Art

My wife went and got her degree in Fine Art at OCADU a couple of years ago, and I got a second-hand Art education along the way. The thing that struck me most about it was the schism between the 'pure' art vs 'commercial' art disciplines in the school; neither area has much time for the other one, though the school ostensibly embraces both.

As my second-hand education progressed, I learned that the fine artists work in service of a concept, an idea that informs their work and is expressed with the Artist's Statement as much or more than by the work itself. A weak concept can sink a whole show and although the strongest concepts don't require much help from the Artist's Statement, if the idea is too obvious it can also fail.

On the commercial side, the concept still informs the content, but with an eye to selling something, which inherently robs it of its sincerity. Working (as I do) with advertising, I am routinely exposed to this conflict, where the clients pull in the direction of selling while the creatives pull in the direction of art. Finding the sweet spot on that continuum can be a victory for the advertiser's bottom line, so it's important to get it just right, so that the target feels entertained rather than manipulated.
 
My exposure to my wife's immersion in the purity of art-for-art's-sake made me think about how all this applies to music. Some musical 'artists' wear the title well; as we listen, we believe they created this piece to express a concept, and the fact that we liked it well enough to buy it in droves and make them millionaires was a secondary side-effect. Other music doesn't fare so well on the sincerity scale; however competently the song is constructed and performed, it still feels like the 'artist's sole intent was to have a hit record and make lots of money. Many, many songs come to mind here, Elvis copycats in the 50's, Beatles copycats in the 60's, arena rock in the 70's, 80's cock-rock, etc. etc., all the way up to misogynistic modern dance tracks. Many of them were even appealing enough to earn their creators a place in music history, but it is a place that is much more rarely revisited.

Artists are artists; they cannot help creating, and often branch out into visual media as well as music. And when we listen to their work, we don't picture them slaving over their instrument to create the next Top Ten hit, we picture them feeling pangs of joy or sorrow and putting those into inexplicably resonant words and music. Like this:

It's got a good beat and you can dance to it...

Of course, people have been dancing to music for centuries, but at some point in the middle of the last century it became acceptable, nay, de rigueur for dance music to include a strong beat for even non-professional dancers to hang onto during the dance. This strong beat got stronger and stronger over the years until it wasn't enough for a drummer to pound it out; it required electronic means to make it as big as possible.

Dancing is a mating ritual for humans, and as such it remains an unassailable power in the world of music, but the power of the pounding dance beat made it possible for even bad dancers to grasp the idea of dancing in rhythm, making it an attractive assist for many rhythm-challenged young people.

Over the years, dance music has divided into sub-genres that aficionados (or even casual club-goers) can identify instantly by their certain characteristics, but whether the music is Disco, Techno, House, Dub, Drum 'n' Bass, Electronica, Trance, Industrial, Breakbeat, Jungle, Hip-Hop, Trip-Hop, Indietronica, Acid House, Detroit House, Electro House, UK Garage, or any one of the other dozens of sub-genres, the common element remains: the beat goes on and on.

In addition to its consistently pounding rhythm, all these styles of Dance Music have something else in common: they've hived off into a separate universe of music from the rest of the world. Oh, there are big-name crossovers that appear on the Top 40, but there are always club hits that have never been heard of by anyone who doesn't visit clubs. Those in the know have that pounding four-on-the-floor as the soundtrack to their nights and weekends - the mating call of the young single.

It doesn't have to be complicated, it doesn't have to have a lot of chords (two will do) but it does need that beat pounding through, and it doesn't hurt if you can intersperse your verses (sung, rapped, whatever) with a melodic hook sung by a pretty girl voice...sounds easy, doesn't it? It's not really...

Entertainment

...which is, after all, the purpose of a good deal of popular music. Yes, there are protest songs, songs of anguish written to exorcise the writer's demons, songs meant to inspire and songs of worship, but at their core, the idea, spoken or unspoken, is that the songs should be entertaining enough to cause the listeners to pay enough attention that they'll get the message.

This is the same principle that advertising uses: a TV or radio spot contains a quick blast of entertainment as a kind of bribe to get the viewer or listener to pay attention to the message the advertiser wants to communicate. The Catholic Church figured this out centuries ago, and took over the general production of music to help sell their message to the masses. When the phonograph was invented and became commonly available, the music was freed to become an advertisement for itself alone, and record sales were the expression of their message.

At some point, it became apparent that video could be used to improve the entertainment value of the music and, presumably, sell even more records. Most music videos were about the same length as the songs they were created to sell, primarily because of the expense of filming, but a couple of artists had enough budget to add a longer set-up and perhaps a coda to the storyline. Twisted Sister had a great little intro on "We're Not Gonna Take It," and Michael Jackson created arguably the best music video of the Music Video Era with the charming little story that framed "Thriller."

