Crazy About You: Reflections on the Meanings of Contemporary Teen Pop Musici thought you might be interested or something.
The importance of fun and leisure in the ideology of teen pop cannot be stressed enough. These ‘feel-good’ hits are targeted to youths presumably unaware and unconcerned with the problems of everyday society. Youths are symbolized as mainly in growing up while having a good time. This emphasis on leisure is of interest to the academic observer for its historical and sociological significance.
see?
― d k (d k), Saturday, 26 October 2002 01:10 (twenty-three years ago)
as far as I can tell they be graduate students, is how. nb this is not representative of all graduate students.
― Josh (Josh), Saturday, 26 October 2002 02:56 (twenty-three years ago)
"we analyzed the lyrical content of each song, as traditional content analysis research on music’s meaning has focused on lyrics"
weak. saying pop's meaning/ideology can be represented this way is like discussing a film in terms of nothing but its script.
― Honda, Saturday, 26 October 2002 04:41 (twenty-three years ago)
I'm serious, if this is what passes for academic writing now then give me a bottle of Wild Turkey 101 and a copy of "Cultural Studies: A Reader" and I'll have this done for you by morning.
One thing I really do respect about journalists: they have word counts. These guys have few original ideas buried in that giant wall of copy; the research methodology is suspect (at best), and the conclusions obvious. If this was an article for a pop zine or something it would be about a paragraph long, max. The text reads more like a summary of a stack of library books than anything else, and not a very good summary at that.
― geeta (geeta), Saturday, 26 October 2002 06:35 (twenty-three years ago)
I haven't read the piece in full, but while skimming I ran across the following sentence in which these dopes inadvertently typo their way to truth:
For instance, in The Sociology of Rock Frith (1978) identified a group of fans who were particularly sensible to commercial music idols.
Frith - who is one of my commercial music idols - once wrote me a postcard mid-'90s saying that 15-year-old girls were the only music fans left in the world who had any taste. So he most likely does consider them to be particularly sensible.
Since I only did a skim, maybe I'm not being fair, but several things jumped out at me as obviously specious:
(1) Vannini and Myers cite Frith to the effect that teen music gets its meaning for teens on the basis of how teens use it, but then instead of trying to find out how teens actually use the music, they do a content analysis of lyrics and on the basis of the lyrics decide how it is that the music functions for the teens.
(2) They define teen pop as the music that's popular among teens and pre-teens, but then, instead of trying to find out what teens listen to, they simply go to the Disney Channel and define that music as the music that's popular among teens. So the taste of teens who listen more to country or rock or hip-hop, or of teens who listen both to Disney and to other stations, gets discounted. This is a good way to exclude Eminem and Shakira lyrics from your study; it's not a good way to find out what lyrics teens are hearing.
(3) They quote M2M falling in love with a guy at first sight, but they don't quote M2M telling a guy to back off and give her more time.
By the way, I'm trying to revive the pinefox's thread about the trouble with the sociology of pop, if you want to add anything.
I can't imagine that Vannini and Myers would be as stupid posting on ILx as they are in this piece. Which is to say, they might be able to think given the right discourse. But their prose in this piece is simple self-destruction.
― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Saturday, 26 October 2002 22:43 (twenty-three years ago)