Pop Music in General

PS. Aydee, maybe if you make playing BJ sound as thought it's something subversive?? Hope he doesn't read this or the cover's blown ...

About as subversive as Phil Collins playing Mercy, Mercy with the BR big band...
Also, no worries Polly, who reads PSs anyway. : I
 
Heya Gust, where'vyabin? Playing, I hope.

Its should be no surprise that pop music is intrinsically formula music which is born with a commercial or business objective in mind rather than a interesting musical idea.

To work off a lowest-common-denominator principle works best in these circumstances.
Something that will please everybody/Nobody will hate it. Minimize the chance of failure, eliminate risk, don't take any chances.. in other words do everything diametrically opposite to what 'music creation' itself believes in.

A middle of the road musical statement if you will. ( We all know what happens if walk in the middle of the road...you get run over )

Take someone that has commercial appeal/potential, broad-base it so that you can close as many loopholes as possible, make him/her likable/acceptable to as many people as possible, change their hairstyle and promote the heck out of them.
If you hit gold, you are the man, and if you tank.. dump em and move on to the next best thing.

Funnily enough though, sheer talent, thoughout the history of pop has often broken through these corporate confines of musical expression and shined through despite the 'ball & chains'.

As an aside, I was reading Sting's autobiography the other day and he quite clearly states that for him POLICE was a commercial vehicle that he choose to ride only to get him to a point where he could then play 'his music'.

I think you've got a real grown up head on your shoulders and musical tastes & talent to match so I'm not surprised you're gagging at a lot of whats out there.. ; )

Hang in there, Gust..


....

Havent been posting much lately, but have been playing :) ill send you an average quality digital camera video if you'd like. then a much better quality recording once i get a zoom H2, though that could be a while...

That's a bit disappointing about sting, though i havent listened to the police too much i like their hit songs.

not all pop is terrible. but there is some horrible stuff that i can't believe people like...

I think you've got a real grown up head on your shoulders and musical tastes & talent to match so I'm not surprised you're gagging at a lot of whats out there.. ; )

Thanks man :)
 
Most definitely. I felt guilty about not posting some Crimson originally, esp something like Lark's Tongues or Red. But I left that for you. :) I used the Chick for the name mostly. And what about Cream, Hendrix or Graham Bond? It goes way back, doesn't it?

I like the notion of pop music as music that is made specifically for commercial consideration. I get a kick out of a lot of it. But I try to make a distinction between music whose merit is exclusively commercial: Brittany or The Archies, and music that although it is commercially appealing, it has some artistic merit, something like Walking on the Moon. In that sense, pop music can rise to the occasion of a sense of artistic merit. I like Dream Theater, another good example. The music they do is a lot of fun; but very rarely actually has an acute sense of artistic merit. I would actually give it more cred. than a lot of folks that would say it's warmed over 70s rock and 80s metal. To me it may have some sense of artistic merit, but to someone else it is just pop.

The important thing to me about contemporary notion is the idea that popular music can rise to art and can be historically pertinent. I brought up Bartok, (and that didn't bring The Colonel in) Look at the number of artist influenced by Bartok: Zappa, Keith Emerson, Jason Moran, and Lutoslawski, a pretty far range. And he didn't get the lauds that Stravinsky got, or Schoenberg among academics. He was probably the composer influenced by folk music who brought it to the most artistic level.

Again the problem when discussing pop music in regards to quality is you have to get passed a lot of superfluous notions of importance to whom, and when. Issues of class, gender, race etc. play a big part in that authentication of taste. And you get into that with a discussion of any musical genre, oh that term.

What is a true artistic expression? Is "She Loves You" not art but "The Long and Winding Road" is? Is "The Black Page" not pop, but My Guitar's Gonna Kill Your Mama, is? What about something like Prokofiev's Lt. Kije Suite, often quoted by popular songwriters? Does quoting Prokofiev make a pop song 'not pop'? Maybe the point of am trying to make is that something can be superfluous and still have charm, and maybe even artistic merit. A lot of the stuff my students bring in is actually quite nice pop: Disturbed, Avenged Sevenfold, Seether. I would be listening to that stuff if I were 15. So this notion that somehow good popular music died with Hendrix and Janis is just nonsense. I mean I am a music historian, and if I could get passed that notion, I think anyone can. and it is a notion that is very bad for music.
 
