or well-known? Or, “touring like crazy, trying to keep his/her name out there so they can keep getting gigs”?
Crap. Now I have to go through all my old press releases to see if I’ve ever used it! (I don’t think I have, to be honest.)
If you do them in word, there are some mass file search tools and if they are online, I can show you how to use the mass search and replace script 🙂
Funny story on that, for a period of about eight months early on in Adaptistration’s history I mistakenly set up an auto correct in word that changed “manager” to “manger” and it flew under my radar for that entire time.
Thankfully, that search and replace script took all of about 10 seconds to mass correct all of those instances. 🙂
I wish I knew how to Twitter, because your thing about god killing another kitten appeals to my dark sense of humor! And as a writer, I appreciate the point about over-used words, especially the sentimental ones. And then there’s the whole apostrophe situation.
Well now you have an ideal reason to start up a Twitter account 🙂
“Sustainable,” in its most common use as boiler-plate propaganda, threatens or kills more careers and orchestras.
Yes, I agree about “sustainable!” (As in “we are going to invent a new sustainable business model for the 21st century,” says the artistic institution who then just goes on doing the same old thing they’ve always done.) I’ll take “beloved” any day over that!!
“Passionate”? “The most noted…of her generation”?