A Changing Industry: Reformations in Popular Music
Every bit the 1960s began, rock and roll was tamer and "safer," as reflected in the surf and route music of the Beach Boys and Jan & Dean, but it was also get-go to co-operative out. For instance, the success of all- female groups, such as the Shangri- Las ("Leader of the Pack") and the Angels ("My Fellow'south Dorsum"), challenged the male- dominated earth of early rock and gyre. In the 1960s and the following decades, rock- and- roll music and other popular styles went through cultural reformations that significantly changed the manufacture, including the international entreatment of the "British invasion"; the development of soul and Motown; the political bear upon of folm- stone; the experimentalism of psychedelic music; the rejection of music's mainstream by punk, grunge, and alternative rock movements; the reassertion of black urban way in hip- hop; and the transformation of music distribution, which resulted in an unprecedented market growth of music from independent labels.
The British Are Coming!
The global trade of pop music is axiomatic in the exchanges and melding of rhythms, beats, vocal styles, and musical instruments beyond cultures. The origin of this global bear upon can be traced to England in the late 1950s, when the young Rolling Stones listened to the blues of Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, and the young Beatles tried to imitate Chuck Drupe and Little Richard.
Until 1964, rock- and- roll recordings had traveled on a one- way ticket to Europe. Even though American artists regularly reached the summit of the charts overseas, no British performers had yet appeared on any Meridian x pop lists in the States. This inverse almost overnight. In 1964, the Beatles invaded America with their mop haircuts and popular reinterpretations of American blues and stone and roll. Within the next few years, British bands every bit diverse as the Kinks, the Rolling Stones, the Zombies, the Animals, Herman'south Hermits, the Who, the Yardbirds, Them, and the Troggs had hit the American Summit 40 charts.
With the British invasion, "stone and roll" unofficially became "rock," sending pop music and the industry in two directions. On the ane manus, the Rolling Stones would influence generations of musicians emphasizing gritty, chord- driven, high- book rock, including bands in the glam rock, hard rock, punk, heavy metallic, and grunge genres. On the other paw, the Beatles would influence countless artists interested in a more accessible, melodic, and softer sound, in genres such as pop- rock, power- popular, new moving ridge, and alternative rock. In the cease, the British invasion verified what Chuck Berry and Little Richard had already demonstrated— that rocyard- and- roll performers could write and produce pop songs as well every bit Tin Pan Aisle had. The success of British groups helped alter an industry arrangement in which most pop music was produced by songwriting teams hired by major labels and matched with selected performers. Fifty-fifty more than important, the British invasion showed the recording industry how older American musical forms, specially blues and R&B, could be repackaged as rock and exported around the world.
130
BRITISH ROCK GROUPS Ed Sullivan, who booked the Beatles several times on his Tv diversity show in 1964, helped promote their early on success. Sullivan, though, reacted differently to the Rolling Stones, who were perceived as the "bad boys" of rock and ringlet in dissimilarity to the "good" Beatles. The Stones performed black- influenced music without "whitening" the sound and exuded a palpable aura of sexuality, particularly frontman Mick Jagger. Although the Stones appeared on his program as early as 1964 and returned on several occasions, Sullivan remained wary and forced them to change the lyrics of "Allow's Spend the Night Together" to "Permit's Spend Some Time Together" for a 1967 broadcast.
