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The destruction of the past...is one of the most eerie phenomena of the late 20th Century. Most young men and women at the century’s end grow up in a sort of permanent present lacking any organic relation to the public past of the times they live in. Eric Hobsbawm. Age of Extremes.

The pop performer does not present music; pop music presents the pop star. Musical quality does not matter; the totemic role of a pop star is to be young, sexually attractive, and plaintive voice of youthful desire. J H Bowen.

Pop and rock music can be criticised, justly, for its constant reversion to the tonic, the insistent repetition of its rhythms, the inevitability of its melodic lines, its extreme harmonic poverty. M L Bachmann.

12). Pop and rock upholds and idealises the idea that fame, adulation, wealth, and satisfaction can be attained by anyone, no matter how untalented, unskilled, or unknowledgeable they are, and this is one way in which rock and pop embrace the Capitalist Dream. The fact that this is often the reality, in the pop world, only serves to reinforce the malignant power of these ideals. One can make millions of pounds by copying four power chords and rudimentary pentatonic phrasing from a million other people who have played exactly the same rudimentary music.

These fantasies, of fame and wealth without talent or achievement, are not good for either society or individuals - the “fever dream of fame” corrupts because it encourages and supports narcissistic dreams that success, wealth, and excellence can be attained without a great deal of self-development and hard work, the illusion of entitlement without responsibility or reciprocity, and the false idea that excellence can be attained without the need for work but because one is a special case and “fully formed” from the beginning. These are adolescent fantasies that have now become part of the illusions of the adult world and are strongly reflected in a popular culture that has ceased to be driven by adult tastes and has shifted to one powered by adolescent urges and teenage tastes. Popular music is heavily oriented to prolonging adolescence for the whole population, not just the young. Consumer capitalism seems to corrupt and leads to the infantalisation of society, and rock and pop largely upholds and reinforces these forces.

Additionally, performers who enter the field of popular music are expected to be young and sexually attractive, another symptom of the sexualization and inherent narcissism of the genre. More than this, they are largely uneducated and untrained: they have engaged in little musical education, their musical knowledge and instrumental abilities are limited, and they are therefore ignorant of many aspects of musicianship and composition. It is really no surprise that they produce a body of work that is limited and basic. Is it possible to take seriously any cultural form that is based on the work of the most inexperienced, unskilled, uncultured, untutored, but photogenic individuals in a culture? And where the pose or the sneer is valued as highly as the music - or at least commented on equally. This is the arena of fashion, surfaces, and presentation rather than anything more serious or challenging.

Compare the musical illiteracy of the typical pop performer with the skill and knowledge of the classically trained musician. This involves the extended study and mastery of a complete system of techniques, pedagogy, musical knowledge, and repertoire. In the piano field, according to O'Riley, it commonly includes beginning, intermediate, and advanced material by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart, Liszt, Shostakovich, and other composers. It also implies a mastery of specialised techniques, performed from the easy to the most challenging tempos, as well as a thorough schooling in music theory, harmony, and composition.

As an aside, it is frequently claimed that one pop musical or another has been “classically trained”. When investigated, these claims are usually based on the fact that the musician in question had ascended the musical grade system in the UK to some degree rather than that that musician has had a serious musical training. I have never heard of a pop musician who could have come anywhere near to demonstrating the technical and musical abilities that could have promoted a career in the classical music world.

The cultural reality is that we live in a sound bite world, in which everything from the TV news to pop songs to political speeches seems attuned to people whose attention wavers after a few minutes. Hard to see how a Bruckner symphony or St Matthew Passion fits into this frenetic culture.

And the educational reality is that few people have been taught even the rudiments of how to “read” a performance of classical music: how to recognise key changes; how to spot pivotal moments in a sonata or fugue; how to retain a memory of important themes so that later transformations can be appreciated; and so on. Richard Morrison.