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So i just thought of something that i feel is very relavent to this discussion...
I am a web designer/developer... i started as an artist and decided to persue commercial art as my occupation. The fields of music and art are inter-related as they are both forms of art, so is dance and theater etc. So i guess the thing is, do you consider commercial art the same way you consider pop-music? I mean do you criticize commercial photographers, graphic designers, movie/tv actors and web designers and say they aren't true artists because they chose to be successful at their jobs? I mean i could be a flat-broke fine-artist or i could be a moderately succesful commercial artist... yes i have to sell-out some sense of artistic integrity but at the end of the day i know i did my job and made money doing it.
In an ideal world people wouldn't have to sell-out artistic integrity due to monetary concerns but this in the real world you often have to do that.
Its like someone said before, money is what makes the world go round... people have bills to pay, mortgages, education and tons of other needs that being "artistic" just won't cover.

Now all that being said, i will also reiterate my earlier point... i feel like 90% of music (and art) is complete crap and there will be a few gems of truly good stuff in all genres. If you use the amount of crap found in any genre as a metric you'll pretty quickly be able to say that all genres are bad. I don't think that we can say that pop is bad because there is a lot of crap in it... if you look back historically at music you'll see the same thing in all genres across all times... the difference is that pop-music is on the radio now so we hear all of the crap along with the good stuff, and the classics stations have already weeded out a lot of the garbage.
 
I'm sure if you asked nicely The Colonel could come up with something that might be classified as microtonal concrète pop/jazz experimental music ...



Britt, apology accepted. Just don't do it again :)



Don't do it, Ferret! It sounds painful! Dying a fiery death and burning forever in the bowels of Hell probably wouldn't tickle either ...

Actually, I like some pop music a lot - or should I say the genre formerly known as pop? :) Now Ferret, before you think "bah humbug!" about me, remember you're talking to someone who owned 14 King Crimson albums in the 70s and now has 150 King Crimson MP3s on her hard drive.

Some commercial music is boring to me, but someone has to make music that speaks to teenyboppers and adrenaline-charged teenage boys. The kids no doubt find a lot of my music boring too. Fair enough, since music is made by people so it attracts and repels us just as we variously attract and repel others.

The main beef about pop seems to be the idea of commercially-minded cynics bastardising music for profit - barstardising that which we consider sacred. I suspect that's where you're coming from. But superficial music wouldn't be created if the demand wasn't there, if the big record companies couldn't find a way of tapping into humaity's lowest common denominator in order to make a buck.

But hey, they're businesses, and businesses are about making bucks - paying for mortgages, early retirements, private school education for the kids, overseas trips etc.

My beef's a bit different to yours - pop production. My irritation isn't aimed at the musos but the record companies. They have conditioned people's ears to expect mega production for music that doesn't warrant it (ie. not Sgt Pepper or Dark Side of the Moon). It puts bands deeply into debt (ie. under the company's control) and they polish up simple pop that should take 2 weeks to record. This, in turn, squeezes out indie bands who can't compete production-wise. Sometimes they still break through, most mostly they have to settle for niche markets to make a living. Or get a day job.

My other beef is how changes to licensing laws in my state have allowed our bars to be infested with lines of poker machines - bars that used to have live music. The poker machines pay better and the bar owners don't have to deal with rock'n'roll crowds, who tend to make a mess. Sydney's live scene is much the poorer for this, as compared with the glory days of live bands in this city during the 70s.

Edit: I posted at the same time as Aydee. It seems we're saying some similar things.


I see it the same way as I do prostitution really. They take something incredibly intimate, personal, and emotional, and sell it as just another manufactured product with all the handmade quality of an assembly line robotic arm.

I am a younger player, (age 20, 6 years) so I am still filled up with all my dramatic convictions. I have been doing well in the local scene but I really hope I never get paid for my solo stuff, I really hope I never have a fan base with a financial vice grip on my creativity. I don't do this to appease, and artists with that attitude fall out of public interest very easily by the look of it.

