Dang, Pop Matters, why are you so good?
Sincerity Fixation
"In other words, it takes effort to remove his music from its marketing context and hear what it really sounds like."
"That is, we consume in order to be noticed consuming by others at least as much as we consume for our own sake and our sense of ourselves is bound up in what we consume and what others think of it. In this regard, pop music is crucial; it maps out subcultural boundaries more efficiently than virtually any other commodity."
What is this Pop Matters thing? Looks neat.
ReplyDeleteYou want a good article on the role of popular music?
http://www2.rz.hu-berlin.de/fpm/texte/adorno.htm
I didn't get it until my professor explained it to me ... he's not dissing popular music because of its qualities, but because of the ways and reasons it is produced. He's not nice about it, either.
"Those who ask for a song of social significance ask for it through a medium which deprives it of social significance."
"However, as the standardized meter of dance music and of marching suggests the coordinated battalions of a mechanical collectivity, obedience to this rhythm by overcoming the responding individuals leads them to conceive of themselves as agglutinized with the untold millions of the meek who must be similarly overcome. Thus do the obedient inherit the earth."