To return for a moment to extremely loud music with a gut-churning thudding bass beat - in 1984, Orwell envisaged the future of mankind as the perpetual stamping of a jackboot on the face of humanity. In this regard our consumer culture has achieved something more subtle and more penetrating than Lenin's Agitprop or Goebbel's Reichspropagandaministerium, or anything envisaged in a Huxleyan or Orwellian nightmare future. The exploited victims do not feel themselves the exploited subjects of designs upon their minds and pockets, and while having mind, heart and intellect stamped upon and numbed, and their pockets emptied, they enjoy and welcome the experience, which becomes a drug, an all-powerful soporific, insulating the victims from all reality, and particularly from political reality. To witness "music" being used as an instrument of mind-control or mind-erasure in this manner is as repulsive, in its way, as was witnessing Mozart and Schubert played by the concentration camp band as Hitler's victims were marched to their fate. Each period of history, each phase of civilisation has the art and music it deserves. If this is so, this music reflects something every bit as disturbing in our collective psyche as communism or fascism at their genocidal worst. Peter Maxwell Davis.

One could easily argue the case that the entire adult population of the Western World has regressed to a childlike state of needing and liking junk food filled with fat and sugar, junk culture, and simple and inane little ditties. Easy consumption, the avoidance of tension and difficulty, and an uneducated and simplistic view of the world increasingly seem the norm, married to a sense of entitlement associated with a lack of motivation to delay any gratification. Sentimentality and addiction to sugary confections predominates. Kitsch culture, false values, and thoughtless consumption hold the day. This is a "me-first" culture, satisfied with complacency because of a fantasy of being fully formed without work or effort, tending to blame others and avoid responsibility for personal actions (for further information, see the research conducted by Dr Jean Twenge on the Evidence 3 page). The increasing commoditisation of social life, and the consequent rise of advertising and publicity as the key culture, tend to promote knowledge as sound bite, enjoyment as sensation, and repute as celebrity which are all characteristics of adolescent culture

Pop and rock music is the most popular cultural product of the past fifty years and, as it has turned out, has been the largest influence on the social, ethical, and general cultural values in our society. It has shaped the thinking and life styles of a number of generations. However, the ethos that has been generated has been one of hedonism and short term gain, the most typical values of a significant part of working class culture in Britain, an emphasis on individualism as opposed to collectivism, and a “counterculture” idealisation on opposition to the norm and to accepted values solely for the sake of opposition. Contemporary popular music promotes values that are capitalistic, racist, and sexist much of the time. A common message of pop and rock music is the perverse and narcissistic idea that "kids know best”, promoting an antiauthority omnipotence. And what is striking about the popular music of the moment is the cold, bitter and sadistic edge to the vision of fleeting sex it promotes, worlds away from the portrayal of relationships as caring, committed, mutual, affectionate, and close rather than perverse, short-term, and exploitative.

Young people invest a great deal of time on rock and pop music and all the signs are that this will increase at the expense of time spent on reading, books, and learning. It crowds out alternative experiences and activities that are thought to be “uncool” or outside the ambience of pop glitter. It therefore undermines cultural diversity in a culture of conformity in which difference is equated with oddity, deficiency, and, increasingly, that which cannot be tolerated. There is a monotony, a triviality, and a quality of boredom about this. If everything is the same and tends towards a homogenous uniformity, surely the world becomes less interesting? Mass production equals uniformity, standardisation, and a decline in creativity. The canvas becomes ever more limited and limiting. There is a tyranny in this process, not only for those whose experience is of being tyrannised by the increasingly widespread aural wallpaper that assaults us all in public places and that is impossible to avoid. Already we are creating a culture in which the visual and aural is predominant in which the written word is ignored and displaced. This must be destructive of a culture of ideas and of serious and deep thought. Pop imperialism will replace a culture based on reading, thinking and learning with a culture of mass consumption, the promotion of products and American imperialism based on its most successful and corrupting export: pop and rock music.