The depressing bit to me is I know that peoples taste in music isn't anywhere as poor as the grammies would indicate. After 20+ years of hard work dream theater just last month finally got the record sales they have deserved all along. It just irritates me that producers get fat and happy doing what they know will work, while it takes real musicians decades just to get what they deserve.
 
So i just thought of something that i feel is very relavent to this discussion...
I am a web designer/developer... i started as an artist and decided to persue commercial art as my occupation. The fields of music and art are inter-related as they are both forms of art, so is dance and theater etc. So i guess the thing is, do you consider commercial art the same way you consider pop-music? I mean do you criticize commercial photographers, graphic designers, movie/tv actors and web designers and say they aren't true artists because they chose to be successful at their jobs? I mean i could be a flat-broke fine-artist or i could be a moderately succesful commercial artist... yes i have to sell-out some sense of artistic integrity but at the end of the day i know i did my job and made money doing it.
In an ideal world people wouldn't have to sell-out artistic integrity due to monetary concerns but this in the real world you often have to do that.
Its like someone said before, money is what makes the world go round... people have bills to pay, mortgages, education and tons of other needs that being "artistic" just won't cover.

Now all that being said, i will also reiterate my earlier point... i feel like 90% of music (and art) is complete crap and there will be a few gems of truly good stuff in all genres. If you use the amount of crap found in any genre as a metric you'll pretty quickly be able to say that all genres are bad. I don't think that we can say that pop is bad because there is a lot of crap in it... if you look back historically at music you'll see the same thing in all genres across all times... the difference is that pop-music is on the radio now so we hear all of the crap along with the good stuff, and the classics stations have already weeded out a lot of the garbage.

If you painted something that you felt like wasn't your best work or far from your best work and yet there was a market for it all of a sudden then yes I bet you would sell out and mass produce this "less than me" art, collect the money, and smile all the way to the bank. Such is todays music. High school bands or talent shows with more talent than half of the garbage for sale in todays market, but if your hair is long enough, you have enough tattoos, and play loud enough or fast enough the youth of today will buy the crap. I couldn't count the number of people who come on here asking, How does my band sound?, and they start out nice and then all hell breaks loose. You can't understand any lyrics even if you can hear the singer and it gets louder and faster as it goes. The drummers have no rhythm, they aren't playing with the band, and they think it's music. Just too much of it. And now they can record their own CD's and act as if they are recording artists without a clue as to how much work actually goes into a professional recording. Just makes me want to scream.
 
So i just thought of something that i feel is very relavent to this discussion...
I am a web designer/developer... i started as an artist and decided to persue commercial art as my occupation. The fields of music and art are inter-related as they are both forms of art, so is dance and theater etc. So i guess the thing is, do you consider commercial art the same way you consider pop-music? I mean do you criticize commercial photographers, graphic designers, movie/tv actors and web designers and say they aren't true artists because they chose to be successful at their jobs? I mean i could be a flat-broke fine-artist or i could be a moderately succesful commercial artist... yes i have to sell-out some sense of artistic integrity but at the end of the day i know i did my job and made money doing it.
In an ideal world people wouldn't have to sell-out artistic integrity due to monetary concerns but this in the real world you often have to do that.
Its like someone said before, money is what makes the world go round... people have bills to pay, mortgages, education and tons of other needs that being "artistic" just won't cover.

Now all that being said, i will also reiterate my earlier point... i feel like 90% of music (and art) is complete crap and there will be a few gems of truly good stuff in all genres. If you use the amount of crap found in any genre as a metric you'll pretty quickly be able to say that all genres are bad. I don't think that we can say that pop is bad because there is a lot of crap in it... if you look back historically at music you'll see the same thing in all genres across all times... the difference is that pop-music is on the radio now so we hear all of the crap along with the good stuff, and the classics stations have already weeded out a lot of the garbage.

Well actually I have chosen to side step this issue completely.

