Last week on American Idol, the contestants were asked to do music of the 21st century. To put it gently, it didn't work well. I'm actually not sure it was the singers as much as the music. After the show, I cleaned out my ears and found myself thinking about why pop music matters to me in the first place.
Many years ago, I was bicycling across the country, and the Unitarian Church of Roanoke, Virginia hosted my group. At the dinner, our hosts seemed a lot like us - informed, good hearted, and ultimately sort of chatty and pleasant. I know I’m insulting the very fine folk who are serious Unitarians, Universalists, and Congregationalists, but particularly in the south, they struck me as people who needed to appear to go to church, but didn’t necessarily have strong beliefs about any particular doctrine. These people would never lead you into the Crusades or any other kind of war for that matter, but they quite possibly might never lead you into heaven and certainly not sainthood.
At the end of the dinner, the Unitarians had invited a black gospel choir to serve as the evening’s entertainment. The effect in this room full of real estate agents and middle-aged professionals who happily chatted about mortgage rates and healthy diets was palpable. The gospel choir had a deep abiding faith that emanated through their music and resonated through the building. “The spirit matters and really great music tells us that,” was the only lyric that I remember.
At the end of the performance, I pulled aside one of the soloists and said “That was incredible. Do you ever do any secular songs?”
Obviously, it was a stupid thing to say and I guess my only excuse was that I was thinking about Aretha or maybe confused this with some 1987 equivalent of Idol, almost like “Don’t you want to make big bucks off your voice?” The woman stared at me, a la Mandisa at Paula and Simon post her song of praise to Jesus (talk about weirdly Biblical names for judges), and said politely, “No, we only sing for the Lord.”
Article comments
1 - chantal stone
Great piece, Chancelucky. It's a scary thought, when you think about how self-absorbed and self-contained we have become as a society, each with our own little iPods and cell phones and portable dvd players. Gone are the days when the entire family gathered around the tv to watch bandstand, when parents KNEW what their kids were listening to.
Even when I was growing up, in the 80's, we only had one television, so when I wanted my MTV, my parents were in close proximity, watching what I watched.
Music has also changed in general though....my husband and I were talking about this the other day. There was a time when a love song was pure poetry set to melody, when Stevie Wonder and Earth Wind and Fire sang about dreams and love and souls being intertwined. William Blake would have been proud.
Now, a love song might ask the question "how am I gonna get into those jeans?"
These times, they are a'changing...
2 - JP
Nice article. The fracturing of the music market has been interesting to watch, but not necessarily good for music. I'm a fan of rock/pop and jazz, but I've just never gotten into the rap and hip-hop genre at all.
I love the jazz masters--Davis, Coltrane, etc--their works are inspiring and moving. Today's pop music pales in comparison, even though hip-hop often samples the masters. Rock isn't what it used to be either--modern country has taken over for the MOR pop/rock of the 70s and 80s.
Chantal, you mean it would be the guy asking how to get into the girl's jeans right? "Humps" is an extremely disheartening, poorly written example of why I don't listen to pop music anymore.
3 - Lisa McKay
Great article. I think you hit the nail on the head in your second-to-last paragraph when you say that contemporary pop music is driven by marketing. There's very little room for artistry when musicians are creating 'product' to appeal to the masses.
I also agree that the iPod culture is indeed an isolating one; when I was growing up, we would tote a few vinyl albums to a friend's house and a bunch of us would listen to music, together. That was my musical life through high school and college. It's a bonding experience and a bit of shared culture that you sure don't get with a pair of earbuds stuck in your ears.
4 - RC of strangeculture
Very interesting post...thank you for sharing these very unique thoughts of yours.
--RC of strangeculture.blogspot.com
5 - chancelucky
Many thanks for the kind comments. I do think there are contemporary musicians for whom music is something other than a commodity, whatever one thinks of Bono and U2 for instance (I think they're serious maybe too much so about their message, etc.). I just think all the social forces are lined up the other way right now including the ways in which we listen to music and what we expect from it.
6 - Steve
I agree with the sentiments of the article, music has become so 'ghetto-ised' as it were, that folks who like one genre of music, have no idea what else is popular in other genres. Also, there haven't been any new musical trends in years now, that have managed to transcend the boundaries of genre. It's hard to imagine how a new kind of music could become popular in a mainstream way anymore, given how niche-oriented the music scene has become.