When will we get sick of manufactured music?

- one telephone (yellow, rotary, a little nicked up)
- one buggy (no horse, like new)
- one Atari 5200 (w/ games: Kaboom!, Joust)
- one popcorn maker (might not operate)
- one floor-standing fan (will dust off before selling)

Do the contestants ever sing about nihilism?

meanwhile, Will Young and Gareth Gates are becoming a little conspicous by their absence. and i'm surprised the American Idol winners have not entered the UK & European market (more likely they would have a hit here with any old crap unlike Will or Gareth or even Girls Aloud in the States).

still, the only thing that really bugs me about the whole thing, along with what seems to me to be a real case of 'championing mediocrity to ridiculous new heights' (but thats a general problem thats affecting bands in other genres e.g. Coldplay/Travis, a lot of hip hop and garage as well, tho its down to personal opinion, expectation and preferences i suppose....comparable to the reception of films like Matrix Reloaded which are adored and despised in equal measure and for a wide range of reasons ranging from the superficial/shallow to the deep and complex), is how the Popstars process demystifies the image of the pop star. MTV are also guilty of this with their myriad docus focussing ever more intensely on the 'personalities' rather than the music. the argument goes that people will go for pop stars they can relate to so they are portrayed as normal people with no trace of 'tortured genius' or 'wild and debauched sexiness' or any kind of mystique, spontaneity or downright surrealism at all. makes no sense to me. a 'pop act' like The Streets will appeal to me because of that particular 'honesty' that is being presented in the music and attitude of the artist. but is Mike Skinner any more interesting than the Pop Idols? maybe...maybe not, i guess what i find interesting is his ideas, beliefs and motives, which seem irrevocably different to those of actual pop acts. plus he is given more of a chance to express those things as he wants to. supposedly this is either not part of the pop idol's mandate (even the likes of Robbie Williams who offers very little other than tedious introspection and self-help by talking about HIS situation - being too rich to know how to handle it and not being able to find true love as a result blah blah) or the pop idols are not strong enough in their ideas, beliefs and artistic desires to bother listening to. i'm not sure i can argue Skinner is BETTER, just that he's different, and that difference is what i prefer. a useful example in just pointing out that manufactured pop is obviously a lot of people's cup of tea and has its place (just like...sorry...fast food), even in an artistic context, and can be no better or WORSE than something else like 'proper rock n' roll' or 'gutter garridge' in that respect. but certainly the saturation becomes intolerable and a source of great frustration to some people who genuinely do enjoy a good pop song and wonder why a TV show like Pop Idol couldnt produce someone like the brilliant Beyonce or indeed someone a little more 'out there' but still capable of scoring big hits (might this only be posible with rappers now? i.e. Missy Elliott) who surely given the chance, would've been totally cool with achieveing fame thru a mere 12 weeks of the Popstars process rather than go thru what i can only assume was a gruelling few years working up towards what became Destiny's Child...maybe i havent thought all this thru properly but i thought it was worth trying to 'answer' the original question at some point.

also Missy and Beyonce do not spend months on network television prior to album release, you actually have to know how to read and/or talk to acquire their records

c'mon now tom...beyonce has an album coming out and her appearing in the carmen-influenced pepsi commercial for the last three months is just an accident?

That doesn't explain the Justin differential, of course.

Anyway, I don't know if there's anything we can do except encourage the performers and purveyors of ACTUAL music and spread the word as best we can.

Worse, I've met the people who buy into them, and they scare me more.

Last, I'm particularly scared by the fact that in the future, these canned musicians will be the ones that we are remembered by, not the ones who are actually out there creating new and innovative pop culture.

I count Hollywood and Broadway with the Music and Television industries as killers of culture. Also, fiction that can be found in the supermarket.

Broadway? Oh yes. There are so many musicals being written and produced in places like Seattle and Chicago that are wonderful and will never see broadway because broadway needs glitz and names like Disney behind each production.

The charts are really terrible now. There is hardly any eccentricity of any kind, far to many glossy dolls doing the sickliest pop heard since the early 50's. What's being aggressively promoted to young men and women is a very slick, super-sheened, high pressure consumerism where those who don't make the grade are simply _screened out of life_.

I'm happy though, because it's ripe for destruction. I'm convinced that pop is on the cusp of an exceeeding violent and exciting convulsion. Stay tuned.

That's where Behind the Music and its progeny come in. Which is to say that somebody can't be a star (not nowadays -- and probably not ever) without a lengthy backstory -- and American Idol et al. invents one for talented if dull individuals.

I'm not sure what this means. What, for example, is Celine Dion's lengthy backstory, beyond making some records & hooking up with her manager?

oh, and Canada.

But I do enjoy the shitty tv kind of music, it's funny. high-quality music isn't for everybody, I think . . and I think there is more and more excellent music being made today than 20 years ago, easily. you just need to change where you look for it. .. turn the fuckin tv and radio off. have you ever found a good meal in the toilet?

Oh, if only I could agree with that, if only if only. Jess may complain about my complaints ;-) but the man will never be George Michael '87/'88 in my heart, musically or otherwise. No pallid Xeroxes! Manufacture somebody better, please! I won't get sick of that!

What gets discussed more rarely, I think, is who exactly likes pop. After all, I would imagine that the vast majority of people in any given country dislike the vast majority of music on the charts -- the stuff that's there is only there because its particular faction tends to be larger than any other given music-buying faction. If I polled a thousand random Americans, I'd guess most of them would take a pop-is-crap line; it's just that they'd have wildly different ideas about what they thought was better.

Thus I work on the assumption that the problem isn't that pop is bad, it's that there's not enough media variety in offering up the various alternatives to it: especially given the fact that radio is by definition localized, you have a lot of people trying to hit that largest niche (pop) and fewer people trying to cover the others. If the other, smaller markets were better served, people probably wouldn't hold such grudges against pop, and would probably have much more rational ideas about whether it was good, bad, interesting, just not their style, etc.

Example: satellite and cable music programming covers a whole spread in probably just about the right proportions of what users want from it. I have this suspicion that if music were broad and decentralized like this, people wouldn't feel as much of a need to take ridiculous shots at pop, as it'd be just another series of options they could just as easily ignore. More importantly, they wouldn't get to feel all clever and daring for disliking it.

This, however, would sort of kill all the good things about pop's omnipresence.

Anyway, Nitsuh is right I think - I honestly don't remember pop getting hated on with this idiotic vehemence back in the 80s or early 90s, even - sure people didn't like it but they weren't disgusted with it. I find it hard to believe it's boy-bands/girl-groups that have provoked this, probably much more the feeling that control of pop has become incredibly centralised, in a distribution sense as much as a creation sense (Clear Channel et al). I can sympathise with that, though the - to my ears - clear magnificence of lots of the product keeps me complacent, sadly.

what amazes me is that the arguments then are exactly the same as those back then. i thought this whole "manufactured" vs. "natural" thing was tossed aside long ago for the red herring that it is.

Well if people can't agree to a basic and obvious trusim like that, there's absolutely no point even attempting to debate anything with them at all, is there?

So is war, apparently - not sure who's going to break that one to George and Tony 'though.

what amazes me is that the arguments then are exactly the same as those back then. i thought this whole "manufactured" vs. "natural" thing was tossed aside long ago for the red herring that it is.

Tad = On The Money. I remember pre-Nevermind Nirvana causing utter OUTRAGE in indie circles for going on about their love of pop and talking in interviews about liking Madonna.

I hate, hate, hated Madonna for all the wrong reasons when I was an angry young punk at the age of about 15. And then I grew out of it. It astonishes me that people go on believing this ridiculously purist dichotomous worldview beyond the age of about 20.

The hatred is the same, but it's so much more obvious and open and honest what it is that is being hated.

Fuck this for a bag of chips. I liked a Liberty X song when I heard it without knowing what it was, this is the sum total of my knowledge and experience. I've never even watched Big Brother, what the fuck do I know?

Anyway...
I hate the 'indie purism' thing. I was talking to Spike (38) yesterday and he said he used to be a Mod when he was a teenager until one of his mates told him he wasn't allowed to like Led Zep cos of how they dressed, despite the fact that musically they weren't all that far from Mod-manna The Who. Equally the editor of Excess (the uni paper music+film pages) is a lovely bloke but only 20, and was gobsmacked when Spike and I were praising Prince the other day.