I work 40 hours a week, and then I play with 3 "twice a week" bands and jam with half a dozen misc projects. I am happy that I can do exactly as I want and survive off of it, and I am happy to have the respect of the older guys who have been around for decades, but when I compare paychecks with the high school eye candy drummers... there's no hesitation "Yeah, I work harder than him."

It's not like they're closet talents, and choose to play down, its honestly the material they had from day one and some producer scooped it up with a plastic dog-poop bag. I get offended by this, it's not even a simple pleasure kind of sound, it's just bad.
 
If you painted something that you felt like wasn't your best work or far from your best work and yet there was a market for it all of a sudden then yes I bet you would sell out and mass produce this "less than me" art, collect the money, and smile all the way to the bank. Such is todays music. High school bands or talent shows with more talent than half of the garbage for sale in todays market, but if your hair is long enough, you have enough tattoos, and play loud enough or fast enough the youth of today will buy the crap. I couldn't count the number of people who come on here asking, How does my band sound?, and they start out nice and then all hell breaks loose. You can't understand any lyrics even if you can hear the singer and it gets louder and faster as it goes. The drummers have no rhythm, they aren't playing with the band, and they think it's music. Just too much of it. And now they can record their own CD's and act as if they are recording artists without a clue as to how much work actually goes into a professional recording. Just makes me want to scream.

We have some interesting stuff going on here. Before getting to that, GD, "crap" has always been with us. Remember bubblegum in the 60s? There's not a whole lot that's as crass as Sugar Sugar and Yummy Yummy Yummy I have Love in my Tummy - lol. BTW, long hair stopped being interesting a, um, ... few years ago. And hey, I have long hair!

There is the same trend going on in music as there is in movies, and sport for that matter - once someone is the loudest and fastest then someone else has to try to be louder and faster still. And there's always new generation who thinks the loudest and fastest of the day is the benchmark and tried to go further again, and all the old loud and fast guys are booooring.

LimpingToad hit the button. Visual art vs music. Music seems so much more conservative than art, which was coming up with wild stuff in the mainstream at a time when Benny Goodman was considered radical. Not a lot of music as "out there" and arty as Picasso or Van Gogh being is as popular with the general public as Pablo and co were/are.

So we're probably more conservative with music than with art. We're also more tolerant of commercialism in art; few people see art in those terms. Maybe because commercial art is mostly a marketing tool which is maybe equivalent of musical backing for a TV ad? I've worked in web and graphic design too and I know commercial artists who would love to have more time to get things how they want it, but the time pressures force you to compromise. Maybe like pop stars are required to keep churning out the hits?

Unlike commercial art, commercial music exists more often as just itself - with little utility value other than serving as a backdrop for dancing and/or socialising, maybe the equivalent of those terrible mass-produced landscapes you see that are produced by painters who churn out one after another. But people are less likely to actively HATE it, and are more likely to just ignore it.

But Ferret... who's to say playing commercial music just for the $$ is more "prostitution" than, say, working in an office or in sales, where we almost completely subsume our innate creativity to commercial ends? After all, people have bills to pay, kids to feed etc. I expect that plenty of musos would rather play sub-optimal commercial music than work in an office and play music on the side.

This brings us to Ken's thoughts about how some commercial music includes stuff with artistic merit, his example being Walking on the Moon with its tasty atmospheric parts and Stewie's fantastic sticking. It's fair to wonder when hearing some commercial music, "How can these guys resist slipping ANY cool stuff in their songs?". Just something ... ANYTHING!! The answer is probably, "Because they can't". But it does keep them out of the office :)

Music is a bit more personal and speaks more clearly to our souls (or whatever) than art does and that's maybe why people seem less tolerant of music they don't like. Maybe that's why there's talk of "musical prostitution"? There's maybe a bit more "sacredness" about music, sacred like relationships. Our ears are more primal sensory organs than our eyes so maybe it speaks to something deeper within us?

So if someone wants to use music to make a living and avoid 9 to 5 work, without treating it as something special, part of me wants to say "Good luck to them". Another part of me is offended because at least working in an office doesn't despoil something that's supposed to be beautiful or exciting or poignant or even transcendent.

