This essay is the second in a semi-regular series
of slightly longer pieces exploring some of the ideas and conceptual
strategies we think are at the heart of music production and reception
today.
Our last piece, “The Trouble with Contemporary Music Criticism,”
was about history. We argued that contemporary music writing often
fails to think about history adequately because of its commitment to a
mostly unacknowledged ideology of progress. This is particularly
problematic, we said, when so much of the strongest music being made
today seems to take history itself as its main point of orientation.
Musicians keep presenting us with alternatives to this default idea of
music as the endless progression of the new, and we keep missing it. The
best in contemporary music is often much smarter than we think it is —
and much more productive too.
Contemporary music is often accused of a kind of passivity: of
refusing to be sufficiently “political,” of failing to “innovate,” of
capitulating to the stultifying forces of retro-culture, of being little
more than a composite of historical references. But in order to think
that way, you need to commit to a pretty narrow view of “politics” and
“innovation”. It is, by contrast, perfectly possible to listen to
contemporary music and hear something extremely active: music
that, in its best instances, is right in the thick of both questioning
and rethinking ideas and hegemonies (like history and progress) that
underpin art, culture, and social life. For this reason, it is also
robustly political. It really does matter.
But our last essay left a lot of key terms unaccounted for. What did
we mean by “contemporary music criticism,” for instance? Or, for that
matter, “contemporary music”? If the answers to these questions seem
self-evident, or if the questions themselves seem redundant, they
shouldn’t. The assumptions we make about each of these key terms are
directly bound up with how we write and listen.
We’ll look at the question of criticism next time. In this essay,
we’d like to tackle the question “What is contemporary music?” The
answer to this question will unfold in two parts. First, we’re going to
argue that the key to this question is the relationship between pop and
non-pop: a relationship that contemporary music, with increasing
intensity, is actually already investigating itself. And second, we’re
going to argue that it is this investigation that has laid the
groundwork for some of the most inventive musical experiments in recent
years.
PART 1: POP AND NON-POP
Pop Eats Itself
If you asked yourself what sort of music you tend to listen to and
read about on sites like Tiny Mix Tapes, what would you say? Underground
music? Experimental music? Terms like these are always either too
specific or too vague. Usually, the easiest method is to answer by
putting the music we like into dialogue with what it is not — whatever I
listen to, it’s predominantly not pop music. This pairing is
the most common way that music in the 20th century has been defined —
popular vs. serious music, pop vs. experimental, mainstream vs.
underground.
But by defining pop by what it is not, we often ignore the fact that
pop music has always had a bit of a knack for defining itself.
In 1957, Chuck Berry released a song called “Rock and Roll Music.” It went, “Just
let me hear some of that Rock And Roll Music/ Any old way you choose
it/ It’s got a back beat, you can’t lose it/ Any old time you use it/
It’s gotta be Rock And Roll Music/ If you want to dance with me/ If you
want to dance with me.” The song peaked at #8 in the US charts and,
in obvious tribute to an artist and a genre they loved, would go on to
be covered by the likes of Bill Haley & The Comets, The Beatles, and
The Beach Boys. All of them were making rock & roll about rock & roll.
Without listing endless examples, what we’re suggesting is that, from
its very beginnings in the 1950s and 1960s, the modern form of pop
music has always had a certain self-reflexive quality. It drew its own
boundaries to some extent, defined itself in the process of its own
embodiment and production.
What’s most striking, however, is just how much pop seems to have upped the ante in this respect over the last 60 years.
Let’s take three examples from last year. In September 2013,
14-year-old US pop star Madison Beer released “Melodies.” The video
starts with Justin Bieber listening to the song on a set of purple Beats
speakers. “You hear that, Ryan?” he asks. “That’s a smash.” He signs a
set of matching purple headphones, puts them in a big red box, and we
cut to Madison opening said box somewhere in middle America. She takes
out her newly Bieber-pimped Beats, puts them on, and hears herself singing. “I
hear melodies in my head, hear melodies in my head, hear melodies in my
head… My heart is a beating drum, repeating my favorite song.” This, then, is an earworm about the fact that it’s an earworm. This is pop eating itself.