We should not underestimate the role of music in influencing human behaviour and especially the behaviour of youth. There have been many social changes in the last 40 to 50 years: "In the 1960s, the family and family values exercised the greatest influences on teenagers' values and behaviour. This was followed up by the school, friends, peers and then the church. In the 1990s it is believed that MTV (music) is the No. 1 influencer of youth, followed by friends and peers; the family at No. 3; the school at No. 4 and the church at No. 5." (Understanding Youth Culture).

Music affects the emotions as powerfully as drugs. Music enters the brain through its emotional regions, which include the temporal lobe, and limbic systems. From there, some kinds of music tend to produce a frontal lobe response that influences the will, moral worth, and reasoning power. However, some kinds of music, such as rock and rap, evoke very little, if any, frontal lobe response. Instead, they produce a large emotional response with very little logical or moral interpretation. (Kay Kuzma). Researchers from Bowman Gray School of Medicine studied 518 music
videos from four cable networks, MTV, BET, Video Hit One, and Country Music Television. What was found was that a significantly higher percentage of music videos aired on MTV contained one or more episodes portraying overt violence and the brandishing of weapons. Rap videos had the highest portrayal of violence, followed by rock videos. Most videos containing violence showed males as the perpetrators. Fifteen per cent portrayed a child carrying a weapon.

What effect do these music videos have on behaviour? One study exposed 222 patients to several months of MTV, followed by five months without it. What happened when the music videos were taken away? Verbal aggression decreased 32 per cent, aggression against objects decreased 52 per cent, and aggression against other people decreased 48 per cent. One conclusion from the study is that the combination of eye-ear, seeing and hearing seems to induce a more profound shutdown of the analytical processes. Violence results.

Pop music, as it is well known, contains messages about, sexual violence, substance abuse, obscene language, rebellion against authority, denigration of women, idealisation, fantasy, etc. Contemporary rock and rap groups saturate their audiences with an unending stream of obscenities, sadism, violence, and perversion. For example, an analysis of 2 Live Crew's album, As Nasty as They Wanna Be (which sold 1.7 million copies), reveals that in one hour there are 226 uses of the word "fuck," 163 instances of "bitch," 81 mentions of "shit," 87 descriptions of oral sex, and 117 uses of explicit terms for male or female genitalia. We might well worry about the impact it might have on individuals and society.

...with its manufactured sense of outrage, juvenile emotionalism, bogus egalitarianism and grotesque sentimentality, pop lacks the capacity to express any feelings other than the most basic; by trying to be rebellious in some inchoate, let’s-goad-the-parents sort of way, it has turned out a succession of illiterate chumps who are more conformist than the “establishment” figures they find it daring to mock. Michael Henderson. Sex, Hate and Hypocrisy. The Spectator, July, 2004.

...the vast majority of people are unaware of this richest of possible listening experiences: not only unaware, but often actively antagonistic towards it, deeming it elitist, the exclusive domain of the elderly, or even of the semi-moribund, irrelevant to contemporary life, the product of a long-dead European white male. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, annual lecture, 2005, Royal Philharmonic Society - Will Serious Music Become Extinct?

... the main influence on most people's lives now is television. With a huge choice of commercial channels, aiming to make as much money as possible out of as many people as possible in the shortest possible time, the lowest common denominator prevails. One can look at circulation figures for the 'popular' papers in comparison with their so-called 'highbrow' stable-mates and realise that most people leave school with a restricted active vocabulary of just a few hundred words, and that the very act of thought is thereby severely restricted. Perhaps not only our children but all of us are being educated to become good, docile consumers, so that we become incapable, or perhaps just unwilling, to question the status quo. There is a history in folk music, and in some fairly recent pop music, of social and political criticism, but the only music most people know - pop music - has become a big business beyond anything ever imagined in the musical world, playing its part in drugging constructive, creative thinking. In rare circumstances where this music does give rise to controversy, the lyrics are even more right wing than our more extreme politicians, inciting racial or sexual violence. It can come as a shock to realise that the majority, particularly of young people, are unaware that music can be 'abstract' - that is, without 'vocals' - and that a musical work can last longer than a pop single. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, annual lecture, 2005, Royal Philharmonic Society - Will Serious Music Become Extinct?

