Topic: Has ‘Pop’ Music damaged the purpose of music?

by: Renato

The definition of music varies according to cultural and social context.  Music ranges from what are considered organized compositions through improvised styles of music to aleatoric (based on chance) forms. So, where in all of this does “Pop” music fall?  Short for “Popular”, pop music hasn’t been a genre for long, and it has always fallen under the “Rock” genre.  The Beatles first crossed the rock/pop line with hits like All You Need Is Love, Hey Jude, and Yesterday.  A lot of these songs were intentionally “poppy” in a sense that they were geared toward an audience that liked these songs: young people.  Paul McCartney knew this and continued to write songs of this nature (if you notice the poppy Beatles songs are mostly written by Paul, while the weirder songs are mostly written by John).

Looking further back, the Pop line was crossed in Elvis’ days when he was swinging his hips for the ladies whilst singing Jailhouse Rock.  But, we’ll stick to the Beatles since they made a slightly bigger impact on music (Elvis purists, we can discuss who made a bigger impact later).  In their later years, when they were experimenting, the Beatles discovered such skills as harmonization, guitar feedback, classical inspiration, artificial double tracking, close miking of acoustic instruments, sampling, direct injection, synchronization, and backward tapes.  Many of these same skills would then be adopted by popular musicians today. Although the reason why artists today should be criticized for techniques like sampling is because the way they use it is more of a lazy way. They sample an entire song and just put in their own lyrics, completely ripping off the original musician.

One more thing on the history of Pop Music: about a decade after the Beatles, a man began a record label in his garage with a loan from his family members.  Berry Gordy borrowed $800 from his family and went on to produce Motown records. He had a gift for identifying musical talent and along with “stringent management” (a term I use loosely), he made Motown a major international success.  Over the next decade, he signed such artists as Stevie Wonder, Jackson 5, The Temptations, Gladys Knight and the Pips, and Diana Ross and the Supremes, just to name a few. So, how does Berry Gordy come in to play for pop music?  Well, Berry Gordy introduced us to the highly regulated song and dance show.  His “stringent management” was more of an authoritarian control over everything the artist would do, and although he received criticism over his control, Motown records would produce hit after hit after hit (side note: Motown could be to blame for why Michael Jackson is so messed up; his stringent control of MJ supposedly denied him a childhood, which caused him to live like a kid in his adult years when he went solo).  So, we can give credit to Motown and the Beatles for the birth of Michael Jackson, AKA, the King of Pop, and Pop music in general, with its highly controlled, auto-tuned, highly choreographed dance sessions in their videos.

Now, knowing this, we can finally come to our original question: has Pop music damaged the purpose of music?  Well for starters, what is the purpose of music?  Primarily the purpose of music is to entertain.  And pop artists today no matter what type are entertaining.  I may not like them but they find an audience.  Jonas Brothers entertains the tween girl crowd, as does Hannah Montana.  So does pop music damage the purpose of music?  That can be answered with a resounding “No.” For starters, just because a particular genre of music may not seem as genuine as another form does not invalidate it in any way.   A great analogy for this example is Jazz; back when Jazz was first starting out, back in ye olden times, everything that was good in music only came from England.  If you wanted to be a musician you went to England. When Jazz emerged, being primarily American, it was not accepted as a form of music and treated much the same as Pop music.  Jazz music, back then, appealed to a much younger audience with a greater buying power, the same audience that pop music attracts now.

So, does that mean we should actually be caring about “musicians” like Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers?  Hell no, but I’ll dwell on that in another article; this one is long enough. This however, does not mean that HM or the Jonas brothers are disingenuous, it may mean, however, that the record labels that sign them are disingenuous.   why should we give Pop music any merit?  Well, because Pop music does have some good artists.  First, you cannot mention Pop without mentioning the King of Pop; I already mentioned him once in this article, and he needs to be mentioned once again.  No one can say that Michael Jackson damages the purpose of music at all.  In fact, MJ has done a lot for music in general be it with his experimentation in music, or his dancing/choreography.

Another reason is that these days, Pop music has evolved into fusion styles of Pop; for example, two great Pop artists are Regina Spektor and Neko Case. Neither of them does any choreography, and both are very talented musicians, but both are a bit too poppy to fall under genres like Folk or Rock, but are also a bit too folky/indie to just fall under Pop.  This has created a massive influx of pop genres each with many differing styles.  Also just because it’s pop doesn’t mean its inherently bad.  Europpop, J-pop, and K-pop are some of the most fun types of music I have ever heard.  If you don’t like Rain, you must be dead inside.

To Sumarize: it’s easy to criticize Pop music due to the manufactured tarts we see on TV; parading around in skimpy clothing, dancing, lip syncing, and basically being placed on stage to look “sexy” for the crowd.  But, I feel that in the age of Clear Channel radio and MTV, we are going to see a lot of this in almost any genre of music.  We are going to see a lot of “manufactured artists” in Rock music.  In my opinion, bands like Puddle of Mudd, Nickelback, and Three Doors Down constitute these types of bands.  The same goes for Rap (i.e. Soulja Boy), R&B (i.e. Pussycat dolls), and any other genre you can think of.  Since we are at the age of American Idol, we are going to get a bigger influx of these same artists who all sound the same, each sounding more and more bland than the next.  The only way to avoid this is to sift through and find the gems out there. No entire genre is inherently bad, and you can find good music out of almost anything; even House music (ntz ntz ntz ntz).