Fanboy Manifesto: Pop Music is Down, Not Out
A place for everything and everything in its place. That’s how the saying goes, right? I’m not sure it is universally true because life tends to get messy, but it’s probably not a bad suggestion to try to have some organization and balance in your life.
I have said, and hear people say, “I hate pop music.†That’s a dumb thing to say and I try not to say it anymore. Pop music can be great. The state of it today may be far less, but I am not giving up on it. I refuse to believe pop music will forever be held prisoner by the likes of Fergie, Mims, Akon, and Justin Timberlake.
Unfortunately, turning on the radio these days likely will make a person dumber by at least 12 percent. Most of the music on the charts today is vapid. Idiocy is exalted. That silly twat Fergie has sold more than 1 million records. The kids all love it!
If that’s what is considered fun, I’d probably wear a scowl and listen to Emerson, Lake & Palmer on vinyl- well, I would have in the ’70s. Today, I’d wear mascara and complain about how the lead cheerleader wouldn’t blow me under the bleachers while claiming to be above such cheap carnal thrills. Either that, or I’d spell the word “banana†while a marching band chased me.
It’s counterintuitive that the higher the shit quotient, the higher the hit potential for a given song. My BC colleage Ray Ellis did a great job of explaining how the increasing influence of the corporate world has contributed to this ass-backwards equation, but remember, pop music is shorthand for popular music. Sometimes a good song finds its way to the top of the charts, so take heart. Sometimes, great music flourishes. When it does, celebrate. When it doesn’t, resist the temptation to join a colony of music snobs.
Serious music fans seem to be under the delusion that good music must also be serious music. Of course, that’s bullshit, but it’s easy to understand how they come to that conclusion.
Take the blues, for example. Most people have it in their head the blues is depressing music, that it’s nothing more than a lot of moaning about how your baby done you bad. Sure, that’s one component to it but that doesn’t come close to encompassing everything the blues is about and everything the blues can do. There are juke joint blues, the kind of songs made for drinking and dancing at the bar on Saturday night. Muddy Waters did more than sing about his troubles, he also sang about freedom from them and what that kind of life might look like.
Before John Lennon wanted to give peace a chance, he wanted to twist and shout. Music can express the full range of human emotions and the human experience. Music can be fun. It’s OK to smile every once in awhile. It’s OK to listen to music that makes you want to move.
Pop may be down, but don’t believe it’s ever completely out. Music goes through cycles. Don’t shut yourself off. Don’t tune out. Don’t surrender to the stupid or the sour. This, too, shall pass.
In the meantime, I will be launching The Billboard Beatdown series. I will write about a song each day, a song you would do well to listen to in place of whatever atrocity is topping the charts where you live.
Filed under: Fanboy Manifesto, Fanboy Site News
Let me save the JT and Fergie fans some trouble:
Yes, I know I’m old. I also know that I am jealous of them. Let’s see, what else… oh, yes, I am aware you are more entitled to your opinion than I am to mine.
Oh, and I know you are but what am I?
Now… play nice.
I have a lot of time for pop music, most of my favourite records being the sort that, one time or another, would have been just that. Now, i supose, they’re “classic”. At what point does pop become classic? i dunno. What about Abba? where do they fit? Dexy’s Midnight Runners? Eminem? Gershwin? where do we draw the line, as Jello Biafra once scowled.
point is, you’re absoloutely right. sometimes popular music is just that for a very good reason. Recent examples? Christina Aguilera, Gwen Stefani’s first record, Lilly Allen, etc etc. Fine stuff more than fit to brighten up any top-40 run-down, thank god.
another thing just occcured to me; in the UK, the chat rules have been altered so as “catalogue” tracks are now elligible in the top 40. a recent escapade i heard tell of, although sadly, too late to do anything, was of a bunch of folks in, i believe, belfast attempting to get a GG Allin track to number 1, or at least into the charts. would GG have become “pop” music at that juncture? the thought is almost too astounding to contemplate without choking.
what IS pop music? a definable genre? just whatever’s in the top 40 at the time? both of these seem terribly precocious answers. hmmmmm.
I love Booker T and would love to find more and more and yet more of what you’ve labelled ‘juke joint blues’. My little heart would beat faster if you would share a few recommendations with the web here…
Interesting question. Has pop music become its own definable thing or is pop music whatever is popular at the time? Both ideas make sense to me on one level or another.
i think it’s whatever is popular at the time. face it, the long shadow of hip-hop the not especially interesting end of it in particular, has had a big influence on what’s popular these days.
what’s no different is that there’s a bunch of really good stuff that never gets played…..but: the consolidation of radio and all that has definitely closed things off. so if you spend any time at all listening to a top40 station, you end up with the feeling that you’ve heard the same song for the past 30 minutes. yeesh.
And Sir Saleski steps in and provides the great subtext to The Duke’s comment. I can’t argue with much of what you say, and you know how I feel about that.