Robert Warren
Contributing Writer
I had a near death experience last week.
I was listening to the radio, showering after a run at the HRC, when the DJ confidently told me that what I was about to hear one of the hottest new tracks of the year. The sounds that burst from the speaker for next two minutes and 52 seconds, haunt me unforgivably to this very day. I nearly drowned right there.
I regained consciousness to hear that the singer calls herself Ke$ha (dollar sign included), the new hit track sits at the No. 8 spot on the Billboard Hot 100. Titled “Blah Blah Blah,” it’s a ravishing work that would make a Planned Parenthood rep cringe with lines like:
“Don’t be a little b---- with your chit chat/Just show me where your d---’s at.”
The song finds a niche for a new all-time low (right next to the LMFAO song “Shots”).
My problem lies not in the pop genre altogether, but in the emerging sub-genre I will call “consumer-pop.” Yes, pop music wants you to consume it, it makes no false claims about this. From Justin Timberlake to Lady Gaga and Beyoncé, they all want you to not only buy their music and paraphernalia but also their created image.
Each one of these musicians wants to burst forth and make culture as they go. Consider the all-too-discussed fashion sense of Lady Gaga—undoubtedly avant-garde with its interesting use of giant plastic bubbles and cloth that covers too little or too much in many ways. Lady Gaga’s attire is an original and forceful statement, even if we don’t know exactly what it means.
Consumer-pop is an altogether different entity. It does not want to create culture; it wants to get rich, drunk and laid from culture consumption. Consumer-pop incurs no risk of failure in its creation only because it lacks creative power altogether.
The entire Ke$ha album is a tribute to pre-teen wastefulness. She sings about backstabbing gossip and being hit on by creepy, older men. At no point does it challenge the listener. She sings only for blissful intoxication and that complete lack of responsibility every teenager searches for on Spring Break.
The surest way to get famous as a consumer-pop performer is akin to how any middle school student would dominate the playground—talk smack, wear flashy colors and have a rich enough parent to get you out of any trouble. You don’t have to actually represent anything yourself; you just have to mirror pop culture back in caricature form. If you look bright enough, people might think you are.
The distinction rests on one key thought, key words from my own mother, “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” The great pop artists want to speak and create meaning, they practice intonation and inflection and introduce new symbols into the language of musical meaning. They say things you may not understand, but also can learn to understand.
The consumer-pop artists only want to use meaning, digging up old, worn-out themes and strapping aftermarket spinners on them in the hopes you will mistake them for more than what they are. They are altogether too easily understood. Where we used to accuse the candy pop of Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears (pre-head shaving of course) of sexualizing youth in an implicit manner; Ke$ha’s consumer-pop brazenly states, “I wanna be naked and you’re wasted.”
What intrigues me is this changing face of musical expression. Teenagers pray to consumer-pop idols and Proactiv ads instead of idolizing songwriting and musicianship—the part of music that actually involved making it, the part of music that was a response and a reaction to society instead of an embellishment of it. This growing trend rejects the sadness, anger or happiness of other genres in favor of intoxication and intentional illusion. I wonder what it says—not about itself but about its own consumers.
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