Radio, of course, is the least likely medium to join in the descent into a Huxleyan world of technological narcotics. It is, after all, particularly well suited to the transmission of rational, complex language. Nonetheless, and even if we disregard radio's captivation by the music industry, we appear to be left with the chilling fact that such language as radio allows us to hear is increasingly primitive, fragmented, and largely aimed at invoking visceral response; which is to say, it is the linguistic analogue to the ubiquitous rock music that is radio's principal source of income. As I write, the trend in call-in shows is for the "host" to insult callers whose language does not, in itself, go much beyond humanoid grunting. Such programs have little content, as this word used to be defined, and are merely of archaeological interest in that they give us a sense of what a dialogue among Neanderthals might have been like. More to the point, the language of radio newscasts has become, under the influence of television, increasingly decontextualised and discontinuous, so that the possibility of anyone's knowing about the world, as against merely knowing of it, is effectively blocked. In New York City, radio station WINS entreats its listeners to "Give us twenty-two minutes and we'll give you the world." This is said without irony, and its audience, we may assume, does not regard the slogan as the conception of a disordered mind. Neil Postman. Amusing Ourselves to Death.

One can’t listen to classical music and especially serious contemporary classical music with the ears, that rather distracted mode of listening, that one has used for other forms of musical styles. James Macmillan.

Milan Kundera’s novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting,  asserts that popular music (a term which he tends to use (quite correctly!) interchangeably with “rock music”) is “music minus memory.”  Much of this novel deals with the enforced forgetting imposed by a totalitarian regime, and the narrator implies that popular music is one of the tools used by the regime to encourage forgetting and to facilitate the rewriting of history. A point that can be applied in all cultures since pop and rock create a monoculture that eliminates all memory of history, culture and tradition. Pop music has forgotten the musical canon and is music with no awareness of tradition and no engagement with the compositional techniques developed over centuries of music history.

13). The idea of deep and concentrated listening to music is becoming increasingly foreign to the mass of the population - indeed the typical pop or rock music consumer primarily uses music as a background or as a rhythmic accompaniment against which to “dance”, if poll evidence is to be believed (“dancing” is merely prancing around in a disorganised fashion, not to be compared with the dance forms found in modern dance, ballet and classical traditions of dance in other cultures - these require a level of skill and ability). This assertion logically follows from the level of complexity of pop and rock - it is obvious that the level of concentration and attention required for A. A. Milne is not at the level of that required for Shakespeare or to solve a complex quadratic equation. Moreover, it is not even possible to direct the same intensity of concentration and attention to A. A. Milne or to a nursery rhyme since the simple nature of the material will not provide scope for this. This music is not intended to be heard, but to be overheard. In contrast to pop, it is clear that to appreciate classical music properly you must give it your full attention, and you need some knowledge of musical form and structure. In common with most popular culture, the appreciation of pop and rock  requires no tutelage or special sensibility, not even close attention because of the simplicity of its structure and materials.

Research shows that while repeated hearings of complex pieces of music bring greater enjoyment before becoming tiresome, that crux comes much sooner with simple songs such as the typical pop or rock song. Indeed, middle-of-the-road pop tunes were reputedly played by the US military to break the fighting spirit of the Viet Cong. The FBI chose Nancy Sinatra's back catalogue when trying to end the Waco siege in 1994.

Active listening, instead of passive consumption, an intelligent focus on musical sound, structure, and argument, as opposed to using music as a generalised wash of sound to produce a generalised emotional pleasure, does not seem to be the current mode of listening, encouraged by the ubiquity and staleness of the musical background that surrounds us in more and more of our daily life. This is the music of starvation. Music is increasingly something to be dipped into and used as a backcloth. Many people, especially the young, are unaware that music can be anything other than a fairly repetitive background with the emphasis on a vocal foreground. The idea that music can be devoid of a vocal and the idea that music can be an abstract art is foreign and outside of knowledge or awareness. For music to be able to be appreciated as an abstract art a different order of listening is required. This is helped by a knowledge of musical grammar and structure and the principles of composition, but essentially requires repeated listening in a “deep” way to appreciate this level of organisation and complexity.