Michael Putland/Getty Images
Motor City Music: Detroit Gives America Soul
Ironically, the British invasion, which drew much of its inspiration from black influences, drew many white listeners away from a new generation of black performers. Gradually, however, throughout the 1960s, black singers like James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Ike and Tina Turner, and Wilson Pickett plant big and diverse audiences. Transforming the rhythms and melodies of older R&B, pop, and early on stone and roll into what became labeled as soul, they countered the British invaders with powerful vocal performances. Mixing gospel and blues with emotion and lyrics fatigued from the American black experience, soul contrasted sharply with the emphasis on loud, fast instrumentals and lighter lyrical concerns that characterized much of stone music.22
The near prominent contained label that nourished soul and black popular music was Motown, started in 1959 by onetime Detroit autoworker and songwriter Berry Gordy with a $700 investment and named subsequently Detroit's "Motor City" nickname. Beginning with Smokey Robinson and the Miracles' "Store Effectually," Motown enjoyed a long string of hit records that rivaled the pop success of British bands throughout the decade. Motown'due south many successful artists included the Temptations ("My Daughter"), Mary Wells ("My Guy"), the Four Tops ("I Tin can't Help Myself"), Martha and the Vandellas ("Oestrus Wave"), Marvin Gaye ("I Heard It through the Grapevine"), and, in the early on 1970s, the Jackson 5 ("ABC"). Simply the label's nearly successful group was the Supremes, featuring Diana Ross, which scored twelve No. 1 singles between 1964 and 1969 ("Where Did Our Dear Get," "Finish! In the Proper noun of Love"). The Motown groups had a more than stylized, softer audio than the grittier southern soul (afterward known as funk) of Chocolate-brown and Pickett.
Folk and Psychedelic Music Reverberate the Times
Popular music has ever been a product of its time, so the social upheavals of the Civil Rights movement, the women's motility, the environmental movement, and the Vietnam War naturally brought social concerns into the music of the 1960s and early 1970s. By the belatedly 1960s, the Beatles had transformed themselves from a relatively lightweight pop ring to one that spoke for the social and political concerns of their generation, and many other groups followed the same trajectory. (To explore how the times and personal gustatory modality influence music choices, come across "Media Literacy and the Critical Procedure: Music Preferences across Generations" on page 132.)
131
THE SUPREMES One of the most successful groups in rocm- and- roll history, the Supremes started out as the Primettes in Detroit in 1959. They signed with Motown'south Tamla characterization in 1960 and inverse their proper name in 1961. Between 1964 and 1969, they recorded twelve No. ane hits, including "Where Did Our Dear Go," "Baby Love," "Come See about Me," "Stop! In the Proper noun of Love," "I Hear a Symphony," "You Can't Hurry Dearest," and "Someday We'll Exist Together." Lead singer Diana Ross (center) left the group in 1969 for a solo career. The group was inducted into the Stone and Curlicue Hall of Fame in 1988.
CBS/Landov
Folk Inspires Protest
BOB DYLAN Built-in Robert Allen Zimmerman in Minnesota, Bob Dylan took his stage name from Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. He led a folk music motion in the early 1960s with engaging, socially provocative lyrics. He was also an astute media critic, as is evident in the seminal documentary Don't Look Back (1967).
Andrew DeLory
The musical genre that most clearly responded to the political happenings of the time was folk music, which had long been the sound of social activism. In its broadest sense, folk music in whatsoever civilisation refers to songs performed past untrained musicians and passed downward mainly through oral traditions, from the banjo and fiddle tunes of Appalachia to the accordion- led zydeco of Louisiana and the folgrand- blues of the legendary Pb Belly (Huddie Ledbetter). During the 1930s, folk was defined by the music of Woody Guthrie ("This Land Is Your Land"), who not merely brought folk to the city simply besides was extremely agile in social reforms. Groups such equally the Weavers, featuring labor activist and songwriter Pete Seeger, carried on Guthrie's legacy and inspired a new generation of singer- songwriters, including Joan Baez; Arlo Guthrie; Peter, Paul, and Mary; Phil Ochs; and— peradventure the most influential— Bob Dylan. Dylan's career as a folk artist began with acoustic performances in New York's Greenwich Hamlet in 1961, and his notoriety was spurred by his measured nonchalance and unique nasal vocalization. Significantly influenced past the blues, Dylan identified folk as "finger pointin'" music that addressed current social circumstances. At a key moment in popular music'due south history, Dylan walked onstage at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival fronting a full electric rock band. He was booed and cursed by traditional "folkies," who saw amplified music as a sellout to the commercial recording industry. Yet, Dylan's modify inspired the formation of folk- stone artists like the Byrds, who had a No. 1 hit with a cover of Dylan'southward "Mr. Tambourine Man," and led millions to protest during the turbulent 1960s.
Rock Turns Psychedelic
Booze and drugs have long been associated with the private lives of blues, jazz, land, and rock musicians. These links, however, became much more than public in the tardily 1960s and early on 1970s, when authorities disrepair members of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. With the increasing role of drugs in youth civilisation and the availability of LSD (not illegal until the mid- 1960s), more and more rock musicians experimented with and sang near drugs in what were oft labeled rock's psychedelic years. Many groups and performers of the psychedelic era (named for the mind- altering effects of LSD and other drugs), similar Jefferson Airplane, Big Blood brother and the Holding Visitor (featuring Janis Joplin), the Jimi Hendrix Feel, the Doors, and the Grateful Dead (likewise equally established artists like the Beatles and the Stones), believed that creative expression could be enhanced through mind- altering drugs. The 1960s drug explorations coincided with the freeastward- speech communication movement, in which many artists and followers saw experimenting with drugs as a form of personal expression and a response to the failure of traditional institutions to deal with social and political problems such as racism and America's involvement in the Vietnam War. But subsequently a surge of optimism that culminated in the celebrated Woodstock concert in August 1969, the psychedelic movement was chop-chop overshadowed. In 1969, a similar concert at the Altamont racetrack in California started in chaos and ended in tragedy when ane of the Hell's Angels hired equally a babysitter for the show murdered a concertgoer. Around the same fourth dimension, the shocking multiple murders committed by the Charles Manson "family" cast a negative lite on hippies, drug use, and psychedelic civilization. And so, in quick succession, a number of the psychedelic movement's greatest stars died from drug overdoses, including Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison of the Doors.
132
Media Literacy and the Critical Process
Music Preferences across Generations
We make judgments about music all the time. Older generations don't like some of the music younger people prefer, and young people ofttimes dismiss some of the music of previous generations. Even amidst our peers, we take dissimilar tastes in music and oftentimes decline certain kinds of music that accept become as well popular or that don't conform to our own preferences. The post-obit exercise aims to understand musical tastes beyond our own individual choices. Exist certain to include yourself in this project.
1 Description. Arrange to interview four to eight friends or relatives of unlike ages virtually their musical tastes and influences. Devise questions about what music they listen to and have listened to at dissimilar stages of their lives. What music practise they buy or collect? What's the first album (or single) they caused? What'due south the latest album? What stories or bright memories do they relate to item songs or artists? Collect demographic and consumer information: historic period, gender, occupation, educational background, identify of birth, and electric current place of residence.
2 ANALYSIS. Chart and organize your results. Practise you recognize whatever patterns emerging from the data or stories? What kinds of music did your interview subjects listen to when they were younger? What kinds of music do they listen to now? What formed/influenced their musical interests? If their musical interests changed, what happened? (If they stopped listening to music, note that and detect out why.) Practise they have any associations between music and their everyday lives? Are these music associations and lifetime interactions with songs and artists important to them?
3 INTERPRETATION. Based on what you have discovered and the patterns you have charted, decide what the patterns mean. Does age, gender, geographic location, or education matter in musical tastes? Over time, are the changes in musical tastes and buying habits significant? Why or why not? What kind of music is nigh important to your subjects? Finally, and about important, why practise you retrieve their music preferences developed as they did?
4 EVALUATION. Decide how your interview subjects came to similar particular kinds of music. What constitutes "good" and "bad" music for them? Did their ideas alter over time? How? Are they open- or shutd- minded nearly music? How practice they class judgments almost music? What criteria did your interview subjects offer for making judgments about music? Do you call up their criteria are a valid mode to approximate music?