Equally there's a gang of kids who take the same train to college as I take to work and they are EXACTLY the same as my mates when I was 15-17 in terms of their attitudes and conversation topics, indie-purism to the hilt (only it's not indie-purism but rather rock-purism). I rememeber distinctly the other day a girl who was definitely un-indie was listening to Michael Jackson (can't remember the song) dead loud on her walkman, and one of these rock kids stated very loudly "how can anyone actually listen to that shit?". I was kinda shocked that in 2003 anyone could totally condemn Michael Jackson as unlistenable shit, presumably just cos he's 'pop' (these kids are happy enough to big-up Queen though because "Bohemian Rhapsody's the fucking hardest thing ever to play on guitar" as one of them said this morning - I find the whole politcs of what's 'good' and 'bad' in this age group to be fascinating and rather scary, primarily becuase I was 16-17 when i first stepped otuside my peergroup's accepted taste and got into Orbital ["but it's techno?!"]).

The problem with this argument is that it implies is that everyone who doesn't like chart pop is automatically some kind of blinkered childish music snob, or just plain lying. I'm sure this isn't the case, any more than it is with someone who doesn't like jazz or indie or Indonesian gamelan music.

(I'm also pretty certain that Missy and Beyonce sell FAR more records than any Pop Idol artist, but that's by the by)

That's not what I'm implying. But what I am stating that blind, blinkered PURISM of saying "that is chartpop, therefor it MUST be shit, simply because it is popular" rather than listening to everything and judging it on its merits of how it appeals to you -THAT is an attitude that is childish and should be/usually is outgrown.

"I don't like this music" - fair enough.

"I don't like that this music is so popular, why are people such idiots" - more problematic, I think.

Of course there's a big element of rejecting childhood, too - most people (I'm guessing) do not start off listening to cool music, they start off listening to the pop charts. Giving them up and getting into 'proper' music in your teens is kind of like giving up children's books (and getting into Stephen King).

Spot the irony in this sentence.

I think T Pratchett realises that he is sad.

I wrote a song and recorded it two ways - once with big scratchy guitars and shouty vocals, and once with floaty girly vocals and drum machines and textures and things - to prove my point. Of course he loved the garagepunk version and hated the other version. Same song, same melody, same chords, same words, yet he refused to see.

But I guess I have the same viewpoint, but reversed, in that the song is nothing, the texture and arrangement is everything.

Remember, this is MY viewpoint: I guess I have the same viewpoint, but reversed, in that the song is nothing, the texture and arrangement is everything.

Oh, and also cause he was an arrogant totalitarian control freak who was jealous of my talents, but that's neither here nor there.

I want nabisco to come back and give his reasons.

and yes, this is a stupid thread.

Quick, quick, I need to hear some music so I can find out if that evil spell that was cast on me by The Damned in 1977 has finally been lifted!

someday but anytime soon, i think.

But what to do? Americans are free to choose, and by and large they choose shit. Or they get it spoonfed and don't know any other meal. Although it shouldn't, it does bother me. What are you doing with your common culture, America? Sure, there's always the argument "Well, turn it off if you don't like it!" But that's a cop out. Of course I can turn it off, but I'm not an island. It's this individualistic drive that corporate America panders to that has all of us hermetically sealed in a cushioned identity, the social world completely drowned out with the headphones in our ears. It's the general fracturing of a Community into soundbyte individuals. "Well, everyone's entitled to his own opinion!"

Well no, not if you don't know shit about what you're talking about you're not. But again, Wall Street wants each to believe s/he is an island unto himself. He doesn't belong to the social. The Commons are under attack (witness the latest FCC ruling). My favorite example of the schizophrenic social personality is buying the Nike swoosh shirt because Nike's ad blitz is all about expressing your own individuality. Individuality is now commodified, mass produced, consumed by a million other idiot who buy the same Nike swoosh for the same reasons.

This is the dark, ugly side of democracy.

Politics != economics.

< /pedant >

(besides it has bought posts out from the likes of 'tsc')

What does that say about our culture? And more importantly, where it's heading?

To me, we're living in the new Dark Ages.

Kate, I think culture was much less commodified under the Roman Empire - I also think it was much less accessible.

Fast Food Rockers are this week's proof of that.

