Corporate Rock 2001: Our societal norms are being dictated to us
Jul 10 '01
The Bottom Line It doesn't matter what the artist thinks -- if you follow popular music, you're hearing what the labels want you to hear.
(Personal note: Written and posted in the Days Inn, St. Augustine. Oldest city in North America settled by Europeans.)
I've been doing a lot of thinking about the state of music in America during my current tour through the East. And a lot of that has been focused on the force feeding of content to unwary radio listeners. This essay discusses social responsibility as it applies to music, not artists. I'll explain why, but feel free to NH this as being "off topic" if you like.
The Musical Landscape of 2001
Does your local radio station have an 800 number for requests? Ever wonder about that?
Have you ever heard "Nights In White Satin" by the Moody Blues? How that came about, and why it will never happen again is an interesting tale.
Ever wonder why you hear the same old songs on the airwaves, and when you request to hear something new, you never do?
You see, the day when music was something that artists performed and was judged and rated by an appreciative audience are long gone. Your radio station has an 800 number because you're listening to a national network feed, and as much as they'd like you to think that what you're hearing has originated from your home town, you're hearing the same songs, the same DJs, the same "dedicated to my girlfriend Janet" as people across the country.
Indeed, even if you do have "local programming," odds are good that the DJ is an appointed mannequin, who pushes the buttons to play the songs that have been dictated to him by his Program Director, or someone even further removed from "the people" in the corporate chain. They have no intention of playing your favourite song unless it's on the "approved list," and how it gets on that list is a bit disconcerting.
So, today, we're being force fed a diet of music that has been selected for us by someone, somewhere, who has little interest in us, our tastes, or our expectations, except as they apply to their marketing numbers cooked up in a soup pot somewhere in New York or Los Angeles or Tokyo.
According to lore, "Nights In White Satin" owes its success to a single DJ, who liked the song a lot and started playing it, although it had been released many years before without success. It became a local hit, and other markets heard about it and started playing it as well.
Do you think that such a grassroots movement could succeed in America today?
Social Responsibility
An artist somewhere writes a song. Regardless of content or quality, it will not be played on the radio until someone at the corporate level approves of it. Remember the payola scams of the 1950s, where DJs were caught spinning records for pay?
You didn't honestly think it was illegal in this day and age, did you?
Read this article:
http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2001/03/14/payola/index.html
What you hear on the radio was brought to you, lock, stock and barrel by payola, disguised in terms like "Independent Record Promoter" and "Co-marketing dollars." In other words, the "hits" of today, whether controversial or not, are put in place, intentionally, by people who don't give a tinker's damn about social responsibility -- they simply want a return on their investment.
Does anyone truly believe that The Marshall Mathers LP is an embarrassment to Interscope (aka Geffen / A&M Music)? Would that album have seen the light of day on a major label if it was?
Do you think that Brittney Spears' "slut/nice girl" image is something that she and her mother came up with?
Does it ever occur to anyone that what comes over the airwaves is not some anguished youth's vision of society, but a corporate view of what will appeal to the largest listening audience?
The determination of who the next "big band" will be is not based on popularity, talent or even musical integrity or vision. It all boils down to "will this sell?" Social responsibility isn't part of the equation, except insomuch as someone might say "This will offend far too many people to be popular" (remember Insane Clown Posse a few years ago?)
So, in reality, unless the artist is completely independent and releases albums under his own label, social responsibility is not something that he or she is part and parcel to -- it's dictated in terms of what the record label will release to the world.
I have seen the enemy, and it is us
The big debate is, of course, whether artists and music reflects society or instigates it. I personally believe that it is a combination thereof. What is normal in some segment of society may be brought forth in a song, and because of the homogenous nature of our entertainment industry, it becomes ingrained across the country.
Rap sprang forth from the turmoils of inner city black culture. Go to any suburban location in America today, and you'll hear it being pounded out of freckle faced youths' cars on every corner. I doubt that they can identify with the emotion and anger that spawned the music, but it has been adopted as their own.
We, you and I are the ones with social responsibility. We control the radio dial, we determine what we buy, and we have only ourselves to blame when corporations dictate what we listen to, what we expose our children to, and what we find the newly accepted social mores are.
To expect corporations to "clean up their act" while still buying their crap is to fly in the face of all we find holy in a capitalistic society.
And to expect the flavour of the day artist to stand up to the guys who sign their checks is the most unrealistic expectation of all.
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adjensen
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Member: a.d. jensen
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