pa6317 dissertation - amazon s3 · in commercially successful pop music from the last five years...

The Death of Pop Music

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PA6317 Dissertation


Are we amid the silent death of a genre?

Joseph James Watt

16th March 2017

ID: 00009425

BA Creative Musicianship

Word count: 8249

Tutor: Gareth Dylan Smith


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Contents

1. Introduction 3

2. Retromania 4

2.1 What is Retromania? 4

2.2 Retro in Music 5

2.3 The Problem of Retromania 6

3. Accelerationism and Music 8

3.1 An Overview of Accelerationism 8

3.2 Accelerationism and Pop Music 9

3.3 Accelerationist Music and Vaporwave 11

4. Pop Music and Homogeneity 12

4.1 The Simplicity of Pop 12

4.1A Harmony 12

4.1B Dynamics 13

4.1C Rhythm 14

4.2 The Similarity Within Pop 14

4.2A Harmony 14

4.2B Dynamics 14

4.2C Meter 15

4.3 Lyrics 15

4.4 Melody 16

5. Adorno and Listener Regression 17

5.1 Fetishisation 18

5.2 Regression of Listening 20

6. Conclusions and Recommendations 21

7. Bibliography 24


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1. Introduction

In 2015, the British Phonographic Industry noted that pop music reigned supreme in the

UK, “accounting for the majority of records sold in the Official Albums, Singles and

Compilations Charts in 2014” (British Phonographic Industry, 2015). In the same year, it was

also noted that pop music was the third most popular genre in the US having shown the most

growth year-over-year, as a study by Nielsen had revealed (The Nielsen Company, 2016).

Additionally, it was the sixth year in a row that pop music took more than a third of the singles

market share in the UK (The Nielsen Company, 2016). Why, therefore, am I set on

investigating such a fatalistic subject, theorising on the potential, and arguably inevitable, death

of Western pop music during the apparent peak of such a fruitful genre? While the birth of

music and its progression to our current musical climate is frequently documented, few

documents speculate the future of Western music, and even less so explicitly addressing the

future of pop. In fact, Steve Goodman, the author of Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the

Ecology of Fear, believes that we are “at a moment when many practitioners have become

fixated on the past and thinkers have found themselves unable to locate possible futures”

(Goodman, 2011). In all elements of culture, it is important to identify and anticipate trends so

to pinpoint one’s role in it and to deepen one’s understanding and appreciation, just as it is

important to understand the history of culture.

Before I continue, it is important to clarify to what I am referring when I use the word

‘pop’. Though the term is derived from ‘popular music’, the two are not interchangeable.

Throughout this proposal I will be referring to the specific genre of pop; music that evolved

into its modern form out of rock and roll in the mid-1950s and is recognised in its increasingly

formulaic style, though I will go into more detail on these formulae later in this paper. I believe

that the West, particularly in pop music, has reached a fascinating period of music culture,

which is becoming somewhat tumultuous. My research will draw on some remarkable common

themes in the current state of [pop] music philosophy; “retromania” and self-appropriation,

accelerationism and the sub-genre culture, amongst other considerations (Reynolds, 2011).

Adam Harper supposes that we have reached a time in music that has brought “composers and

listeners to the brink of an era of limitless musical possibility” (Harper, 2011), and I will be

considering whether this ‘infinite’ potential is useful, or being misapplied in Western pop

music, and why, with such limitless possibility, “[pop] music [is] becoming increasingly

formulaic” (Percino, Klimek and Thurner, 2014). As further clarification, though I will be

referring to the whole of pop music, I would argue the damage to the genre stems from


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‘popular’ pop music, such as the formulaic chart music with which one will be familiar. I will

also briefly reflect on the effects that the Information Age has had on the face of music,

considering how it has changed the way music is created, how music is shared and consumed,

and how the consequential effects of this have saturated the ‘musical landscape’. I will be

drawing from a variety of texts, and this dissertation will serve as the synthesis and discussion

of these readings.

2. Retromania

2.1 What is Retromania?

“Not only has there never before been a society so obsessed with the cultural artifacts

of its immediate past, but there has never before been a society that is able to access

the immediate past so easily and so copiously.” (Reynolds, 2010)

Retromania is a term originally coined by Richard Horn in his book Memphis: Objects,

Furniture and Patterns (1986), and refers to enthusiasm for retro designs. ‘Retro’ is

distinguishable from antique or vintage as it is merely an imitation of a previous style. Retro

usually refers to characteristics that are nostalgic, and in this essay, I will be using this

expression to refer to replications of styles from the 1950s onwards. The term ‘retro’ was first

used in relation to music by Simon Reynolds in his 2010 book Retromania: Pop Culture's

Addiction to its Own Past. In this, he argues that “we're wallowing in our memories more than

ever—and that cultural innovation is stagnating” (Harvey, 2011). The book focuses on a

particular element of post-modernism; the virtually habitual acts of self-appropriation in

Western music, predominantly where pop music is “characterised by its self-conscious use of

earlier styles and conventions” (Tate, 2015). Retromania is a fascinating trend, and it is

important to consider its role in the potential demise of pop music. It is, of course, worth

recognising that this has been an inclination of many elements in Western culture typically

since 2000. One can look at such examples as Instagram, a popular photo application for phones

designed to share pictures of a style that are “reminiscent of Polaroid and Kodak Instamatic

photos”, H&Ms ‘50s-esque’ 2012 Autumn fashion campaign with Lana Del Rey, or even the

television show Mad Men, a style-conscious show set in the 1960s – 70s (Handberg, 2015). To

some extent, we are all victims of ‘Retromania’. A look in our wardrobes, at our furniture or


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our crockery, would probably exhibit an item reminiscent of the recent past. Walk into any

electronics shop, and one will find oneself surrounded by kettles and radios, many of which

are designed to be ‘nostalgic’. Retromania has become a key element of modern western

culture, and as such is slowly replacing much of what was ‘modern’ while being barely

recognised.

Fig. 1: Lana Del Rey in H&Ms 2012 Autumn fashion campaign.

(H&M, 2012)

2.2 Retro in Music

The trend of “using the past as if there were no tomorrow” is less recognisable in music than it

is in fashion, and therefore it is important to reflect on some examples of the use of retro trends

in commercially successful pop music from the last five years (Handberg, 2015). Consider

‘The 1975’, a pop-rock band comprising of four members, all in their twenties. The band has

been nominated for numerous prestigious awards, including ‘Best Act in the World Today’,

and has also won ‘Best Album’ at the Q Awards for the album I Like It When You Sleep, for

You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware of It. However, it could be argued that this success has

not been due to innovative, pioneering music; the album is very clearly rooted in the ‘80s.

SPIN, an online music news website, looked at 30 reviews of The 1975’s album and noted

every time an artist from the 1980s was referenced; a total of 31 artists from the 1980s were

mentioned in these 30 reviews, from INXS and Prince to Duran Duran and Fleetwood Mac

(Unterberger, 2016).


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The ‘80s revival has been witnessed through many artists over the last decade, such as

La Roux, Lady Gaga, Mika and Little Boots. Of these, Lady Gaga has frequently been

compared to Madonna in both style and music (Bryant, 2016), McCormick (2009) has drawn

similarities between La Roux and Eurythmics, while the characteristics of their lead singer Elly

Jackson have been compared to those of Annie Lennox (Reynolds, 2011). Simon Reynolds

recognises Will.i.am as a “pioneer of 90s recycling”, and in his Guardian article Total Recall:

why retromania is all the rage, he points out that “the non- ‘80s parts of The Time [by Black

Eyed Peas] sound like boshing techno-rave from the early days of Berlin's Love Parade”

(Reynolds, 2011). The power of retro in recent pop music is very evident. This in itself is not

a problem; as Jackson of La Roux pointed out, recreating ‘80s music in a modern context has

allowed her “to pick out the best bits” (McCormick, 2009). But this does raise the question of

whether this trend of retromania could be contributing to the demise of pop music.

Fig. 2: In For The Kill single sleeve

(Polydor Records, 2009)

2.3 The Problem of Retromania

Retro itself is not an issue, and of course, is not a new phenomenon. Music of all genres,

including pop, has gone through various resurgences and reimaginations over the last 30 years,

yet has not been damaged by these revivals. My concern arises when we consider this in the


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light of all the technological advances with which we now live. Adam Harper noted that the

time in which we live has brought “composers and listeners to the brink of an era of limitless

musical possibility” (Harper, 2011). Therefore, we would expect to witness cutting-edge

developments in pop music, but what we see is that cultural innovation in pop music is

stagnating. This is the first issue.

Periods of time are defined by the culture of that era, and key events. An example of

this could be the Elizabethan era, which is of course recognised for the reign of Queen Elizabeth

I, but is also culturally renowned for the peak of William Shakespeare, a significant playwright

who changed the path of English theatre. This revolutionary theatre has found itself cemented

in the history books. By contrast, modern pop music defines the ‘now’ by the terms of the past.

I believe that music has always been led by cultural reformers, and that reformation itself looks

to the future, but when we consider contemporary pop, we find that it looks to recovery instead

of discovery. Simon Reynolds questions “when we listen back to the early 21st century, will

we hear anything that defines the epoch? Or will we just find a clutter of reproduction antique

sounds and heritage styles?” (Reynolds, 2011). The pop music which is so fruitful now may

well be forgotten, already being identified by its ‘80s and ‘90s ancestors.

One deliberation is that if pop music is so intent on repeating its history, maybe it is

this history which is being repeated which defines pop. Let us consider, that the music trends

that are returning, (80’s sounding synths, production values and rhythms), are in fact the

cementing of pop’s real identity; music that is defined by the elements that are so recognisably

‘‘80s’. This is an unusual phenomenon; the first time a widely acknowledged genre has

developed and then reverted to a former state, but fundamentally it is not a problem. What we

must question, however, is what then happens to every other style of music that has come under

the pop umbrella until now but does not fit these hypothetical criteria of ‘pop’. In this scenario,

pop has become limited in its definition, resulting in the failure to identify alongside all the

songs that have previously been ‘pop’ but no longer meet the new definition of pop in its retro

elements. In this situation, pop would either have to become narrow in its definition and thus

lose all other songs that are currently regarded as pop, or alternatively, this ‘80’s’ style of pop

would need to be renamed.


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3. Accelerationism and Music

3.1 An Overview of Accelerationism

“The dissolution of civilisation wrought by capitalism should not and cannot be

resisted, but rather must be pushed faster and farther towards…its ultimate

conclusion, either because this is liberating, because it causes a revolution, or

because destruction is the only logical answer.” (Harper, 2012)

Accelerationism is a social and political theory which is traceable to Karl Marx. This theory

asserts that the prevailing system of capitalism must be expanded and accelerated so to prompt

radical change. As Noys said in his book The Persistence of the Negative: A Critique of

Contemporary Continental Theory, “if capitalism generates its own forces of dissolution then

the necessity is to radicalise capitalism itself: the worse the better. We can call this tendency

accelerationism” (Noys, 2010). Accelerationism is a relatively new political theory, truly

having been coined by Benjamin Noys in his 2010 book Malign Velocities: Accelerationism

and Capitalism, and can already be identified by left and right variants of accelerationism.

However, for the sake of relation to music, I am going to approach accelerationism through its

fundamentals, looking at capitalism through the microeconomics concept of the profit motive.

The profit motive refers “the economic statement that organisations need incentives to be

persuaded to relinquish resources that are invested into operations. Simplified, this means that

institutions must expect to receive something that is worth more than their investment before

they are willing to invest” (Li, 2011). There is a lot to be written on the theory of the profit

motive, but the crucial elements are that in a capitalist society the purpose for producing any

goods and services are to sell them for a profit, not to satisfy people’s needs (World Socialist

Movement, 2003). Additionally, in a capitalist society, the profit motive is not necessarily a

result of greed but is rather a motive that is “imposed on capitalists as a condition for not losing

their investments and their position as capitalists” (World Socialist Movement, 2003). This

becomes central when considering how this relates to pop music.


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3.2 Accelerationism and Pop Music

Pop music has changed dramatically since the 1950s, as has the pop music industry. The 1950s

saw the rise of Rock & Roll and R&B, and the growth of these genres was accompanied by the

ascent of the record label industry, then dominated by five major labels, Columbia, RCA

Victor, Decca, Capitol and Mercury (Vogel, cited in Bielas 2004). The 1950s can be seen as

the decade of prosperity, where the American economy grew by 37%, and spending was at an

all-time high, and this was no different for the music industry (Schmoop Editorial Team, 2008).

Artists such as Elvis Presley, considered risqué at the time, became widely admired. The

popularity of such artists developed prior to them being signed to a major record label, meaning

there were no real risks for these majors to sign these artists. This is a stark comparison to the

current pop industry. Major labels take a much larger role in scouting, styling, and advertising

artists in an increasingly competitive environment. The musical landscape has become

saturated, yet despite this, in 2012 the music industry posted its first profit since 1999. “Total

revenue came in at $16.5 billion, less than half the $38 billion the industry enjoyed in 1999”

(Ausick, 2013). This fact is necessary when considering the effects of capitalism on music. As

DeGusta (2011) analysed, when the US recorded music revenue is adjusted to account for

inflation, in 2009 the turnover was $8 billion, the lowest the turnover had been for over 33

years, as the graph below shows.

Fig. 3: US Recorded Music Revenue – Analysis by DeGusta

of data provided by RIAA when adjusted to account for inflation.

(DeGusta, 2011)


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Labels, therefore, are less enthusiastic about taking risks on new artists, risks such as Elvis

Presley and his salacious image in the 1950s. These labels, therefore, have been honing a

formula of pop music that sells, due to the profit motive, the necessity to turn a profit to survive.

There are a variety of reasons that this formula sells, as were investigated in part in Adorno’s

Theory of Listener Regression.

This becomes a dangerous cycle when various factors of the current musical climate

are contemplated. It may be argued that, due to the saturation of the music industry, it can be

challenging for consumers to choose what to listen to. Like any product or service, the wider

the range of possibilities, the harder the choice becomes. Therefore, consumers would listen to

their peers, marketing image and advertising. Labels, subsequently, have emerged as the

marketing machine, and as producer J Chris Griffin said in an article on mic.com, “There's no

way a new artist can make it without that kind of marketing power behind them” (Barnes,

2014). As such, labels direct most pop listeners to their artists, and these artists are performing

a formula that is gradually become less and less varied (see 4.2). This is where the theory of

accelerationism arises. By honing this ‘formula’ of pop music so to guarantee a profit in the

business, the pop music itself is becoming more stereotypical of itself, and this is accelerating

the dissolution with the capitalistic nature of the pop music industry.

Grammy-winning songwriter and producer Larry Dvoskin feels that audiences are

already starting to tire of the pop homogeneity (Barnes, 2014). This meets the criterion of

accelerationism, which is that as capitalism moves faster and farther, as it is in the pop industry,

people will recognise its downfalls and the result will be to cause either destruction or

revolution. Ironically, it is those who are driven by the profit motive in the music industry who

are fuelling accelerationism. J Chris Griffin believes that this will change soon and that people

will need to be set apart again.

"When you equal the playing field, it always goes down to the least common

denominator — which is what we have with a four-on-the-floor beat and two chords.

It’s very equalised, I think you'll see that unequalise again ... What will set people apart

is 'Oh, it's my knowledge of chords' or 'Oh, it's my knowledge of how to sing better.'

What you'll see in the next five years is a disequalisation." - J Chris Griffin (Barnes,

2014)


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3.3 Accelerationist Music and Vaporwave

Vaporwave is a subgenre of both electronic and pop that originated in 2010 and has gradually

spread across the internet. It was a reaction to globalisation, consumerism and other capitalist

concepts, and the artists that make vaporwave “can be read as sarcastic anti-capitalists

revealing the lies and slippages of modern techno-culture and its representations, or as its

willing facilitators, shivering with delight upon each new wave of delicious sound” (Harper,

2012). Vaporwave is usually wholly synthesised, or the track relies on heavily processed

portions of ‘corporate mood music’. There is broad use of sampling, and these samples are

often slowed down, repeated and cut. Much of vaporwave can be interpreted as ‘post-lo-fi’,

but despite this feeling of retro, it is produced to a ‘glistening’ high standard. Some vaporwave

may well be created purely to fit the style, but in Dummy Magazine, the producer behind

vaporwave album New Dreams Ltd, said that the album is “entirely a caricature of mass media

and its evolution in the late 80s right before computer culture blew up in America” (Harper,

2012). It is remarkable that there is such music as to challenge capitalism, and the capitalism

of music, but also that vaporwave has been growing gradually more popular. It is, of course,

difficult to conclude whether listeners of this genre are aware of the social and economic

commentary of the music, or whether they do simply enjoy the dystopian caricature of mass

media, but it can be assumed that not all listeners are informed about the foundations of this

music. Therefore, this popularity becomes extraordinarily ironic.

Fig. 4: Floral Shoppe album cover

(Macintosh Plus, 2011)


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4. Pop Music and Homogeneity

“The thing that I love about pop music is the simplicity and the directness of it”

(Lo, 2014)

4.1 The Simplicity of Pop

Tove Lo, the Swedish singer and songwriter, is fair in her acknowledgement of the beauty in

the simplicity and directness of pop music. It is true to say that this simplicity can be what

listeners truly enjoy, but I will focus on this idea later in this essay concerning Adorno’s theory

of listener regression. I want to first address the technical aspects of pop music in the songs

individually, but wish to avoid following “the stereotypical lament of each receding generation

of music listeners” (Matson, 2012). Whilst aware that a key element that defines pop music is

its simplicity, with a focus on melody and production, I will first look at the complexity of pop

songs in terms of some of the elements of music as outlined by Narmour in his 1988 text

Explorations in Music, the Arts, and Ideas: Essays in Honour of Leonard B. Meyer. Pendragon.

These are the meter, tempo, harmony, dynamics, melody, rhythm, tessitura, timbre, and texture.

To focus on the elements within individual songs, rather than between songs, I will first look

at harmony, dynamics, rhythm and melody, starting with harmony.

4.1A Harmony

In 2012, the blog Hooktheory published an article that contained analysed data of the chords

for 1300 ‘popular’ songs. These songs were taken mainly from the Billboard 100 and were of

genres distinguishable from jazz or classical. The majority were pop songs, but other genres

including rock and folk were included in the figures. The first set of data revealed in the article

was the most prevalent keys of these songs, with 26% of them being in the key of C major, or

its relative minor A minor, shortly followed by G major, or its relative minor E minor used by

12% of the songs. The reason behind this phenomenon, and why it could be argued to be

‘simple’, is that C and Am both use all the white notes on the piano, arguably the easiest keys

to play and write in on piano, and the following popular keys of Em and G are the most

comfortable on guitar. This, of course, suggests that these keys were chosen for the simplicity

of writing and playing rather than for sound or appropriateness for instrumentation necessarily.


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Howeve, this isn’t as common for other genres. Seth Kadish analysed the key signatures of

compositions from ten different composers, (Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorak, Haydn, Liszt,

Mendelssohn, Mozart, Rachmaninoff, and Tchaikovsky), and found there was a larger variety

of keys used, and that the frequency of use between the different keys was more consistent

(Kadish, 2014). He also noted that the more popular keys in classical were also the less

favourable ones in pop music (Kadish, 2014). Kadish found that D major was the most frequent

major key, a key with two sharps, and D minor was the most utilised minor key, a key with one

flat (Kadish, 2014). These are arguably more complicated keys to write and play in, but it

should be remembered that the focus of this music was, indeed, the music (as opposed to lyrics).

After all, Eliot Van Buskirk did note in a blog post about popular keys on Spotify insights “it’s

no surprise that songwriters would write their chords in [C major and G major and their

enharmonic equivalents] so they could focus their energy on more important things… melody

and lyrics” (Buskirk, 2015). Maybe this is where the value of pop music lies, in the lyrics, and

I will deliberate on this later. However, let us continue to consider the other elements of music

first, looking at dynamics next.

4.1B Dynamics

Dynamics is a particularly interesting element when referring to pop music. The ‘loudness war’

is the “term applied to the ongoing increase in the loudness of recorded music…as musicians,

mastering engineers and record companies apply dynamics compression and limiting in an

attempt to make their recordings louder than those of their competitors” (Vickers, 2010). This

concerns the similarity between songs in the pop music genre but also suggests a certain level

of plainness in the dynamics within songs. In the attempt to make their recordings louder than

competitors, musicians and producers have to sacrifice the range of dynamics in their music,

so that even the lowest points in the dynamics of their songs are loud. The loudness war is

argued to be ‘over’ now, as online music streaming platforms such as YouTube and Spotify

have introduced loudness normalisation to reduce market pressure to over compress material.

However, it is still evident that recent releases such as Justin Bieber’s album Purpose are still

extremely compressed, which may suggest that the obsession with compression has found itself

very firmly embedded in the pop industry. This could potentially change over the coming years,

and it is worth considering whether a reversion to a larger dynamic range may affect pop music

and what this may look like.


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4.1C Rhythm

Rhythm is also very simple in pop music, but this is understandable and arguably necessary.

One of the key roles of pop is to encourage dancing, and of course, this is achieved through

dance-orientated rhythms. These rhythms tend to be simple, as to make it easy for the listener

to follow the groove. Much of the UK Top 40 pop songs revolve around a variation of one of

three different rhythms, these being four on the floor (a kick drum on each crotchet), tresillo (a

faux triplet, the 1st, 4th and 7th quavers are accented, or the 1st, 4th and 7th semi-quavers) or

just a back beat (a kick drum on the 1st and 3rd crotchet and a snare on the 2nd and 4th). These

are all common rhythms, and though there is no issue with them being simple so that people

can dance, it could be argued that the growing homogeneity of rhythmic elements between pop

songs is damaging to the merit of the genre.

4.2 The Similarity Within Pop

Naturally, if a genre is simplistic in its bare elements, the songs within the genre will be very

similar due to a lack of variation.

4.2A Harmony

After providing the most frequent chords in pop music, Hooktheory continued to outline trends

in harmonic construction when all songs were transposed to the key of C major. One may be

familiar with the expression ‘four-chord pop song’, a reference to the sheer number of pop

songs that use the progression I-V-vi-IV, and variations of that sequence. In fact, in 2011 the

band ‘Axis of Awesome’ uploaded a video to YouTube that covered 47 songs using only this

chord progression, gaining over 31 million views partly due to its revealing nature of so many

pop songs. The results of Hooktheory’s analysis of the song database showed that when all the

songs were transposed to C major, 73% of the songs used G, 73% used F, 68% used C and

56% used Am, before a drop to 26% using Dm. This evidences the extensive use of I, V, vi

and IV in pop songs.

4.2B Dynamics


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As noted in 4.1B, the ‘loudness war’ dramatically changed the dynamic variety within songs

as they were gradually compressed, but even more significant is that this overuse of dynamic

compression affected all pop songs. Naturally, as the loudness war was a competition for

musicians, mastering engineers and record companies to make their recordings louder than

those of their competitors, the difference in dynamic ranges between pop songs dramatically

decreased. A quantitative analysis of nearly half a million songs, published in Scientific

Reports, illustrates a variety of trends that have emerged over the previous decades covering

“three primary and complementary musical facets: loudness, pitch, and timbre” (Serrà et al.,

2012). The results showed “growing average loudness levels” which “[threaten] a dynamic

richness” (Serrà et al., 2012).

4.2C Meter

There is little to remark on the meter, because although much of pop music uses common time,

this is the most prevalent time signature in Western music. Evidence of this can be seen in the

fact that every UK number 1 pop song in 2016 was in common time. However, it would be

wrong to define 4/4 as ‘simple’ in pop music, in the same way as it would be inappropriate to

name any waltzes in 3/4, the defining meter of a waltz, as simple.

4.3 Lyrics

Lyrics play a vital role in pop music. They work together with the melody and rhythm

to create a catchy ‘hook’ and tell a story. Where pop music has its pitfalls in harmony and

dynamics, it can be argued that the merit of pop songs lies mostly within the lyrical content. If

one is to consider that belief, one would also need to consider a study run by Andrew Powell-

Morse which was to question the complexity of pop music lyrics. This study was executed by

inputting the lyrics of 225 different songs to check the ‘Readability Score’, a tool that uses

analysis systems such as the Flesch-Kincaid grade index and the SMOG index, to check the

average grade level of the song. Over the years 2006 to 2014, the average American grade level

of the songs decreased from 3.5 to 2.75, which matches the capabilities of a 9-year-old and a

7-year-old respectively. It should, of course, be recognised that in order for pop songs to be

catchy, they need to be simple. However, it is unlikely that the value of pop can lie in the lyrics,


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especially considering that, on average, the lyrics are simple enough for a 7-year-old to

understand. This is, however, excluding a 7-year old’s lack of capacity to understand any

sexual references, which are copious. “Approximately 92% of the 174 songs that made it into

the [Billboard] Top 10 in 2009 contained reproductive messages,” wrote professor Dawn R.

Hobbs in Evolutionary Psychology (Hobbs, 2011). Lyrics in pop music tend to be simple, but

also sexualised, and it would be hard to argue for the complexity and worth of the lyrics in the

majority of popular pop songs.

4.4 Melody

The melody, also known as the ‘topline’, is thought to be the most key element of pop music.

As explained later in this paper in 5.2, overall, the majority who consume pop music have learnt

to listen atomistically, and one of the central focusses of this listening is the melody. Multi-

instrumentalist and producer Ryan Tedder said in an interview with Tom Cole that “Melody is

the single most important thing to any song, period. I don't care what anybody says, it trumps

everything” (Cole, 2010). As considered through section 5 of this dissertation, placing most of

the significance on melody alone can be damaging, but it is worth reflecting on the approaches

to melody in pop music nonetheless. Although there are circa 8.25 x 1019 possible combinations

of 10 note melodies, due to pop music traditionally remaining wholly diatonic, and increasing

awareness by songwriters of what makes a melody catchy, this number appears to be a lot

smaller in pop music (Freke, 2014). The first essential tool to writing a pop song that will be

successful, due to its memorability, is the use of repetition. This is an obvious device, but

repetition for the sake of memorability dramatically decreases the number of potential melodic

combinations bothin within and between pop songs. Though there is no scientific information

to explain what exactly makes a melody memorable, the data of popular songs and their

melodies has provided information from which to draw that could explain what tools help make

a melody ‘successful’. Music Radar summarised four examples of catchy melodies and gave a

brief explanation of what makes them ‘good’ melodies. The first example is of ‘peaks and

constants’, which is that from taking a monotonal topline, changing a syllable to be stressed by

making it peak in pitch gives a passage energy. The second, as mentioned, is repetition and

symmetry, such as can be heard in most pop music. The third, most remarkably, is of holding

a pedal note in the melody while changing the chords underneath to make melody simple yet

strong, and the fourth is a combination of the previous three rules (MusicRadar, 2012). Though


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these four examples are only advice on a music website, this becomes significantly more

noteworthy when it is considered that some contemporary music educational institutions teach

rules such as these to their songwriting students. By refining and reinforcing the systems of

what makes a melody successful, this even further dramatically reduces the possibilities of

melodies within pop music. Roger Scruton argued that “even when modern pop aims to be

lyrical, melody is synthesised from trite and standardised phrases, which could be rearranged

in any order without losing the effect” (Scruton, 2015). Though this is clearly a negative angle

from which to assess melody in pop music, the simplicity and consequent similarity of melody

in pop songs can also be understood, with another cause due to the technocratic nature of the

pop industry. This can be seen with names such as Max Martin and Lukasz Gottwald being

heavily involved with a significant number of top 10 pop songs. In fact, as of March 2016, Max

Martin has written or co-written 22 Billboard Hot 100 number-ones (Caulfield, 2015).

5. Adorno and Listener Regression

“People have learned to listen without hearing.” (Huron, 2005)

Theodor W. Adorno, German sociologist, philosopher and music theorist, was a leading

member of the Frankfurt School. It was this Institution that was the source of Critical Theory,

a concept that argues that ideology is the primary obstacle to human liberation and that

objective knowledge is illusionary. The Frankfurt School sought to develop a psychological

understanding of the problems of modern capitalism, and from this Adorno drew attention to

three ways in which he believed capitalism reduces the Western people. Though his writings

divide opinion due to the extremes to which Adorno wrote, the foundation of Adorno’s concept

of the ‘culture industry’ has some crucial importance. This is that leisure has fallen into the

hands of the ‘entertainment machine’, a cross-platform media which he believed was designed

to keep people distracted and unable to understand themselves. Adorno supposed that popular

music complements the “reduction of people to silence, the dying out of speech as expression,

the inability to communicate at all” (Adorno, 1938, repr. 2002: 289). The concept of Adorno’s

that I would like to focus on is his theory of ‘listener regression’, as outlined in his 1938 essay

On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening. This theory “describes the

process by which music industry forces transform listeners from independent social creatures


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into passive, compliant consumers of musical product” (Penick, 2014: V). Having written

previously about popular music as a product, it is in this essay that Adorno begins to dissect

the true effects of the commodification of music on listeners. He claims that the “current

musical consciousness of the masses can scarcely be called Dionysian”, that is to say, that on

the whole, the general taste of popular music has become rationalised and thus is no longer

relating to the emotional aspects of human nature (Adorno, 1938, repr. 2002: 288). Adorno

claims that musical goods have become standardised, and that it is near impossible to make

any value judgements on this now commodified art, and that popular music is “so completely

identical that preference in fact depends merely on biographical details or on the situation in

which things are heard” (Adorno, 1938, repr. 2002: 289). It is this idea of normalisation that is

vital to understanding the concept of regressive listening. Adorno’s theory is made up of two

fundamental parts, the fetishisation of music and the regression of the listener, and I will discuss

each accordingly.

5.1 Fetishisation

The first part of Adorno’s essay outlines his view of ‘fetishisation’, or idolisation, in popular

music. Adorno begins by commenting on the expectations of instrumentalists and vocalists,

and though his thoughts are relatively radical, they contain a truth that can clearly be seen in

much of today’s pop music. This is that musical appreciation has been degraded to ‘fetishism’,

especially when it takes “possession of the public valuation of singing voices” (Adorno, 1938,

repr. 2002: 294). Adorno claims that for ‘musical vulgar materialists’, “it is synonymous to

have a voice and to be a singer” (Adorno, 1938, repr. 2002: 294). What he is arguing, is that in

earlier eras, a high level of skill was demanded of singing stars, and this technical virtuosity

was celebrated. However, it is the material that is sung which is fetishised, and demands for a

high capacity to perform are no longer made; Adorno (1938) even goes on to claim that even

mechanical control of an instrument is no longer necessary. He continues,

“If one even dares even in conversation to question the decisive importance of the voice

and to assert that it is just as possible to make beautiful music with a moderately good

voice as it is on a moderately good piano, one will immediately find oneself faced with

a situation of hostility and aversion whose emotional roots go far deeper than the

occasion” (Adorno, 1938, repr. 2002: 294)


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Though written well before the age of contemporary pop music, Adorno penned a good

example of how during the epoch of the ‘master violins’, the Stradivarius was idolised. At the

announcement of it being played, listeners would find themselves in elation (despite not being

able to tell the difference compared with other violins), and would thus forget to listen to the

composition or execution. “The voice or instruments are made into fetishes and torn away from

the function which gives them meaning…” (Huron, 2005) We can draw two contemporary

examples from this, the first being where technical skill is no longer demanded of singers.

