Post by Deleted on Aug 16, 2014 11:25:05 GMT -5
Just Dance:
Observations on Pop Music
Observations on Pop Music
Okay, first thing's first. If we're going to have any kind of relationship, there's one thing you have to know about me- I think most people sincerely have their head shoved up their ass when it comes to actually analyzing music.
In a society as conservative as America has been since pop culture was invented, we have always created divides amongst ourselves of the respectable and the trashy. People who believe in or support labels give them power and meaning, which has lead to most every negative reputation music has adopted throughout the decades by fans of one genre choosing to label what they don't like as trashy and identifying it with some undesirable element = the listener. For the last nearly 15 years, thanks to the internet, there has been a powerful backlash against dance pop, "teen" or bubblegum pop, and electronic music by heavy metal and classic rock fans which eventually deemed them the term "rockists." Listening purists who themselves deemed electronic pop music as shallow or soulless. You've heard it before. In the 80's, after Ronald Reagen invaded the White House and Tom Cruise's Calvin Klein-clad gyrating booty invaded America's living room (this was the dawn of VHS, after all), this attitude adopted an innocent, fun-lovin' face of "that stuff just ain't for me!" But just a few years earlier, it had a much more disturbing association. Ala, the "Disco Sucks!" movement. Which made sure to label what at that time was the most hardcore form of dance music as: gay, black, and female. Therefore saying: it sucks because it's for people who are not as good as I am (the "I" being heterosexual white males). The inherent divisiveness was bad enough, but you'd better believe the movement itself was marked with hate and rage, and intense homophobia and racism. Yeah... all over music.
Fast-forward just 12 or so years later and we see a certain rage of the youth bringing on the emergence of grunge, Nirvana, and Kirk Cobain as cultural prophet. Well, Kirk Cobain was a passionate supporter of the gay community, a close friend to feminists, and clearly not a fan of institutionalized intolerance or hatred of any kind. It's hard not to call what he brought to that decade a revolution of sorts, although the 90's instead decided to create even more genre dividing- which only served to define listeners as snobs and lead the decade to be branded by the mainstream charts rather than what people who surfed every channel liked the most. The 90's was an internet age, and groups managed to have successful careers without videos on Mtv or being played on the same stations as the ones that played The Bodyguard-era Whitney Houston or Shania Twain (who, by the numbers I've reviewed, had the best selling album of the decade). Or, better yet, how a single song by a band would be considered mainstream appropriate - the perfect example being Smashing Pumpkins' "Tonight, Tonight" - while the rest of their output was considered too hard, too angry, too alienating to a decade where most of the #1 hits were RnB. I love the 90's dearly but, man, did the mainstream charts turn it into a real "easy listening" kind of a decade. As people look back at the decade now, many are not getting a full picture of what music was really like. And there's a method to that madness as well. Because, again, it was a sign that something from the youth was being rejected by the "respectable" majority. Which, in the 90's, was mainly any "outlaw" genre, such as rap or techno. (Or, to be blunt, the most flamboyantly "too black" or "too gay" genres.)
The next decade would see them subtly combining forces, but in the meantime, the nation which decided to bury pop music after the decade of excess began to lose its plastic charm unearthed it in a big way with the re-emergence of the 80's boy bands (New Kids on the Block) and teenaged pop princesses (Tiffany, Debbie Gibson). As well as a pair of sideline genres- "Latin pop" (Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez) and ... "jock jams." The latter actually stuck with us the whole decade long thanks to Technotronic, C+C Music Factory, and Quad City DJ's, but now thanks to commercial compilations- it finally had a name. Our culture had literally given credibility to the view on what societal attitudes fuel pop trends detailed in American Psycho (at that time, an actual book rather than a movie) by stigmatizing the subgenre of dance music representing the return of disco with a conservative label: "jock." In the decade we're living right now, we identify these guys as "bro's." Or as the type of guy portrayed in shows like Entourage or Two and a Half Men.
How things have changed? Well, things have definitely changed. Today, resentment of modern "pop" - which resembles truly nothing it did in the 80's or in Europe in the 90's or with disco in the 70's (probably thanks to the influence of electronica and hip-hop in the 90's) - is more of a character judgment rather than an unabashedly racist or homophobic one. For example, I have a Facebook friend who loves to bash "teenybopper" artists for not being P!nk (sometimes just called Pink). This perspective is, naturally, very telling because Pink is like a female version of Eminem in that she strikes people as tough, direct, brutally honest, heavily critical of superficial trends in the culture and how her own fans are portrayed / regarded, and that she largely represents the ideal of pop music by not expressing herself through her sexuality or gender. So, basically, she's an enigma of pop in the face of any era post-Madonna. But, then again, Madonna doesn't get as much respect as she used to these days. Which is a problem I'll be more than happy to address soon enough. But, back to Pink: thanks to an age in which the pretensions of the music you listen to (decided by whom, I don't know) are what people actually pay attention to, her messages come before her music. To the point where I have to admit to finding nearly everything about her to be rather bland. Not that this keeps her down in any way. Her popularity has not once been challenged since she burst onto the scene with boyfriend-blasting anthems like "You Make Me Sick." She is an extremely important part of our musical landscape, which I can also admit- much as I think Peaches or Lily Allen truly deserve her acclaim as they faced the same adversities and dealt with them in what I consider to be more interesting ways.
Which brings us back to the eternal struggle of Respectability-vs-Trashiness. Or, the cataclysmic "fall" of Madonna. Which I mean to bring back into this analysis merely as what she stood for, fought for in some respects, and what every last woman in pop who owes her almost everything they've got and especially their fans take for granted. This of course goes beyond the petty, idiotic trash-talking fans of Lady Gaga do to Madonna or Nicki Minaj to Lil' Kim, etc. This might as well be represented singularly through Pink, as the somewhat anti-sexual leading icon of the industry. As a gay man, I honestly find myself more inclined to lean toward the artist more spurned by labels in the industry. For example, Lady Gaga's being religious and expressing that through her music has only lead to her being called a "whore" or other nasty things while Katy Perry shockingly maintains a more clean reputation due to the comic, goofy mugging or candy-coated "summer jam" posturing she adopts when she wants something to shoot out of her bra. She's religious too, though you'd hardly know it. The difference is that one challenges the listener to continue being religious after being burned by society's labels and constant pressure (Gaga) and the other just plays everything she does which most would consider offensive ("I Kissed a Girl," "Ur So Gay") off as being innocent and cute (Perry). Meanwhile, it all goes back to Madonna. Who will forever be the one and only Queen of Pop because she answered critics and naysayers for decades with both grace and pride. She's never backed down and very seldomly takes the easy way out. And that's my idea of a woman pop music should be idealized through.
Anyway, as I drift in and out of this thread with more topics relating to popular music and all that makes it go round, I'd like to just be my usual punk self and post a link to a song I identify with even though I'm a guy as a mission statement to say let's judge more responsibly. Earn respect, don't demand it. Or, even more relevant to the topic of discussion- who says trashy can never be respectable?: