If you read about music, you have probably encountered two recent pieces of writing on the subject of whether or not to take pop music seriously: One by the TV critic Saul Austerlitz for the New York Times Magazine; another posed as a conversation on NPR between longtime music writers Ann Powers and Carl Wilson.
“In 2014, nothing starts a fight more quickly than a huge pop song,” reads the intro to Powers and Wilson’s exchange. Setting aside the hyperbole—or embracing it, maybe—let me add that this has also been the case in every other year that pop music has existed. The prejudices backlighting these arguments are familiar: Pop is shallow product forced on minds too young or dumb to know better; rock is uncut truth transmuted from a powerful and probably male god. Pop is about play and transience; rock is about timelessness and authenticity. Pop is a preprogrammed drum machine; rock is the wild expression of the soul through an electric guitar.
All this is easily dispelled by the endurance of ABBA and Madonna, or remembering that “Bob Dylan” is not actually Bob Dylan’s name, and that in the early 1980s he made an album called Empire Burlesque that, for the work of a rock hero, features an awful lot of synth horns. The boundaries between pop and rock are—and always have been—imaginary.
Before I go further, though, are you sure you know what popular music is? Some of Billboard’s top-selling albums this week are a soundtrack to a Disney movie, a Johnny Cash reissue from the 1980s, a Shakira album on the cover of which she is pictured holding an acoustic guitar, and a sinister-looking product by a band called Chevelle, who Wikipedia describes as “alternative metal, post grunge and hard rock,” none of which sound very Spring Fling to me.
And let’s not forget country music, that strange and independently functioning world within a world, hugely popular and yet invisible to many, the niche market that in fact accounts for a large portion of the pie. If you are a reader of this website, you probably know who Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus and Pharrell are. Maybe 2 Chainz, too, and definitely Drake. But what about Luke Bryan, an affable, goofy guy who has sold millions of records to people? Night after night he takes the stage at arenas across the country, swiveling his hips in bedazzled jeans, cocking his baseball hat with a rakish wink in his eye. Do you know Luke Bryan?
The point is that popularity is a number, but “pop” is a concept. To its enemies it suggests a dystopian image of music served up like condensed food pellets from some uncaring hand, forced into our living rooms and offices, inescapable. To its friends it is something inclusive, a unisex, one-size-fits-all party smock, the thing that draws everyone to the floor. Someone like Grimes can be described as “pop” by her fans despite not being all that popular, because Grimes’ music prizes being catchy, clever and direct. The same goes for Sky Ferreira and Haim, and once went for bands like the Talking Heads. Popular music conjures the mob mentality of the lowest common denominator; pop is sophisticated, beautiful and yet so easy a baby could grasp it.
In his Times essay, Austerlitz asks, “Should gainfully employed adults whose job is to listen to music thoughtfully really agree so regularly with the taste of 13-year-olds?” On what we’re agreeing about, I’m not sure. That Katy Perry is entertaining? Have you seen the video for “Dark Horse”? I like when the little dog shows up, and when Juicy J wears the pharaoh’s outfit.
My guess is that Austerlitz’s hypothetical 13-year-old and I would find the little dog entertaining for the same reason, which is buried somewhere deep in our amygdales and has to do with encountering non-human animals that behave in seemingly human ways. Then a year or two will pass, and the 13-year-old may get some notion that what delights them has to be important. It has to mean something. It has to weather the tests of time and discourse. A hard shell of sophistication will form around them, and when presented with the little dog in the “Dark Horse” video they may turn toward the mature pleasures of the National and whisper, “No longer can I laugh.” Or they might not.
What matters here is not what we talk about, but how we talk about it and why. If you’re writing a long essay about the cultural import of Beyoncé in the hopes that people will put down their old Two Lone Swordsmen albums, relax: You’ve already won. Beyoncé does not need you to help her sell records, or her Heat Rush fragrance, or her black lace bunny ears, or her toddler onesie.
She may, however, need you to be able to talk to your friends about why her fame has a healthy impact on culture. I can’t and won’t do this because I dislike Beyoncé—she seems too blandly interested in her own power, and I don’t know how to square her supposed uplift of young women with the fact that she accepts large sums of money from a soda company whose products contribute to the spread of diabetes in American youth.
But let’s imagine a perfect conversation about her. What would it look like? Would you like her music more afterward, or would you just like the stimulation the conversation provides?
One of the difficulties of fully embracing pop is that when you do, you can no longer emphasize its significance. It becomes something light, a loose ribbon dazzling in the breeze about which nothing sticky can be said. You hear it, you like it, and it’s over—no mess and no remainder. Analyze it like an epic poem and it risks losing the shine that brought you to it in the first place.
To me, the purest pop is always about novelty—about the way some simple but bizarre proposition can short-circuit our attention and make us squeal with delight. “Surfin’ Bird” is a good example, as is “Turn Down For What.” Meaning doesn’t elevate music like this, it kills it. This doesn’t mean real pop has to be ephemeral, I don’t think. Listen to “Surfin’ Bird.” Do it. It holds up and probably will forever.
So: Do you make room for transient joy? Does it impede your deep thoughts, or does it inspire them, like a spark to wick?
On the other hand, I sometimes worry that serious music can only be served by serious talk, or worse, that people who like serious music can only have serious reasons for doing so. The truth is that you will probably meet just as many shallow people at a National show as you will at a Miley Cyrus show, the difference being that people at the National show are more likely to think they’re important, while people at a Miley Cyrus show are more likely to think they’re having fun.
To this point I submit a series of imaginary letters to the free-jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman called “New Perspectives on Ornette Coleman”, by the critic Frank Kogan. Coleman’s music was high-minded, liberated and difficult—for most people, the definition of avant-garde—but Kogan’s letters are written in the low and simple style of mash notes to a teen magazine.
“Dear Ornette,” one starts.
“I like your music very much and so does my older sister and even my father says you're not bad. My friend Shelly just gave me a copy of Science Fiction for my tenth birthday. She says it is hard to find but she found it. It is my favorite album I think. I like Tiffany’s album too but yours is better. Someone told me you were touring with Richard Marx and Jerry Garcia. My dad said he would take me if you played an auditorium so that they would let me in.
Best of Luck,
Cynthia”
A ten-year old having ten-year-old thoughts about free jazz. Now that tickles me.