5 Date. To aggrandize on your findings, consider the connections of music beyond generations, geography, and genres. Have a musical artist you lot like and input the proper name at www.music-map.com. Apply the output of related artists to observe new bands. Input favorite artists of the people yous interviewed in Stride 1, and share the results with them. Expand your musical tastes.
Punk, Grunge, and Culling Respond to Mainstream Rock
133
Past the 1970s, rock music was increasingly viewed as just some other part of mainstream consumer civilisation. With major music acts earning huge profits, rock presently became some other production line for manufacturers and retailers to promote, parcel, and sell— primarily to middleast- class white male teens. Co-ordinate to critic Ken Tucker, this situation gave ascent to "faceless rocone thousand— crisply recorded, eminently catchy"—featuring anonymous hits past bands with "no established individual personalities outside their ain large but essentially discrete audiences" of young white males.23 Some stone musicians like Bruce Springsteen and Elton John; glam artists like David Bowie, Lou Reed, and Iggy Popular; and soul artists similar Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye continued to explore the social possibilities of rock or at least proceed its legacy of outrageousness live. But they had, for the nearly office, been replaced by "faceless" supergroups, similar REO Speedwagon, Styx, Boston, and Kansas. By the late 1970s, rock could only seem to define itself by saying what it wasn't; "Disco Sucks" became a standard rock slogan confronting the popular trip the light fantastic music of the era.
Punk Revives Rock's Rebelliousness
SLEATER- KINNEY All- female bands like Sleater- Kinney continue to take on the boys'-club mentality of rock and roll. The band formed in 1994 in Washington land and gained disquisitional acclaim for its feminist take on punk rock. The ring took an extended hiatus beginning in 2006 but returned in 2015 with a new album and tour.
Paul R. Giunta/Getty Images
Punk rock rose in the late 1970s to challenge the orthodoxy and commercialism of the record business. Past this time, the celebrity days of rock's competitive independent labels had ended, and rock music was controlled by simply a half- dozen major companies. Past avoiding rock'due south consumer popularity, punk attempted to return to the basics of rock and roll: unproblematic chord structures, catchy melodies, and politically or socially challenging lyrics. The premise was "do it yourself": Any teenager with a few weeks of guitar practice could learn the sound and brand music that was both more democratic and more provocative than commercial rock.
The punk motion took root in the small dive bar CBGB in New York City around bands such equally the Ramones, Blondie, and the Talking Heads. (The roots of punk essentially lay in four pre- punk groups from the late 1960s and early 1970s— the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, the New York Dolls, and the MC5— none of which experienced commercial success in their twenty-four hour period.) Punk apace spread to England, where a soaring unemployment charge per unit and growing class inequality ensured the success of socially critical stone. Groups similar the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Buzzcocks, and Siouxsie and the Banshees sprang up and even scored Top 40 hits on the U.Chiliad. charts.
Punk was not a commercial success in the United States, where (non surprisingly) it was shunned by radio. Nonetheless, punk's contributions continue to be felt. Punk broke down the "boys' order" mentality of stone, launching unapologetic and unadorned frontwomen like Patti Smith, Joan Jett, Debbie Harry, and Chrissie Hynde, and it introduced all- women bands (writing and performing their own music) like the Chiliado- Get'south into the mainstream. It besides reopened the door to rock experimentation at a time when the industry had turned music into a purely commercial enterprise. The influence of experimental, or post- punk, music is still felt today in culling and indie bands such every bit the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Speedy Ortiz, and Parquet Courts.
Grunge and Culling Reinterpret Rock
NIRVANA'S lead singer, Kurt Cobain, is pictured here during his cursory career in the early 1990s. The release of Nirvana'southward Nevermind in September 1991 bumped Michael Jackson'southward Dangerous from the top of the charts and signaled a new direction in popular music. Other grunge bands soon followed Nirvana onto the charts, including Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, and Soundgarden.