I remember one video, though, which was audaciously long, a short film that 'happened' to have a song in it. I haven't heard anyone mention it in years, but at the time it was considered to be groundbreaking and was expected to trigger a new wave in narrative videos. Of course we know now that didn't happen, but I found it (inevitably) posted on YouTube, and it stands up remarkably well for its age. Here's Julien Temple's "Jazzin' for Blue Jean" starring (twice) David Bowie:

Oh I Can't Sit Down

Today's post isn't any kind of analysis of any kind of musical genre, it's a little journey I went through concerning a particular song.

When I was growing up, we had the soundtrack album from the movie of "Porgy & Bess," a work which suffered through more than its fair share of troubles on its way to release, and more afterwards. (For the whole long, sad story, check out the Wikipedia entry) As a small child, I noticed something I thought was strange in the lyrics to one of the songs, "Oh I Can't Sit Down," which is an otherwise innocuous song about a celebration called Picnic Day. The male singer sang, "Guess I'll take my honey and his sunny smile along" at one point in the song, and also, "Hey there, Andy, be my sugar candy!" Another lyric in the song a little later on is, "Today I am gay and I'm free...," so when I got a little older, I guessed I had figured out the song's secret.

Fast-forward to a few days ago, when, for whatever reason, this song appears in my memory again; who knows why, perhaps I heard someone say, "I can't sit down" and that triggered it. I start thinking about the theory I've held for decades that this is a gay anthem, and then I realize that's impossible; when the opera was written, being gay was so illegal that no one in their right mind would even obliquely refer to it in public. Curious now, I google the lyrics, and find that the lyric is actually "Guess I'll take my honey and her sunny smile along," and the line about Andy doesn't appear at all. The plot thickens. Now I'm trying to figure out if the music director of the movie has hidden an Easter Egg for gay friends in the movie by switching the lyrics in that one song. Seems unlikely; Andre Previn was married 5 times and had several children.WTF??!

Eventually, I run across a YouTube video of some songs from the movie, including "Oh I Can't Sit Down," and I get my answer. In the movie, instead of being sung by a man, the song is sung by Pearl Bailey, a deep-voiced woman who for decades I have assumed is a man from the sound of her voice.

The music from the original opera is amazing, but often runs long and involves a lot of crashing and banging onstage in the recordings I've heard. Previn's edits to Gershwin's arrangements brilliantly highlight the lovely songs and dispense with the filler. If you want to skip straight to "Oh I Can't Sit Down" to see what I was talking about, skip ahead to 18:04, but all of this music is pretty great:

Genre Genesis

My interest in the notion of 'polymusical' tastes began because the songs I was writing myself seemed not to fall into the same categories as each other, but recently I've been thinking about where all the categories came from in the first place. My theory is that over a period of time, the contributions of numerous lesser lights finally culminated in the creations of one artist or group who synthesized their styles into one clearly defined style that formed the jumping-off point for thousands to follow.

So, for example, in simplistic terms, every modern musical is the result of composers and librettists struggling to live up to the legacy of Gilbert & Sullivan, who perfected the comic opera form that had been around for centuries. In the same way, every metal band is a child or grandchild of Led Zeppelin, who, as the first distorted-electric blues band, drew on generations of blues players, but created a new genre by changing the instrumentation and exaggerating the vocal style.

R&B is more difficult, because not only are the roots lost in poor historical documentation, but there are so many sub-styles, each with their own parent. Nevertheless, when the recording industry came into existence, the records of Lead Belly, Henry Thomas and "Blind" Lemon Jefferson had the effect of popularizing the music of the black American south, laying the foundations that would lead to the Motown sound. It's easy to miss the fact that, although Motown put out songs by many artists, the sound was the result primarily of one group of session musicians (The Funk Brothers) who played on dozens of hits, many of which were written by one group of songwriters (Holland-Dozier-Holland) thus codifying the style. I would argue that these two groups of creators are largely responsible for how R&B music sounds today, although much latitude needs to be extended as it's a huge category.

One of the most interesting genres for this historical dissection is Country Music, which, in contrast with the Blues Music of poor black American southerners, was the folk music of poor white American southerners. Originally known as 'hillbilly music,' it married instrumentation from Ireland (fiddle), Germany (dulcimer), Italy (mandolin), Spain (guitar) and West Africa (banjo), and later added the steel guitar from Hawaii. Generations of Appalachian settlers from these origins combined their talents and developed hillbilly music, and it all came together when one man laid it down on wax and became the voice of the genre: Jimmie Rodgers, The Father of Country Music.

Watch as this woman smiles and nods while Jimmie casually dashes off a couple of verses about shooting up his ex and her new boyfriend.

Phoenix Careers

The trajectory of a musical artist's career tends to follow one of a couple of patterns: if the artist has gifts of a limited nature, they might enjoy success with a memorable song as a young person or band, then falter after a few lesser attempts at the brass ring; if the artist is unusually gifted, they might continue their ascendency through a series of hits. But once in a while, an artist or band can power through after the first decline and reinvent themselves for a second chance.

Of course, there are numerous variations on this theme, for example, the artist whose initial career is unknown outside a small geographic circle but hits it big with the reinvention. Think Alanis Morissette, whose dance-pop first release went platinum in Canada, or Katy Perry, who put out a gospel album as Katy Hudson before connecting with Morissette's old co-writer, Glen Ballard, and becoming an international pop-star.

David Bowie made a career of reinventing himself for every album, but it felt more like restlessness, and applied more to his visual image and less to the music, which still sounded like Bowie each time.

And some bands were forced to reinvent themselves when they lost a key band member: AC/DC, Chicago, Pink Floyd, Yes, Genesis and The Doobie Brothers all changed their sound to greater or lesser degrees when a founding member quit, was sidelined or died. For Floyd it was the launch of the most successful part of their careers, for AC/DC it just changed the sound of the vocals, and for the rest it led to a slicker, more radio-friendly sound that won new fans as it alienated old ones.

The reinventions that interest me, though, are the carefully mapped-out intentional ones: for example, the Beastie Boys were once a hard-core punk band, but after cobbling together a hip-hop song out of a prank phone call, they threw themselves into rock-flavoured rap and made hits. Or, after a series of bubblegum pop hits as The Turtles, the principal members of that band adopted the moniker Flo & Eddie and continued their careers as respected members of Zappa's Mothers of Invention (conspicuously remote from bubblegum pop) as well as providing session vocals on many other radio hits.

And then there are the artists who just stopped for a few years or decades, disappeared to relax, maybe write some more, maybe live a peaceful life out of the public eye, then dropped back into the scene, as strong as they ever were, no reinvention necessary. Here's an example of that:

Time (Signature) after Time (Signature)

I was thinking about how many (or perhaps how few) popular songs there are that change time signatures in the middle. Just to be clear, I'm not talking about prog-rock and jazz, they do that all the time, almost as a point of pride;  Zappa almost never wrote anything in one time signature, Dave Brubeck made a career of exploring odd signatures, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a track by Yes, King Crimson or Genesis that kept to one sig all the way through. Led Zeppelin experimented with odd time-signatures, but I'm pretty sure all their biggest hits were in straight time. I'm talking about songs that were hits on the radio, songs about which no one particularly commented on the odd time-signature changes. (Genesis did, however, have a Top-40 hit with "Your Own Special Way" which switched signature and tempo from verse to chorus)

Anyway,  I thought of a few examples, and as preparation for writing a blog post about it, I decided to Google and see if other people had made lists of examples. It quickly became pretty clear that although there are occasional examples peppered around the charts over the years, this trick was used most extensively by The Beatles and basically as a one-off for anyone else. It made me wonder if I'd stumbled upon one of the secrets of their success, out there in plain sight with no one paying enough attention to pick up on it. Check the (incomplete, I know, but you have to start somewhere) list of changing time-signatures in popular music:

Dionne Warwick - I Say A Little Prayer
Mason Williams - Classical Gas
Lee Hazelwood & Nancy Sinatra - Some Velvet Morning
Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody
Bee Gees - Jive Talkin'
Blondie - Heart Of Glass
Pink Floyd - Money
Peter Gabriel - Solsbury Hill
Kelly Clarkson - Low
The Beatles - We Can Work It Out
                    - She Said She Said
                    - Dr. Robert
                    - Good Day Sunshine
                    - Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
                    - Good Morning
                    - Strawberry Fields
                    - Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite
                    - Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey
                    - All You Need Is Love
                    - Yer Blues
                    - Happiness Is A Warm Gun
                    - Here Comes The Sun
                    - I Me Mine
                    - Two Of Us
                    - Revolution
                    - Across The Universe
                    - I Want You (She's So Heavy)
                    - Don't Let Me Down
                    - Across The Universe
                    - Mean Mr. Mustard
                    - Martha My Dear
                    - Blackbird
                    - You Never Give Me Your Money
                    - Magical Mystery Tour
                    - The End

I'm sure you can think of others, both Beatles songs and songs by other artists, but I think my point is made. Most of the Beatles songs on the list are Lennon songs - one gets the feeling that he just thought up words that expressed what he wanted to say and adjusted the time to accommodate them. Maybe that's the secret: instead of slavishly contorting the lyrics to fit a predetermined melody, we should loosen up and allow the words to dictate how the music goes.

I'll leave you with another McCartney song that fits the criterion: