Who needs Pink Floyd, Dire Straits, they're not our music, they're out of date

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Jaysis I'm ruined.

The pop quiz was somewhat of a triumph - £330 in the kitty for charity, pretty good result, bigger things expected of the auction on Friday tho. Nobody got the Bradford fire question; nobody got Chernenko; I think one team got Chumbawamba; nobody got I'd Rather Jack; almost nobody got ABBA; EVERYBODY got Busted, hurrah.

Does anyone want more bits and pieces questions?

Here is a question that's been floating around my brain a bit: is pop music a good medium for self-expression? When I think of records which have some kind of confessional or soul-baring component to them I tend to be thinking of records I think are a BIG BAG OF SH1TE. "Self-expression" isn't exactly the right words here, maybe with conversation I can work towards a better way of phrasing this...

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

No, viz Nobody wants to hear about your problems when they want to enjoy themselves. Pop music is about having fun.

However there are a few exceptions to above rule:

Madonna - Express Yourself
S-Express

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I wonder if this becomes clearer if you rephrase it: pop music is rubbish when it is ONLY self-expression; pop music can be (but need not be) a powerful vehicle for self-expression (actually is that really the right word? But I think I know what you mean), but is only also effective as pop music when it the self-expression is mediated by e.g. tradition, genre, consideration for audience, commercial impositions -- i.e. all the other stuff. I think an aesthetic theory needs to have a place for expression in it (I didn't think this a few years ago) because it is an undeniable fact that some / many artists do see what they are doing in those terms. But, to draw a parallel, the people who are encouraged to write doggerel by their psychologists as a way of dealing with their emotional problems are not making art, because all the other factors are missing.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yeah I like the insertion of 'only'.

It's one of the big things I just don't GET about the way some people enjoy music - something like John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band just seems so awful to me because it really REQUIRES you to take some kind of interest in JL's inner life, it feels boring and intrusive somehow.

[catsgomiaow.livejournal.com]

I think the self-expression thing is why I ONLY like upbeat pop songs and HATE ALL BALLADS (and therefore entire recorded output of Westlife).

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Well there's no self-expression in Westlife really (or is there??), actually something I'm interested in with the boyband/girl group format is whether the expressive value of a song is diluted by having multiple singers. With Diana Ross and the Supremes, say, Mary and Flo are the friendslist to Diana's LJ, so the illusion(?) of self-expression is still there. But with Westlife trading lines off each other you're asked to believe in a great big gestalt "I" which might be any or none of them and therefore might also be YOU.

Great pop music often gives you a way to express YOURSELF in other words, not that Westlife are great but you know.

(This is the 'theme' of Popular I reckon.)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i think the thing i like abt lennon/plastic ono is that it's on the borderline between utter confessional and high-end craft: you see the bad side being morphed into the good side, or failing to be so morphed, or something

(for example: on one hand, an outpouring of unshaped ME ME ME; on the other, it's all double-tracked -- ie his voice is sent thru some kind of slight reverb to "chorus" it, which is a weirdly "anti-authentic" device to reach for)

(also: there's ringo on drums behind him)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Well isn't he saying, yes I am a pop star (even if I hate it) and this SHOULD be part of the business of being a pop star.

(OK maybe 'could' instead of 'should').

I guess I wouldn't want it removed from the armoury of pop completely because as Jeff and Alex suggest there are things that can be done with it. But surely there are better ways to get something off yr chest than writing a song about it.

(I think I phrased this as "Blogging killed indie for me" once)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

lennon's famous massive two-part interview w.jann wenner in the stone at this same moment (ie of plastic ono band) is the virtual INSTALLATION of rockism ordinaire -- not to mention the rock'n'roll CANON -- in the critical discussion

so i think his WRONGNESS was part of a reactive project against "it has all gone horribly wrong"

(of course you also have to factor in the sheer topsyturvy HORRIBLENESS of 68-69 out in the world, when EVERYONE totally lost their bearings) (so i am interested in this record as a marker of that side of lennon -- as bellwether for the topical -- as much as using it as a tour-guide round the inside of a man's whiny heart)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Pop music that lets the singer express themself = Soul music. Totally different kettle of beans.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yeah as ever I am including everything in my big "pop music" basket.

Soul music is a rum cove.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

but soul music is delivered on a base of high technical craft (cf skidmore's excellent FT piece); it operates at this edge between intense formal rules and sometimes quite fubsy conventions

(also very often the singers are NOT SINGING SONGS THEY WROTE)

the "fear of collectivity" (ie that to make the nice noise you need contributions from several ppl who presumably DIDN'T all go through the thing yr singin abt) (eg RINGO) seems to be a part of what's goin on here

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Singing songs they wrote = helpful but not essential for expressing oneself. See George Michael doing Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me at Freddie Tribute Concert. I would class that a soul song because, well, he put his soul into it.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I always think soul music is as close as a performer gets to what listening to music feels like.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I agree -- isn't the most interesting thing about westlife the extent to which there is no self-expression. And who would want it? Even the tweenage fans aren't buying into the soul of the performer, they WANT a bland screen on which to project their fantasies. Forgetting this was of course Charlie Busted's mistake, when he wanted to get 'real' (and obviously emotional). Actually, the trouble with 'self-expression' is that it conjures up either 'emotional sincerity' or 'innate creativity'. But surely Axl Rose is expressing fear and confusion and anger and hurt and rejection and desire in 'Welcome To The Jungle' -- which is probably a more 'expressive' song than 'Sweet Child Of Mine'. And even a song which says basically 'I'm a horny rockstar and I want to fuck chicks' is expressing something.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Yes, in the right hands. See my updated post today on Kevin Blechdom and Millie Jackson. They filter their self-expression through characters that may or may not be them, or are exaggerated versions of themselves, but still counts I think.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

While I'm figuring out my own very important views on this question, could we have some more bits & pieces questions?

(I think my views are "how are you supposed to be able to tell?")

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I wonder whether it matters if you can tell or not? I think *evaluating* pop on self-expression would be a disaster; in fact if you can tell that someone is trying to 'express themself' perhaps we could say that it has failed to become 'pop' successfully.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

but isn't the "TALE OF THE STAR" part of the "work"? i actually think something is being missed here bcz of tom's intital generalisation, which is that pop has a concrete history of styles and manners and shticks and tricks, and also that audiences do: ie they "express" the story of their own lives - cf SEVEN AGES OF POP LIFE theory - in reference to specific releases at particular ages

(and if you happen on the release out of sequence, and try and slot it into the mode where it did once work, in ref.its FIRST audience, it can SPECTACULARLY not work --- but this is not the only mode available...)

[steviespitfire.livejournal.com]

Sorry, no time to read this YET, BUT I have a few initial questions:

1. What is "the self"? In the context of a pop song? Esp re: band dynamic? The singer? Boy band? The singers?

2. What is being expressed? Need it be misery/loathing? Might not any "I" = expression of a self? ie. "I wanna dance ect"

Sorry if these have been asked/answered already, I just want to log my thoughts for when I come back from work.