© Pycha/DAPR/Zuma Press
134
Taking the spirit of punk and updating information technology, the grunge scene represented a significant development in rock in the 1990s. Getting its name from its oftenorthward- messy guitar audio and the anti- fashion torn jeans and flannel shirt appearance of its musicians and fans, grunge'southward lineage tin can be traced back to 1980s bands similar Sonic Youth, the Minutemen, and Hüsker Dü. In 1992, after years of limited commercial success, the younger cousin of punk finally broke into the American mainstream with the success of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on the anthology Nevermind. Led by enigmatic singer Kurt Cobaidue north— who committed suicide in 199four— Nirvana produced songs that one critic described equally "stunning, concise bursts of melody and rage that occasionally spilled over into haunting, folk- styled acoustic ballad."24 Nirvana opened the floodgates to bands such as Green Day, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, the Breeders, Hole, and Nine Inch Nails.
In some critical circles, both punk and grunge are considered subcategories or fringe movements of alternative stone. This vague label describes many types of experimental rock music that offered a departure from the theatrics and staged extravaganzas of 1970s glam stone, which showcased such performers every bit David Bowie and Kiss. Appealing chiefly to higher students and twentysomethings, alternative stone has traditionally opposed the sounds of Peak 40 and commercial FM radio. In the 1980s and 1990s, U2 and R.E.Thou. emerged as successful groups often associated with alternative stone. A key dilemma for successful culling performers, however, is that their popularity results in commercial success, ironically a state of affairs that their music often criticizes. While alternative rock music has more multifariousness than ever, it is too not producing new one thousand thousanda- groups like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Greenish Day. All the same, culling groups like Chill Monkeys, Vampire Weekend, and Deafheaven take launched successful recording careers the old- school way, but with a twist: starting out on independent labels, playing minor concerts, and growing popular apace with alternative music audiences through the immediate buzz of the Net.
How-do-you-dop- Hop Redraws Musical Lines
KENDRICK LAMAR gained a large Cyberspace post-obit early in his career and released one of his albums exclusively through iTunes in 2011. His major- label debut followed in 2012, along with a number of guest spots on songs past high- profile artists. His 2015 album, To Pimp a Butterfly, was one of the near acclaimed releases of the twelvemonth, and he gained farther visibility by appearing on a remix of Taylor Swift'southward hit unmarried "Bad Blood."
Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic for Bonnaroo Arts and Music Festival/Getty Images
With the growing segregation of radio formats and the dominance of mainstream stone by white male performers, the identify of blackness artists in the rock earth diminished from the late 1970s onward. By the 1980s, few popular black successors to Chuck Berry or Jimi Hendrix had emerged in rock, though Prince and Lenny Kravitz were exceptions. These trends, combined with the rise of "condom" dance disco past white bands (the Bee Gees), black artists (Donna Summer), and integrated groups (the Village People), created a space for a new sound to emerge: hip- hop, a term for the urban culture that includes rapping, cutting (or sampling) by deejays, breakdancing, street clothing, poesy slams, and graffiti art.
In the aforementioned style that punk opposed commercial rock, how-do-you-dop- hop music stood in direct opposition to the polished, professional, and frequently less political world of soul. Its combination of social politics, swagger, and confrontational lyrics carried forrad long- standing traditions in dejection, R&B, soul, and rock and scroll. Similar punk and early rock and scroll, hellop- hop was driven by a autonomous, nonprofessional spirit and was cheap to produce, requiring only a few mikes, speakers, amps, turntables, and vinyl records. Deejays, like the pioneering Jamaican émigré Clive Campbell (a.k.a. DJ Kool Herc), emerged showtime in New York, scratching and reast- cueing old reggae, disco, soul, and rock albums. These deejays, or MCs (masters of ceremony), used humour, boasts, and "trash talking" to entertain and keep the peace at parties.
