The politics of pop music
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Pop music is encouraging a culture of passivity in Britain's youth according to THIS article over on the Guardian's Comment is free.
Not sure I agree with the article, but the author's got a pretty face:)
Labels: comment is free, pop music
posted by Blamerbell @ 1:03 pm,
5 Comments:
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At 9:32 am,
Martin said...
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Don't judge pop music by Girls Aloud! It would be like slating Dennis Potter because he works in the same medium as Ant and Dec. The Smiths, Manic Street Preachers, The Clash, The Pogues... four very political and anti-passive bands off the top of my head. There is as much variation in pop music as there is in human feeling.
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At 1:07 pm,
Blamerbell said...
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"Don't judge pop music by Girls Aloud!"
I'm not.
"There is as much variation in pop music as there is in human feeling."
With a tiny bit of analysis, it's clear that this is simply not true.
Anyway, if you want to comment on that, get over to the Guardian - I'm still in the top 10 reads! -
At 11:26 pm,
Martin said...
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I'll write my book on pop music one day, explaining why it's the most misunderstood art form of the twentieth century... but in the meantime read Michael Bracewell's 'England Is Mine' if you can - it's about constructing the English identity through pop music. You'd love it!
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At 11:40 pm,
Martin said...
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Just read the CIF thread and can't be bothered to register. But basically, to analyse pop music in the same terms as the way you'd analyse classical is just missing the point. Yes, it's generic. Yes, it's repetitive. Yes, it's structurally simple. The point is that matters relatively little because pop is a cultural phenomenon not simply a musical one. And in any case, although I tend to go for esoteric and difficult literature (my favourite book really is Ulysses), I judge intellectual and emotional art by different criteria. Music to me is about emotion - raw, primal, personal, often simple, repetitive, but really the very stuff we're made of. Intellect, language is constructed of more complicated material. Hence, simple and powerful music, complicated literature. I just judge them differently, although in its own ways my favourite pop music is quite complex too, but not sophisticated in the way classical or jazz can be.
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At 5:48 pm,
Blamerbell said...
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"But basically, to analyse pop music in the same terms as the way you'd analyse classical is just missing the point."
To think that's what is going on is missing the point.
If there'a any "terms" to the analysis it's the terms in which we all digest the music which is around us every day. In most cases this won't be classical music.
The fact is that as people living in the West we automatically process music in a certain way - to describe it you nneed to use a certain degree of musical analysis.
Any other approach is complete nonsense.
