Popular Music
The music business is a cruel and shallow
trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves
and pimps run free, and good men lie like
dogs. There is also a negative side
- Hunter S. Thompson
The Early 20th century
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Edison invents the Phonograph in 1878
the primary means of disseminating popular
music until the 1920s remained printed sheet
music.
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The music-publishing business was centralized in
New York City, particularly in an area of lower
Manhattan called Tin Pan Alley.
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With the rise in live performance space like
Vaudeville theatres, Nickelodeons and Minstrel
shows came a rise in sheet music.
Scott Joplin and Ragtime Music
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one of the most
important developers of
ragtime music
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His most famous pieces
were “Maple Leaf Rag”
and “The Entertainer”.
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Ragtime can easily be
considered the first form
of American Popular
music.
Tin Pan’s Golden Age
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The Golden Age of Tin
Pan Alley occurred during
the 1920s and 1930s.
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Writers like George and
Ira Gershwin, Richard
Rodgers and Oscar
Hammerstein II
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And Tin Pan moved from
“dives” to broadway!
The Crooners
Frank Sinatra
Bing Crosby
The conventions…
…are altered.
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The African American
influence on
mainstream popular
music became stronger
during the Jazz Age,
which preceded the
Great Depression of the
1930s.
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Big Band swing
dominated pop music!
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Popular figures
included, Glenn Miller,
Artie Shaw and Benny
Goodman
Post WWII
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Important shifts in popular music tied to social and
technological changes.
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The massive migration of Southern musicians to
urban areas and the introduction of the electric
guitar were particularly influential.
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These changes set the stage for the hard-edged
Chicago blues of Muddy Waters or the honky-tonk,
or “hard-country,” style of Hank Williams.
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Both of these would, in the mid-1950s, give rise to...
Rock-and-Roll
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Blend of “jump band”
rhythm and blues.
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DJ/Concert Promoter
Alan Freed coined the
term to describe music
recorded by small
independent labels.
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rock and roll was an
unexpected success
among a newly affluent
teenage audience.
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Bill Haley’s “Rock
Around the Clock”
(1955)
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Quickly followed by:
– Jerry Lee Lewis
– Elvis Presley
– Buddy Holly
– Fats Domino
– Little Richard
Match the 50’s music stars!
And these?
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With the popularity of
Rock n’ Roll, Jazz
music was also still
popular.
However, in an
attempt to distance
themselves from the
standardized sounds
of the 1950’s several
jazz musicians began
to break the mold.
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Miles Davis, John Coltrane
& Thelonius Monk were at
the vangaurd of the free
jazz or modal jazz
movement.
Davis would come up with
a skeletal basis for songs
and invite the best
musicians to join him to
improvise.
Influencial: Van Morrison’s
Astral Weeks
The 1960’s
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The early 1960s also saw the development
of distinctive regional styles in the United
States.
Southern California = Beach
Greenwich= Folk
Detroit = Motown
Suburban America = Garage Rock
The British Invasion
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Brits raised on the
influences of blues and
rhythm and blues
invigorated mainstream
popular music, in part
by reemphasizing longstanding aspects of
American music.
1964 with The Beatles
others included: The
Who, The Animals, The
Rolling Stones, The
Kinks & Manfred Mann.
Some of the others...
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The late 1960s was a period of corporate
expansion and diversification in the American
record industry. A new youth-oriented popular
market was defined by a broad category of music.
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San Francisco psychedelia
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Guitar heroes such as Jimi Hendrix and Eric
Clapton
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Southern rock (Allman Brothers & Lynard Skynard)
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Hard rock (Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath & Deep
Purple)
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Jazz rock (Frank Zappa and The Mothers of
Invention)
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Folk rock (The Byrds)
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Soul Music covered a
wide range of styles
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gospel-based (Aretha
Franklin)
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funk (James Brown)
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soulful political crooning
of Marvin Gaye
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Raw Southern Soul of
Otis Redding
The 1970’s
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the music industry consolidated its power and once
again sought to mass-produce music styles that had
originally been highly individualistic.
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Corporate rock!
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Glamorous superstars playing to massive crowds in
sports arenas defined a new mainstream.
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Although a number of distinctive styles—disco, glam
rock, punk rock, new wave, reggae, and funk—were
pioneered by independent labels and marginalized
musicians, the music of the 1970s is generally
viewed as less individualized.
Glam Rock
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Began in London,
England
David Bowie
T-Rex
Roxy Music
Slade
Influenced Americans
like Lou Reed, Iggy Pop
and KISS
Funk
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With the assination of
JFK, Malcolm X, Bobby
Kennedy, and Martin
Luther King…Black Music
became militant… deep
and aggressive bass lines
and lyrics.