Nicki Minaj and Katy Perry are well known as vocalists who rely highly on autotune and

production to mask downfalls in their practical capabilities when it comes to singing, yet are

both highly regarded in the pop industry. Due to various influences, they both rose to fame in

the pop world and have themselves become idolised, or as Adorno claims, fetishised. This

means that despite their limitations, the idolisation of these two artists bypasses the listener’s

ability to accurately listen to the composition or execution. It is also interesting to note that

whereas once it was the products such as Stradivarius and Amati violins being idolised, it is

now the artists, arguably now the products of labels, who are fetishised.

On this subject of fetishisation, Adorno continues to claim that all contemporary

musical life is dominated by the rise of commodification and that now the pleasure of music

can often be obtained by the appreciation of its exchange value. He argues that the consumer

is valuing the monetary worth of music, and the transformation of music into an object of trade

forces pleasure from the idea that the music is valuable (Huron, 2005). This can be seen

whenever pop music has had the support of significant money and marketing, and this

correlates with its success and general appreciation. This recognition of ‘value’ happens with

all products in a modern capitalist society to an extent. The mindset of placing the significance

of music in its exchange value ‘intoxicates’ the buyers. They are bombarded with products to

buy, by those who market the products, and it is this fetishisation of these higher monetary

worth products, or in this sense certain pop music, that Adorno likens to “the behavior of the

prisoner who loves his cell because he has been left nothing else to love” (Adorno, 1938, repr.

2002: 297). This growing fetishisation of the voice, the artist and the exchange value of music

happened simultaneously to the transition to a universal style, the standardisation of music, so

to lessen commercial risk, as explained above in 3.2. This normalisation led to what Adorno

believed was the counterpart of fetishism; the regression of listening.


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5.2 Regression of Listening

Adorno’s theory of listener regression was the counterpart to his writings of the fetishisation

of music, and in summary, he explains that over-exposure to the standardised form of popular

music makes the standardisation transparent to the listener. As Penick elucidates, “A parallel

phenomenon might be a strong but steady smell which becomes undetectable by those exposed

over time to it” (Penick, 2014: 7). The regressive listener, as Adorno claims, is someone who

has had their listening abilities and habits regress and arrest at the infantile stage upon exposure

to music industry product, which has converted them into the ‘acquiscent purchaser’. Adorno

explains that while the song’s duration, structure, melodic range and harmonic sequences are

unified, the listener not only loses the capacity for conscious awareness of music but also

becomes stubborn in his belief that any perception other than listening atomistically is possible.

This gradually leads citizens into a state of “deconcentrated listening”. “...deconcentrated

listening makes the perception of a whole impossible. All that is realised is what the spotlight

falls on – striking melodic intervals, unsettling modulations, intentional or unintentional

mistakes, or whatever condenses itself into a formula by an especially intimate merging of

melody and text” (Adorno, 1938, repr. 2002: 247). Adorno believed that the value of a work

of art comes from the relationship between the work’s smaller compositional units and its

whole structure and that deconcentrated listening prevents this, resulting in the enjoyment of

atomistic detail, which Adorno deems superficial. It is these elements that outline Adorno’s

concept of listener regression.

Despite various arguably damaging trends in pop music, to many, simply enjoyment of

something is enough to give value to the object being enjoyed. Pop music, for example, despite

its simplicity is widely appreciated, just as Tove Lo acknowledged that it is the simplicity in

pop that she loves. However, Adorno’s theory suggests that sociologically speaking, much of

this satisfaction is no longer independent but relies to some extent on the Freudian concept of

‘collective identification’. Penick summarised appropriately,

“Adorno, who might fairly be characterized as an “ego over all” ultra-rationalist, may

have seen in regressed listeners a malformation of the rational side of their brains (their

egos) which has many similarities to Freud’s concept, but in his less psychoanalytical

point of view referred to the failure of “ego formation” more in a socio-psychological

sense - more as the failure to retain independent musical judgment in the face of music


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industry pressure to comply and conform - than in the strictly personal sense Freud

originally clearly intended” (Penick, 2014: 10).

It is fundamental to consider this, that the majority of current consumers of music are unable

to understand music independently and rationally, and that therefore only “listen in a way that

has been socially adjusted by the music industry to seek sensual enjoyment (libido) rather than

rational understanding (ego)” (Penick, 2014: 11). In an article with the BBC, Roger Scruton

argued that this idea of pop pollution is comparable to the effects of pornography. He argues

that “just as porn addicts lose the capacity for real sexual love, so do pop addicts lose the

capacity for genuine musical experience” (Scruton, 2005)

This is where I feel pop music has been damaged, and though pop music itself came into being

after Adorno’s essay, it has not always been as formulaic as we see it today. Art has been

understood as key to the advancement of humanity and the understanding of the world, but the

theory of listener regression suggests that pop is the catalyst for the prevention of the

majorities’ capabilities to enjoy music at a more meaningful level.

