Political Economy of Music

Style over substance

• “In popular culture...surface and style, playfulness and jokes, and what things look like are said to predominate at the expense of content, substance and meaning. As a result, qualities such as artistic merit, integrity, seriousness, authenticity, realism and intellectual depth and strong narratives tend to be undermined” (Strinati, Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture)

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Pop Music Today

• 20 song writer just throw a few simple chords together and a catchy auto tuned vocal hook that repeats throughout the song. Heres an example of how music writing has changed

• metal music scene is full of bands playing “generic songs” all the bands get the look (long hair skinny jeans, V-neck sleeveless top with tattoos all over)

• The metal fans are the pickiest fan bases ever if a sound has been around to long (E.g. a month or so) it gets branded and old and not flesh anymore and they demand something new and heavier and more “brutal”.

Varese• socially the people with money would listen to

music and the people were almost always upper class white men. There are many photos and paintings showing this male dominated world, one photo of Varese shows this very well its of him sat down hand on his chin clearly thinking about something important surrounded by expensive sound equipment showing his wealth and status, also notice how old he is and he looks like a grumpy old man, this tells me that he probably had very old fashioned views on women in the work place

• PSY has done it again with his new song Gentlemen it has a funny recognizable video witch links are brains back to Gangnam style and the funny thort it gave us.

• Lady gaga is well known for doing crazy things. Her tranformation shows this. But would she be as famous as she is if she had stayed “normal”.

• The idea of perfect seems to fight through. She lost loads of fat and had surgerys just to fit in

• Unfortunately the buyers are practically to blame… illegally downloading mp3s instead of buying them or CD’s or even LP’s. The consumer loves the convenience style and easy of being able to carry thousands of songs around with them to listen to them whenever they wish, where ever they wish. Regrettably for me and many other artist they don’t care that they are throwing away over nine tenths of the sound quality of the song they have as MP3’s

• . More and more bands aren’t selling there music they give it a way as advertisement of the band they will upload the video on the YouTube and it will get them more fans that will pay for gig tickets and merchandise. So the bands are putting more effort in the there live shows to make people want to go. And the show becomes more of a firework display than a gig.

• I believe that music is loosing its integrity it doesn’t have the same emotional content poured in to it when song are written these days

• We get people on Xfactor getting a quick pass to fame, not having to work hard there whole life’s just to get enough money to live from thee music like million of musicians do they sacrifice there life’s just to get a glimpse of be famous for there music not because they applied on to a TV show

• . talking of TV shows there is one show that flips style over substance on its head so it substance over style and that is The voice purely judging them on there vocals not there looks and then giving the contestants the choice of who they wont to coach them. That proves that there are people starting to fight back against style. Maybe in the future we will have heart felt meaningful songs in the charts again like Phil Collin-in the air tonight, or Gerry Raffert Baker Street.

THANX FOR LISTENING