Emo and Scene: More on Pop Music
Another classroom discussion of popular music has led to the request that I discuss the styles of teen music, dress, My Space postings, and self-image called "Emo" and "Scene."
After a little reading on Urban Dictionary.com, I realize that these styles are deeply uninteresting to one who has seen it all before in various incarnations. They are the newest clothing of the oldest of Romantic clichés: ironically lockstep uniformity in worship of the individual, of emotion for its own sake, and of rebellion against the villain "society."
Though the various styles of music sound different, nearly all the styles of teen-popular music at the moment are versions of the same thing: a mostly shallow and ignorant Romanticism driven by unexamined passions and prejudices expressed in music of painfully ear-piercing noise or lethe-like, spirit-dulling sentimentalism. My initial grown-up's response to nearly all of this music is "get real."
This is not surprising. Most music in any age is not much good. The great classical composers remain in our consciousness because of their greatness, but thousands of pieces of "classical" music are deservedly lost to us. Same with most jazz, most "classic rock," most anything. However, different ages too have their characteristic qualities, and it is not unheard of for the art of an entire age to be deservedly forgotten for its banality or dullness or shallow sensationalism. To me, we seem to be in the midst of such an age.
But I don't want merely to discount my student's attachments to their favorite songs and favorite artists. Their feelings matter to me and their attachments are real. But I also have a calling to help them see the meaning in their attachments. So I propose the following deal:
If anyone would like to persuade me of the seriouness, depth, value, beauty, or truth in his or her favorite songs or musicians, FIRST read my blog posting of Tuesday, March 14, 2006, called "Pop Music and Quality" and absorb its points. THEN contribute to the comment section of this posting (by clicking on the pencil icon at the end of the posting) one paragraph about why you honestly judge a piece of music to be valuable on grounds more than mere sentimental feeling. I will seek it out (or borrow it from you) and listen to it and then respond to your comment as honestly as I can.
Who knows? Maybe you'll convert me. But first, study "Pop Music and Quality."
After a little reading on Urban Dictionary.com, I realize that these styles are deeply uninteresting to one who has seen it all before in various incarnations. They are the newest clothing of the oldest of Romantic clichés: ironically lockstep uniformity in worship of the individual, of emotion for its own sake, and of rebellion against the villain "society."
Though the various styles of music sound different, nearly all the styles of teen-popular music at the moment are versions of the same thing: a mostly shallow and ignorant Romanticism driven by unexamined passions and prejudices expressed in music of painfully ear-piercing noise or lethe-like, spirit-dulling sentimentalism. My initial grown-up's response to nearly all of this music is "get real."
This is not surprising. Most music in any age is not much good. The great classical composers remain in our consciousness because of their greatness, but thousands of pieces of "classical" music are deservedly lost to us. Same with most jazz, most "classic rock," most anything. However, different ages too have their characteristic qualities, and it is not unheard of for the art of an entire age to be deservedly forgotten for its banality or dullness or shallow sensationalism. To me, we seem to be in the midst of such an age.
But I don't want merely to discount my student's attachments to their favorite songs and favorite artists. Their feelings matter to me and their attachments are real. But I also have a calling to help them see the meaning in their attachments. So I propose the following deal:
If anyone would like to persuade me of the seriouness, depth, value, beauty, or truth in his or her favorite songs or musicians, FIRST read my blog posting of Tuesday, March 14, 2006, called "Pop Music and Quality" and absorb its points. THEN contribute to the comment section of this posting (by clicking on the pencil icon at the end of the posting) one paragraph about why you honestly judge a piece of music to be valuable on grounds more than mere sentimental feeling. I will seek it out (or borrow it from you) and listen to it and then respond to your comment as honestly as I can.
Who knows? Maybe you'll convert me. But first, study "Pop Music and Quality."
posted by G.Rap | 10:55 AM
13 Comments:
Dr. Rap:
Could you entertain a request to give an example of a peice of music, from any age that is "valuable on grounds more than mere sentimental feeling?" I understand your point about time being the ultimate test of quality, but even the joy I get from listening to the few Classical works I like is still sentimental.