Personally, I really like the idea of creating music with broad appeal but retaining some artistic merit. Most times you want to pick up gigs to enjoy the full musical experience and that means being discipline and compromise, but at the same time you want to really enjoy what you're doing. I suspect that's the space many forum members are at. Others might be hoping that their unfettered expression will strike a chord with the public so they don't have to be wage slaves, tho' that's a bit like buying a lottery ticket.
 
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I lost all interest in popular culture a long time ago. Lowest common denominator and all that. It's just not interesting. It's crass, base and, well, ignoble. To me pop music is the Fox news of music.
Look around you. Pop culture is everywhere, it's pretty much all there is. America is all about pop culture. I just spent two weeks in New York and it isn't any different there.
But since that's the way it is you're left with the choice of what to do with yourself in this tacky culture of ours. You just have to make your peace with the reality that in order to keep from starving you will definitely play drums on some really crappy music, you will and don't kid yourself. The strange thing is that in order to do that you have to be a really good drummer because there are tons of drummers who want those kinds of gigs.
As to all these bands and entertainers, I don't know anything about them, nor do I care, any more than I care about American Idol or professional wrestling.
 
...

It is all around us, not just in music. Its this monster that tells you what to wear, what to eat and how to look and ends up with what to listen to.

And when commercial and media interests align themselves to this all powerful juggernaut, there's no stopping it and it permeates pretty much the whole world.

The 'In- Things', Reality TV, processed food, the Hollywood blockbusters served up like pancakes every summer, fitting into size 0 Ed Hardys and other such trivial pursuits is what sadly defines millions of innocents aspiring for a sense of identity and self worth.

Thankfully, the news isn't all bad because on either side of this flood, there have always been gutters that run rich with the nutrients of our creativity, morality, our conscience that fulfill and satiate our basic desire and innate need for what is special and beautiful in this world.

...
 
when commercial and media interests align themselves to this all powerful juggernaut, there's no stopping it and it permeates pretty much the whole world.

... Thankfully, the news isn't all bad because on either side of this flood, there have always been gutters that run rich with the nutrients of our creativity, morality, our conscience that fulfill and satiate our basic desire and innate need for what is special and beautiful in this world.

Yes. There will always be people playing independent music for the love of it. And it's not uncommon for "gutter musicians" to slip their influence into the mainstream.

Ironic that musical compost can be used to help grow [expletive] :)
 
We have some interesting stuff going on here. Before getting that that, GD, "crap" has always been with us. Remember bubblegum in the 60s? There's an argument that today at least we haven't descended to the level of Sugar Sugar and Yummy Yummy Yummy I have Love in my Tummy - lol. BTW, long hair stopped being interesting a, um, ... few years ago. And hey, I have long hair!.



What about something like Ticket to Ride. If you had only heard The Beatles version you would say it is a pop song. But what about Vanilla Fudge's version or their version of "You Keep Me Hangin' On." I think the problem is that genre is largely interpretation and interpretation is largely marketing or audience in the popular music world. The question that would need to be answered is which one is art? The Vanilla Fudge version is one of the earliest examples of progressive rock elements and had a major influence so that much qualify it as having some artistic merit. But let me add that I am not prepared to say that Motown has no artistic merit. That seems to me to be nonsense.

Is the song "You Keep Me Hangin' On" any more 'sophisticated' than "Sugar Sugar." I would say perhaps, but barely and they both have the same social function, to sell records. Now one could do a social reading into it Motown and say this is at the height of the Civil Rights Movement and say there is a social element to the music that is reflective of the times. But I don't think that many would argue that The Supremes being a were not a pop band, and that song being pop.Neither one is nearly as sophisticated as what Miles Davis or Stan Getz were doing at the same time. People always ask the question, if pop is devalued in the face of something like King Crimson, why should King Crimson have value in the face of Steve Reich?