Also, when precisely did the British Isles stop drinking ale?

After about 3 amphorae.

On the other hand, it is collapsing under its own weight and the challenge to its business model posed by file-sharing, and people are listening to more music than ever before.

This must mean something.

I like to think of soundbite culture as representing an evolutionary advance. Our information processing capabilities have advanced so far that we simply don't need to hear ideas worked out at length anymore--we would rather get the core, extrapolate the rest and move on to the next piece of juiciness post haste.

blah blah

(Dan - me too but I bit my tongue because it *is* awful turbosnobbery as well as funny.)

The latter. I'm not giving my REAL address.

"Dan - On so many levels...!"

So.... how many levels can someone be a turbonerd on then?

Is this one of those deals were you get all the way to level 99,999 and then find you can't get through the magic door to free the magic Pincess from the terrible curse of the Radiohead album because you didn't know you were supposed to get the secret key from the cats with the soundart dronerock whiskers back on level 3?

Mwah hah hah hah hah hah hah haaaaaahhhhhh!!!

I feel that way about life some days Kate.

Way, WAY too weird!

Dan Perry, the last survivor of The September That Never Ended...

Common culture = Motown hits in movie trailers, Glenn Miller, "Amazing Grace," Frank Sinatra, Vivaldi, Elvis Presley, "Michael Row Your Boat Ashore," Ella Fitzgerald, the theme songs from "I Love Lucy," "The Addams Family," and "Cheers," Greensleeves, "Jesus Loves Me This I Know," "Happy Birthday to You," John Denver, "Old Man River," "Yesterday," the Harlem Boys' Choir, the suburban church choir, "Rock around the Clock" and "Puff the Magic Dragon." That's what common culture means. Not Ashanti.

Which, to answer Julio: one of the fun things about pop is that -- for young people, at least -- it constitutes one common pool of culture, common references and experiences that are shared and are linked to time and etc. I can talk about "Hungry Like the Wolf" with nearly anyone I encounter: pop is the stuff of trivia quiz shows and drunken bar nostalgia precisely because it provides common experiences of any given moment. It also provides all of this odd social stuff to play off of, this sense of something personal and important being at stake in deciding which pop stars fly. There'd be a lot of advantages to the splintering and decentralization of listening, but it would sort of suck the center out of that. The same thing has happened in literature, to an extent -- the splintering of a solid center into more chaotic shapes -- and while a lot of that social stuff gets replaced by what type of thing you like, this is a bit disappointing: there's something to be said for everyone having read certain books and heard certain songs so they share some kind of landscape.

Er, I dunno. I think jazz and classical each typically hover around 2 to 3 percent of the total yearly sales. And a year a two ago, Gary Giddins reported that Kind of Blue outsold all of Sony's other recent jazz discs combined -- and this presumably including Wynton Marsalis' stuff, too!

Heh. But again, everyone's thinking I hate music when I'm not feeling a particular *approach* to music now. Refer to the singles thread for more hoohah on that point.

Nabisco -- but I don't care about the landscape being shared. Why exactly is that specifically important? There are other ways to social connection beyond 'certain books and certain songs.'

Dan Perry, the last survivor of The September That Never Ended...

-- Andrew Farrell (afarrel...) (webmail), June 19th, 2003 10:58AM. (afarrell) (later) (link)

You do realize that "The September That Never Ended" was coined by an ILXer??!

(The biggest sales category, incidentally, is rock -- and how much of this do you think's a result of Rolling Stones compilations and Rod Stewart back-catalogues? How much of the r&b market share -- which includes stuff like fusion and reggae -- is a result of Bob Marley compilations? Etc. The idea that young-people pop-radio stars are what "most people listen to" strikes me as off-base.)

OK => but it has its downside. what abt the 'young people' that just get left out of this, or the not so young. And surely you could sacrifice some of that 'omnipresence' of pop and still have moments that people can share people and maybe you could get more people 'in'.

Go on.

it reminds me in a way of ppl harping on about the 'lovely hot weather' or something, if yr sick of even hearing yrself complain about it or just don't want to think about it

(fav (mangled) quote from somewhere:
' weather forecasters: don't tell me it's going to be 'lovely weather' tomorrow, just give me the damn facts - i've got my own opinions')

(but point taken about diversity)