-Alex Myers
Alex is the victim of a common confusion, that between "sentiment" and "sentimentality."
Sentiment is real feeling, a response to something, in life or in art, that moves us to feel something, or more commonly, a variety of things. All works of art evoke feelings, and that they do so is essential to our finding meaning and pleasure in them.
Sentimentality, by contrast, is the evocation of particular feelings for their own sakes rather than as genuine responses to some depiction of reality. And sentimentality is always a blot on a work of art.
If you see a movie that moves you to tears because it depicts a reality that merits such a response, that is not sentimentality. Your tears are the appropriate response to an image of pain or sorrow or suffering or tragedy or whatever. But if you pick out a movie to watch that you know will make you cry because you want to have a good cry, that is sentimentality on your part. And any movie made not in order to depict a reality that might make you cry but in order specifically to make you cry is guilty of sentimentality. It exists to jerk your emotions for their own sakes, not as real responses to authentic experience.
That's why we call Oedipus Rex a tragedy and the TV Soaps tear-jerkers. We MIGHT cry at either one, but the latter exists only to make us cry, while the former evokes tears in response to a true revelation of the tragic human condition.
The same is true of music: serious music evokes real feelings in response to authentic experience; sentimental music evokes manufactured feelings using cliches to push our pre-existing buttons.
Now, with this distinction in mind, go back to read my posting and see if it doesn't make a lot more sense. If not, I'll be happy to respond again.
http://www.towerrecords.com/product.aspx?pfid=3249374&title=Revolutionary+Vol.+2+%5bExplicit+Lyrics%5d&artist=Immortal+Technique
10th track "4th branch"
See next posting for my response.
I see. I would suggest:
http://www.towerrecords.com/product.aspx?pfid=3404265&title=At+War+With+The+Mystics&artist=The+Flaming+Lips
Disc 1, Track 1
Alex,
Would you mind typing the words for me? The music is certainly pleasant enough, but I couldn't catch all the words. Thanks. More when I know what is actually being said.
yeah yeah yeah yeah...
If you could blow up the world with the flick of a switch
Would you do it?
yeah yeah yeah yeah...
If you could make everybody poor just so you could be rich
Would you do it?
yeah yeah yeah yeah...
If you could watch everybody work while you just lay on your back
Would you do it?
yeah yeah yeah yeah...
If you could take all the love without giving any back
Would you do it?
yeah yeah yeah yeah...
And so we cannot know ourselves
Or what we'd really do
With all your power
With all your power
With all your power
What would you do?
With all your power
With all your power
With all your power
What would you do?
no no no no no...
If you could make your own money and then give it to everybody
Would you do it?
no no no no no...
If you knew all the answers and could give to the masses
Would you do it?
no no no no...
Are you crazy?
It's a very dangerous thing to do exactly what you want
Because you cannot know yourself, or what you'd really do
With all your power
With all your power
With all your power
What would you do?
Ahhhhhh, ahhhhhh, ahhhhhh...[humming]
With all your power
With all your power
With all your power
What would you do?
With all your power
With all your power
With all your power
What would you do?
With all your power
With all your power
With all your power
What would you do?
The Smashing Pumpkins – 1979
Forgive me as I make an insufficient attempt to put to words what makes this song resonate so well. In describing this piece I am finding that I bump into the same shortcomings that I bumble through in poem analysis. A poem, as well as a song, as Dr. Rappaport defines it, “says in words what cannot be said in words”. Therefore, it is incredibly difficult to use words to explain what is best described without words. However, for the sake of unclogging the deaf ear Dr. Rap has turned to modern music, I am rising to the challenge of putting to words a concept, a powerful empathic emotion, which is astonishingly mute.
I’ll start by speaking in general terms about the composition as a whole (what feelings it invokes, what mood it establishes, etc) before I jump into specific lines and phrases. This is a song about growing up and the emotions therein. The speaker is someone who has already grown up and is reflectively looking back upon the events, people, and feelings stored in his memories. The feeling this song creates cannot be described in a single word or phrase but profoundly resonates with many who grew up in the last twenty-five years. It’s the feeling ascribed to the teenage angst and wasteland which many must cross at some point in their young years before growing up. It is the childhood “midlife crisis” as emotions are mixed and churned in the transition to adulthood. It is the waiting, boredom, tedium, exasperation, frustration, and in some cases, depression that brings on a strong desire to “knock people’s hats off”. It is the waiting.