“Increasingly young ears cannot reach out to this enchanted world, and therefore turn

away from it. The loss is theirs, but you cannot explain that to them, any more than you

can explain the beauty of colours to someone who is congenitally blind” (Scruton,

2005)

6. Conclusions and Recommendations

I believe we are in the final days of pop music.

This is not to say that pop music will cease to exist necessarily. It is a powerful force

in the music industry and will not be silenced until more is demanded of the contemporary

music culture. Nonetheless, pop is no longer the youthful and reformative prospect it once was.

No longer does it look to rebellion; no longer does it encourage new artists to push boundaries;

no longer does it look to new and exciting limits. Pop music is amid breathing its final breaths

before it fully becomes the lifeless vessel for labels and artists to exploit a culture of regressive

listeners, for the sake of the profit motive. Let me clear, before assumptions are made of myself,

that I am writing as a fan of pop music. This is not the abhorrence of an exclusively ‘high-art’

consumer, but rather a lament for the misapplied potential of pop music. Though retromania


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and the western obsession with the recent past could catalyse advancements in culture, instead

it appears to be stumping the growth of genuine originality, and yet we are far from exhausting

all the resources from which we rely on to create and compose music.

I’d like to pose the question “Where does the value of pop music lie?”. It is vital to

consider the significance of music in all its forms before attempting to answer this question.

As Robert Garfias outlines in Music: the Cultural Context, it takes many roles in human life

(Garfias, 2004). Music can be deeply spiritual for some, it has the power to change one’s mood

dramatically; it is both mathematical and linguistic. Music has been used to strengthen armies,

and it is used to lull babies to sleep, being used across cultures to tell stories. Returning to the

question, it is unconvincing to assign the value of pop music to the musical elements

themselves, as the elements of the music are kept at such a standardised level. The harmony is

relatively limited, as is the rhythm and dynamic. A study that considered the evolution of

contemporary pop music through pitch, dynamics and timbre even noted that the results

indicated “less timbral variety: frequent codewords become more frequent, and infrequent ones

become even less frequent. This evidences a growing homogenization of the global timbral

palette. It also points towards a progressive tendency to follow more fashionable, mainstream

sonorities” (Serrà et al., 2012). The production values of pop music are extremely high, but

even production has found itself becoming standardised and limited in its originality. If it is

not a compositional element of the song, then it is the equivalent to the outer packaging of a

vinyl or CD. Though there are many exceptionally well-written pop songs in terms of the lyrics

in my opinion, as I explained in 4.3, many pop songs do seem to lack a certain level of

complexity that is often required to give something creative its worth. Therefore it would be

complex to argue that the value lies in the lyrics of pop music. It is also interesting to note that

the sexualisation of many of these lyrics runs alongside the advertising understanding that ‘sex

sells’, and this sexualisation of lyrics may in fact be the use of sex appeal by labels to increase

its profit, and in turn increase the exchange-value of the song.

I would argue that pop music is already on its way to becoming lifeless, but it may even

go so far to collapse as a major genre. One of the reasonings for this is due to the saturation of

the music industry on account of both the wide range of sources of music and the rise of the

‘bedroom producer’. Even back in 2014, there were over 20,000 songs added to Spotify every

day, which, if each song is an average of 3 minutes, is about 41 and a half days’ worth of music.

The more music that is made, the more genres appear and the more the lines between genres

are blurred. However, as pop music becomes more narrow in its variation, it will most likely

fail to remain as the umbrella for new emerging genres that find themselves currently


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categorised away from pop music. Another reason finds its basis in the theory of

accelerationism. As pop music becomes more capitalist in its makeup, it may generate its own

forces of dissolution. It is difficult to anticipate what this may be. One possibility is that there

may be a universal revelation of the boundaries and limitations of pop music once it becomes

further standardised. Though Adorno offered no recommendation of how to turn back the

regression of listening in On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening,

he does note that “creators of new and radical music do not just aim to contribute to musical

progress. They consciously aim to resist regressive listening and battle against those powers

which destroy individuality in society.” (Adorno, 1938, repr. 2002: 315). Pop music is not

beyond saving.

If the majority wish to restore the integrity of pop music, two actions must be

undertaken. The first relies on the consumers of music. This is for listeners to demand more of

both their own listening and of the music to which they listen. This means that listeners must

listen outside of the charts, actively seek out new artists and new genres to support and try at

points to focus their listening to the music. This will both direct more attention to smaller artists

not necessarily following the status quo, and will, in theory, expand the listeners’ awareness of

a variety of music, and of the elements that form music. This is the only way to abrogate the

effects of listener regression and prevent the increasing fetish character of pop music. The

second action relies on the creators and writers of pop music, or rather music. This is for

creators (songwriters, composers and producers) to demand more of their own music. This is

to expand their musical vocabulary and to avoid a frequent use of trite clichés. This could take

the form of no longer following the standardised structure of pop or an expanded listening that

reflects in an advanced use of rhythm. These two behaviours together would maintain the value

of the genre.

However, without these two actions, I believe that pop music will have to either

surrender to its lifeless identity, or that it will dissipate so much across its many sub-genres that

it will no longer exist as a genre itself. Either path spells the death of pop music.


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