135
The music industry initially saw hip- hop as a novelty, despite the enormous success of the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper'south Delight" in 1979 (which sampled the bass beat out of a disco hit from the aforementioned year, Chic's "Skillful Times"). Then, in 1982, Grandmaster Wink and the Furious Five released "The Message" and forever infused hip- hop with a political accept on ghetto life, a tradition connected by artists like Public Enemy and Ice- T. Past 1985, hip- hop had exploded as a pop genre with the commercial successes of groups like Rudue north- DMC, the Fat Boys, and LL Absurd J. That twelvemonth, Run- DMC'due south anthology Raising Hell became a major crossover hit, the first No. 1 hullop- hop anthology on the popular charts (thanks in office to a collaboration with Aerosmith on a rap version of the group'due south 1976 hit "Walk This Manner"). Merely considering nearly major labels and many black radio stations rejected the rawness of hip- hop, the music spawned hundreds of new independent labels. Although initially dominated by male performers, hip- hop was open to women, and some— Salt- N- Pepa and Queen Latifah amid thethou— quickly became major players. Presently, white groups like the Beastie Boys, Limp Bizkit, and Kid Rock were combining hullop- hop and punk rock in a commercially successful mode, while Eminem plant enormous success emulating black rap artists.
On the 1 hand, the conversational way of rap makes it a forum in which performers tin can contend issues of gender, class, sexuality, violence, and drugs. On the other paw, hip- hop, similar punk, has often drawn criticism for lyrics that degrade women, espouse homophobia, and applaud violence. Although hip- hop encompasses many unlike styles, including various Latin and Asian offshoots, its most controversial subgenre is probably gangster rap, which, in seeking to tell the truth about gang violence in American civilization, has been accused of creating violence. Gangster rap drew national attention in 1996 with the shooting death of Tupac Shakur, who lived the tearing life he rapped near on albums similar Thug Life. Then, in 1997, Notorious B.I.Chiliad. (Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. Biggie Smalls), whose followers were prominent suspects in Shakur's death, was shot to death in Hollywood. The effect was a alter in the hip- hop industry. Almost prominently, Sean "Diddy" Combs led Bad Boy Entertainment (former home of Notorious B.I.G.) away from gangster rap to a more danceable how-do-you-dop- hop that combined singing and rapping with musical elements of rock and soul. Today, howdyp- hop'southward stars include artists such equally YG, who emulates the gangster genre, and artists similar volition.i.am, Lupe Fiasco, Talib Kweli, and M.I.A., who bring an old- school social consciousness to their performances.
The Reemergence of Pop
After waves of punk, grunge, alternative, and hellop- hop; the reject of Top xl radio; and the demise of MTV's Total Request Live countdown testify, information technology seemed equally though pop music and the era of big pop stars was waning. But pop music has endured and fifty-fifty flourished in recent years, especially with the advent of iTunes. The era of digital downloads has again made the single (equally opposed to the album) the dominant unit of measurement of music, with digital single download sales more than ten times equally pop as digital album download sales. The dominance of singles has aided the reemergence of pop, since songs with catchy hooks generate the most digital sales. Past 2014, iTunes offered more than twenty- eight million songs, and the tiptop artists were leading pop acts such as Katy Perry, Lana Del Rey, Rihanna, Jason Derulo, and Luke Bryan. Similarly, streaming services such as Spotify, Rdio, and Deezer, each offering more than twenty million tracks, have also greatly expanded accessibility to music. The digital formats in music accept resulted in a bound in viability and market share for independent labels and have changed the cultural landscape of the music industry in the twenty- first century.
136
ITUNES shifted the music business toward a singles- based model. While artists still release full albums, it's also possible to produce a massive iTunes hit, similar Carly Rae Jepsen's "Phone call Me Maybe," before an anthology is even bachelor (Jepsen'south full album sold modestly upon its later release). But some artists tin nevertheless sell full- album packages: Beyoncé'due south self- titled album (including a serial of music videos to accompany the music) was released exclusively to iTunes for its offset few weeks and promptly broke sales records for the site.
© Rick Davis/Splash News/Corbis
Post a Comment for "The Era of Digital Downloads Has Again Made the the Dominant Unit of Music"