The Dissipation of Art in Music
By MNJ
| Posted in Writer's Block
When the recent X Factor show finished and the credits had rolled, I sat there feeling decidedly empty. Not because it wouldn’t be on again the next weekend, but because at the end I found I didn’t really care who had won and who hadn’t. I won’t be buying the winner’s CD, or anything by any of the contestants – the music they produce in the future will probably hold not even the slightest interest for me – and I was embarrassed at having become so involved in what is essentially mass manipulation of a huge section of the population by a couple of media companies.
I asked myself why I had started watching the programme in the first place, which was during the audition stages. I had to admit I had taken a simple voyeuristic pleasure in witnessing the disappointments and the occasional tantrums of the mostly deluded contestants. These audition programs are not live, unlike the final stages, and I had to keep reminding myself that the shows are put together in editing suites by producers making TV shows to attract advertising revenue. They’re not musical events. However, as I continued watching in the subsequent weeks, I was drawn in and began to get emotionally involved in the progress of the contestants I liked. Some of them do have real talent, and some of them do genuinely have great singing voices, will go far, and I wish them well.
The trouble is I’m conflicted by all this. For me, the world of manufactured pop music – and by that I mean the industry that has turned out all the contrived and sound-alike records of the past decade – has on one hand had a positive effect in that it peddles dreams of stardom and therefore encourages kids to take up music – definitely a good thing. But it has also had a negative effect in that the element of artistry and originality has become dissipated. It’s almost as if anything that’s musically interesting or original cannot be considered of interest to the population at large. This is hugely patronising, and more worryingly, highly manipulative.
Are we really becoming so unquestioning as consumers that we will accept anything we hear on pop radio and on the TV talent shows as ‘good’? It’s a bit like a multiple choice question, there’s absolutely no intelligent thinking required, all the work has been done for you. Music for me has always been about personal choice and I worry that the power of TV talent shows – and they don’t look like going away anytime soon – is starting to steer pop music down a very narrow path indeed.
After its inital birth in the fifties, pop music was brought to new heights of artistic achievement by The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Pete Townshend and Brian Wilson amongst a host of others. They set unprecedented standards of quality in song writing and music production which has lasted five decades. If we’re not careful it could all be undone forever by a few powerful individuals whose interest lies elsewhere.
Tags: manufactured pop music, Songwriting, x-factor