James Brown
Parliament / Funkadelic
even Motown got
aggressive
Disco
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Aggressive funk titles
like “Black and Proud”
were too much for the
dance floor.
Producers and session
players created dance
friendly numbers and
business - both record
company execs and
clubs jumped on board!
Hard Rock
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Rock bands like Led
Zeppelin and Deep
Purple had taken rock
to the stadium level.
Others followed:
The Eagles
RUSH
Emerson, Lake and
Palmer
KISS
Punk (NYC)
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Annoyed by the $$$
behind popular music a
revolt started in NYC in
the mid 1970’s
The New York Dolls
The Ramones
The Talking Heads
Patti Smith
Richard Hell
Television
Punk (London)
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Within no time the
British are bringing over
NYC punk bands to
play in London and a
new musical revolution
is underway.
The Sex Pistols
The Clash
Buzzcocks
Exploited
New Wave
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Several bands started
to change punk music,
but kept the ethics.
This new style forged
the way for New Wave
in the 1980’s
The Jam
Elvis Costello
Madness
The Undertones
A new urban sound
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Young African Americans
in NYC combine toasting
(speaking over music) with
the creative recycling of
prerecorded material, later
known as sampling.
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Gil-Scott Heron (Beat
Poets)
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Afrika Bambaataa
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Kool Herc
The 1980’s
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A number of factors
contributed to an
economic revival in the
music industry during
the mid-1980s.
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The Music Video
MTV
The Compact Disc
The Walkman
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Michael Jackson’s
“Thriller”
As the biggest selling
album up until that time
it established a pattern
by which record
companies relied upon
a few big hits to
generate profits
Bruce Springsteen’s
“Born in the USA”
Madonna’s
“Like a Virgin”
Prince’s
“1999”
Rap Continues to rise
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Grandmaster Flash and
the Furious Five
The Sugarhill Gang
Both crack the billboard
top 40!
But it would take Public
Enemy to use Rap as
an important medium in
explaining describe in
stark terms the way of
life in America’s
minority-dominated
inner cities
Rapping sometimes conveys a stronger message than
singing.
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Public Enemy release
“It Takes a Nation of
Millions to Hold us
Back” in 1988
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Rap is now a political
medium
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Others followed with
angry attacks on Urban
America
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NWA, ICE - T & Tribe
Called Quest
What happened to it?
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Then a split occurred.
On one side: Vanilla Ice
& MC Hammer - The
commodification of Rap.
On the other side: The
emergence of Gangsta
Rap - or what has been
called The Ghettoization
of Black Culture.
The 1990’s
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By the end of the 20th century it had become
almost impossible to discern the difference
between the center and the periphery of American
popular music.
Peripheral music always ends up at the centre…
Nirvana - First album and EP released on Sub Pop
Within three short years they are the centre of a
modern rock phenomenon
revolution after revolution taken and commodified
to sound like a cheap fabrication of itself.
The 1990’s – Major artists, but few things that are
groundbreaking…
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The best-selling
recording artists of the
1990s included:
Mariah Carey
Garth Brooks
Boyz II Men
Snoop Doggy Dogg
Metallica
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Britney Spears
NSYNC
Alanis Morissette
Oasis
Today’s music
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The corporate
commodification
of music to a
“product”
continues.
The Medium is
truly the
message!
Celebrity
The re-emergence of the
independent
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Perhaps in reaction to the over
commercialization of modern-pop music
the “industry” and fans have begun to
focus on the anti-thesis of this…the
independent musician.
Radiohead
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Radiohead’s OK Computer experimented with
song structures and incorporated some
ambient, avant garde and electronic influences.
Without any “hits” the band went on to be one of
the biggest in the world
Then, they left EMI and released their 2007
album “In Rainbows” directly through their
website.
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The Arcade Fire
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Debut album
“Funeral”
sold 650 000
copies
Opened for
David Bowie
and U2
2011
Grammy for
Album of the
Year The
Suburbs.
The Biggest
band in the
world?
Democratization of music
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The internet means that even unknown
artists can market themselves and gain
notoriety.
OK Go
Selling out?
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It used to be that musicians could rely
on record sales and live music
attendance.
Now, in the era of downloading and
expanding promotion prices artists need
to find other ways to make money.
Allowing the use of their songs in
commercials, films and TV shows prove
financially rewarding for most bands.
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The identification of
musical styles with
complex patterns of
social identity—age,
race, and class—also
continues to shape
American musical
tastes.