There are tons of celebrities out there in the world. Even if one were to consider that 1 in every 1000000 people is a celebrity, we end up getting 7000 of them - and being one in a million sure isn’t an easy statistic to chew on - that’s setting yourself apart from about 999999 others, naively calculating. There are just so many celebrities in the world!

And now, each celebrity gives a host of interviews every year to a bunch of news channels, to magazines, on podcasts - and there are just so many of those that it becomes really hard to keep track of what your favourite celebrities intend to say. Whether celebrity culture is healthy or not for a society is a matter of discussion for another time, but the bottom line is that there are just a lot of people who become popular for some reason - and who give a lot of interviews.

When you have a lot of stuff with the same format, it becomes difficult to maintain good quality. The same goes for interviews - some of them are rather “skippable”, while some are genuinely amazing, quite like works of art. Good interviewing is most certainly more than just asking quetions - the host needs to ensure that the conversation is proceeding in a decent direction and needs to give a good flow to the interview and cover topics without breaching points of discomfort. But some interviews are special.

Very recently, I came across one featuring Jerry Cantrell as the guest. I really like Alice In Chains and was quite curious to know how its members grew up in their personal lives before joining hands to form the band (a point to note, though - the band’s music and/or song themes may not be appreciated by everyone, in general; they’re quite dark in nature).

The said interview was quite interesting not only in terms of content but also how it was presented - it was an hour of just Cantrell talking, with the interviewer’s questions edited out, so as to make it all sound like one continuous narration. It left me hooked on to the interview and allowed me to take in everything that was being said with a very sharp focus rather than getting distracted by the constant switching of speakers, as in the typical case of any interview. There was no introduction, no wrapping up, and in fact, the interviewer was not even shown at any point.

It felt quite meaningful, this format, and it would probably make the viewer feel much more connected to the interviewee than in the case of a typical interview - and that probably is the point of one - of givng a perspective from the side of the person in the spotlight. When that person speaks about various topics without appearing to be interrupted, maybe it’s a much nicer experience for the audience. Or Jerry Cantrell really knows how to narrate well. Probably both.

Time to watch the entire Icons series, I guess. Looking forward to watching a lot of meaningful interviews soon!