I just read that and I didn’t even understand it. Let me try again:
It is the feeling of apathy and laziness that sinks into the joints, a mind numbing dysthymia; it is a tired lack of motivation and a restless desire to pass the time in whatever way possible; it is the expectation of some uncertain and looming future which stirs up anxieties that can only be mollified by casting any future-oriented thoughts into the temporary safe box that is the subconscious; it is the perseveration on the completely irrelevant aspects of one’s day – a paperclip, the stucco patterns on the ceiling, the impulsion which leads to pages of senselessly scrawled doodles, anything, anything to avoid facing the responsibility of adulthood.
Onto the lyrics. The problem with describing this song is the phrases in this song are not meant to paint a specific picture. Rather, they are a string of loosely connected ideas meant to produce images unique to the listener. These images (though different from individual to individual) combine to compose the feeling (described above).
“Shakedown 1979
Cool kids never have the time
On a live wire right up off the street
You and I should meet”
We start with both a word and a date. The word, “shakedown” has far too many connotations for me to address completely, so I will leave it be. “1979” establishes a point in time, a date to which we can ascribe a generation, although I’d argue the rest of the song is still fully applicable to future generations. The “live wire” conjures images of the internet which is the primary means of communication and networking for teenagers; thus the following line, “You and I should meet.” Given the date, however, one might suppose that this is probably a reference to the telephone rather than the internet. The “cool kids” who are too “cool” in their narcissistic self indulgence is the first reference of several which describe different stereotypical teens well known to anyone who grew up post 1979.
“June bug skipping like a stone
Headlights pointed at the dawn
We were sure we'd never see an end to it all”
The last phrase indicates that the speaker is looking back in the past events. It is the near-sightedness that effects all teenagers: a year from now is an eternity from now. Thus, the speaker (and jhor friends whom jhe speaks for in the first person plural “we”) never saw that this time in jhor life was so fleeting until it was gone. Personally, I interpret this certainty (“we were sure we’d never see and end”) as a sort of denial of the future. The less specific images in the first two lines are meant to conjure up individual memories, in my case, loitering about skipping stones and the arrival of June bugs in the summer.
“And I don’t even care
To shake these zipper blues
And we don’t know
Just where our bones will rest
To dust I guess
Lamented and absorbed ‘to the earth
Below”
The chorus sweeps the listener right into the head of a teenager. Here we see apathy. Here there are no concern with death (we don’t know just were our bones will rest), or the great questions of life (to dust, I guess). The “zipper blues” phrase has many interpretations. Originally, it brought up images of idly flicking at the zipper of ones jacket, restlessly fumbling with it to pass the time. Later, I began to think of it as zipper blues as a reference to sexual frustration. That is, the desire to have sex and the blues that comes with not getting even noticed.
“Double cross the vacant and the bored
They're not sure just what we have in the store
Morphine city slippin' dues down to see
That we don't even care as restless as we are
We feel the pull in the land of a thousand guilts
And poured cement, lamented and assured
To the lights and towns below
Faster than the speed of sound
Faster than we thought we'd go
Beneath the sound of hope”
Here we meet the “vacant and the bored”, the second group of stereotypical teenagers. They are equally confused about the future (“They’re not sure just what we have in store”) and use opiates as an anodyne for their unease. The restless group just doesn’t care about anything and is completely overwhelmed and inundated by apathy. The “land of thousand guilts” reminds me of my parents, the responsibility I have and haven’t assumed, the pressure, and the guilt that kids are not infrequently subject to. Next, we have the mention of the town (“poured cement…lights and towns”), the concrete jungle that is society, binding and uncontrollably sucking us kids “down” from our high perch, taking away our childhood immortality and carelessness, and, with the advent of adulthood, forcing us to become a part of it.
“Justine never knew the rules,
Hung down with the freaks and the ghouls
No apologies ever need be made
I know you better than you fake it to see”
Here we have our first reference to a specific person rather than just a group. I am not sure exactly what the author is doing here, but I feel it may be a reference to Frankenstein (“Justine…freaks and ghouls”). Regardless, I interpret the speaker’s specification of an individual as a reminder that the speaker is looking back on the past remembering events specific to jhemself. The mention of “faking it” hardly needs to be explained; I feel that “faking it” is so universal it would be redundant and condescending to explicate any further.
“That we don't even care to shake these zipper blues
And we don't know just where our bones will rest
To dust I guess
Forgotten and absorbed into the earth below
The street heats the urgency of now
As you see there's no one around”
We’ve come to the penultimate line of the song. Bear with me only a few sentences more, we are almost done. “Street heats” is another image that is supposed to dig through the listener’s memory to bring up more nostalgic reminders of the past. “The urgency of now” is another focus of the teenage mind. The teenager concentrates on instant gratification, looking good, and feeling good; the future is too far away to be of any concern.
I will mention only a few of the many midrashim one might attenuate from the final line. In one regard, it is the speaker concluding now that he has made it through all the archetypal groups of teens (“the freaks, the ghouls, the restless, the vacant, and the bored”) and now there is no one else to talk about. Simultaneously, it is recognition of the fact that all these people from the speaker’s childhood are gone now. It is all in the past; they have moved on and grown up. The speaker has finally seen the “end of it all.”
The Smashing Pumpkins have created a masterpiece which captures the uncertain transition to adulthood like no other song. It is a work of mellow ambiance and subtle brilliance that assimilates complex and indescribable feelings attributed to coming of age into a single complete and coherent work that surely deserves the praise of Dr. Gideon Rappaport.
I really wish I could edit my own posts. I write an essay late at night, hastily post it, and now am embarrassed at my obvious mistakes. There are many changes I would like to make. I can only assume (and hope) that Dr. Rappaport is not above editing my essays! Anyway, please forgive my fumbled commas, my subject/verb agreement errors (etcetera), my bloviating, and my blatant misuse of the word "attenuate".
OK, I know this is taking way too long, but I'm a dinosaur in tech as well as pop music. Thanks to Alex for sending me the link to the Yeah Yeah Yeah song by Flaming Lips. I've now listened to it all the way through.
Verdict: I find it annoyingly shrill, repetitive, shallow, and banal. Yes, the sentiment seems to hint that we should care about others not only ourselves in using our power. But the twelfth "what would you do with your power?" doesn't seem to get the listener any closer to a good answer than the first. No illumination, no wisdom, no insight offered; only repetitive holier-than-thou hectoring. That's quite apart from the nasty-sounding shrillness of the "yeah yeah"s and a melody that goes nowhere.
Conclusion: people who like the song for its not-immoral implications are right that it is better than the vile depths of the bad kinds of rap music. But that is not saying much. In fact, it is saying very little. Is not expressing violent nastiness in filthy language enough to make a song good? You would really rather listen to this "yeah yeah" litany than to a Mozart aria? Even the "(she loves you) yeah yeah yeah" of the Beatles is heavenly by comparison.
More responses will come as I get to listen to the suggested songs. It does make it easier to do that if you send me a link.
Dr. Rap,
I am going to go a different direction with this one, going back to your definition of the difference between sentimentality and sentiment, specifically focusing on the qualifier of using cliche's to evoke the emotion. One of my most frequented album's is an all-french album by one of my favorite Artists, Manu Chao. The beat takes me away (in the same way that classical music does, in my experience, although the feelings I get are much stronger when listening to Manu Caho). Now, I understand you may not like the music, and even admit that you may hate it. The words, to me, are not cliche, for I do not even know what they mean. My question to you is how does your opinion and judgement of the beat and the rhythm serve as a qualifier for quality? Is it possible that music you personally do not like can approach 'true art' status?
I will send you some cuts from the album.
Shakedown 1979
http://youtube.com/watch?v=pl3iKLCb8s4
I have not had time to listen to Smashing Pumkins yet. Perhaps during the winter vacation.
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