Every era has it's bubble gum. Sugar Sugar was actually the number one song of 1969, and stood four weeks at number one at the height of the after math of Woodstock. It is actually a well written song. It was probably written for kids. It is kids music. You'd have to ask who was buying those records, and I would say it was tweens. The cultural problem is when people who are forty are still listening to that type of music. Whose listening to Hannah Montana? If it's my ten year old drum student, who loves Hannah, that's one thing. If it's somebody in their twenties maybe she needs to grow up a bit. We have a joke. Ten year old boys like Hannah, and fifteen year old boys like Hannah; but for a very different reason. And the other question to answer is why is bubble gum so bad and Motley Crue so good? And then there was The Backstreet Boys and N'Sync. You could sit around all day only listening to the most sophisticated music.

Jazz is losing its audience today, and classical music has been in decline for a decade now. People ask the question how do you save jazz, how do you save classical music? A lot of people's paychecks depend on it. A lot of musician's paychecks depend on the status quo. And people ask the question how do you market jazz to a new, perhaps younger audience. I think that as people are expressing the problem here, it is not one of marketing. Marketing is the problem. If you hear The Coltrane Quartet recording of Alabama, and it's meaningless to you, there is a bigger problem. You got no soul.
 
I guess props to the Monkees for refusing Sugar Sugar, so their producer invented another band The Archies and had them do it.
 
And it's not uncommon for "gutter musicians" to slip their influence into the mainstream.

Oh yes. Though many drowned trying, some have "surfed the big pipeline" and used the system successfully to put something of lasting value out there.
 
Just a quick thought before I go and pretend that I have a life for a while:

It isn't black-and-white. There's some great pop songs out there and also some "creative" underground music that's little more than obscure noodling fit for neither man nor beast (nor woman or female animals).

Like brilliance, crap comes in various flavours ...
 
I guess props to the Monkees for refusing Sugar Sugar, so their producer invented another band The Archies and had them do it.

If writing a song like that is so trite and so easy, write me one and then we'll talk. :)
 
the Monkees were trying to expand their work and wanted more control over their music and Sugar Sugar was the last straw as far as creativity was concerned so they refused to sing it.
 
If you hear The Coltrane Quartet recording of Alabama, and it's meaningless to you, there is a bigger problem. You got no soul.

Oh, I so very much disagree with that. It seems that you're just trying to show how hip you are with a statement like that, no offense. Why is it a problem if someone doesn't like John Coltrane, if they find his music meaningless? I find many things meaningless that the vast majority of people place great importance on and I don't think I have a problem.
"Got no soul?" Nah. They just don't like it, that's all. It's not a problem that people like what they like unless you make it one. Just don't go there, don't eat at Chili's or Burger King, don't watch reality TV, don't buy Lady Gaga records, don't look at MTV and don't buy your clothes at Old Navy or the Gap. Easy. Maintaining high standards in your life is just as easy if it matters enough. But the first thing to do is not give a damn about what the "hoi polloi" are doing. Which is hard to do when you're in traffic with them.
The point is to make your own life what you want it to be, to only let into your life what you want there. None of my friends, my non-musician friends, really give a damn about music one way or the other, and that even goes for some of the musicians I know, but I don't have any problem with that and I very much doubt that John Coltrane did either.
 
Oh, I so very much disagree with that. It seems that you're just trying to show how hip you are with a statement like that, no offense. Why is it a problem if someone doesn't like John Coltrane, if they find his music meaningless? I find many things meaningless that the vast majority of people place great importance on and I don't think I have a problem.
"Got no soul?" Nah. They just don't like it, that's all. It's not a problem that people like what they like unless you make it one. Just don't go there, don't eat at Chili's or Burger King, don't watch reality TV, don't buy Lady Gaga records, don't look at MTV and don't buy your clothes at Old Navy or the Gap. Easy. Maintaining high standards in your life is just as easy if it matters enough. But the first thing to do is not give a damn about what the "hoi polloi" are doing. Which is hard to do when you're in traffic with them.
The point is to make your own life what you want it to be, to only let into your life what you want there. None of my friends, my non-musician friends, really give a damn about music one way or the other, and that even goes for some of the musicians I know, but I don't have any problem with that and I very much doubt that John Coltrane did either.


Are you kidding me with this? Just wanting to be hip? There's nothing 'hip' about liking a 50 year old jazz recording by one of the great jazz ensembles. Maybe it was hip in '64. I don't know why I should justify this with a response.
 
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