The above assertions are supported by evidence. Many researchers who have studied the subject believe that the way people listen is changing(particularly true for those under the age of 35). A study by psychologists at Leicester University, to take one example, monitored 346 people for two weeks to explore how they related to music. Music emerged as something that was passively listened to, used as “sonic wallpaper” that was barely perceived and used mainly to pass the time. The researchers concluded that “music has become a soundtrack to everyday life rather than something life-changing and special” (A C North & D J Hargreaves. Use of Music in Everyday Life. In Music & Perception, Vol. 22, 2004). A Keele University study also found that only 2% of experiences involved listening to music as a main activity. The researchers concluded that concentrated listening is not the norm for most people. Attention is instead distributed “across a complex situation of which music is only a part” (J A Sloboda. Music - Where Cognition & Emotion Meet. The Psychologist, Vol. 12, 1999).

Music teachers in schools and visiting performers have also noted increased instances of poor listening skills (Music Teacher, June 2006).

In contrast to popular forms, to appreciate classical music properly you must give it your full attention, and you need some knowledge of musical form and structure. It may be true that some classical music is as immediately compelling as pop, that the first bars of Beethoven’s Fifth are more than a match for those of Deep Purple’s Smoke On The Water. But on the whole, a symphony is undeniably much more complex and demanding than Yellow Submarine. This is readily apparent and cannot be denied. The quality of attention it demands is therefore of a different order, just as Dostoevsky is more demanding than Beatrix Potter. In contrast to pop and rock, classical music has maintained an attachment to its history while branching out into extraordinarily varied directions. When you listen to it, or perform it, you become part of a continuum that stretches back centuries. That amazing passage of musical ideas from one generation to the next is a form of communication that we can equate with an emotional language. Pop and rock, however, is tied to an eternal present in which the music of even the past year is forgotten and past achievements can then be endlessly regurgitated as brand new and innnovative.

The media, of competitive necessity, have to rely on sensory bombardment and over stimulation rather than intellectual reflection and analysis. We have been conditioned to expect short, snappy presentations of all types--special effects, quick-cut editing, continual camera movement, fast-paced action, flashy colours, pounding music, and any other means to intensify the visual and aural excitement. In a 1984 speech, newscaster Robert MacNeil summed up this attribute of the television experience:

“The trouble with television is that it discourages concentration. . . . Programmers live in constant fear of losing anyone's attention--anyone's. The surest way to avoid doing so is to keep everything brief, not to strain the attention of anyone but instead to provide constant stimulation through variety, novelty, action and movement.

. . . Consider the casual assumptions that television tends to cultivate: that complexity must be avoided, that visual stimulation is a substitute for thought, that verbal precision is an anachronism. It may be old-fashioned, but I was taught that thought is words, arranged in grammatically precise ways” Post-Intellectualism and the Decline of Democracy: The Failure of Reason and Responsibility in the Twentieth Century. Donald N. Wood.

The above constriction of attention and listening skills is symptomatic of more widespread cultural trends, tending to create a culture of short attention spans and increasing superficiality. There is a demand for immediacy and an inability to tolerate complexity that has produced a sad decline in all areas of culture. Critics such as Adorno believe that popular music no longer has the ability to even entertain and instead merely complements the death of expressive speech and humanity's tendency towards non-communication. He wrote of the "pockets of silence" that are so prevalent in society and stated that "if nobody can any longer speak, then certainly nobody can any longer listen." This 'regression of listening' was a major concern for Adorno because for him, it was synonymous with the incapability of most people to participate in concentrated listening and was a sign of the manipulation of need by commercial forces. His view was that this was primarily a phenomenon of working class false consciousness and exploitation and an example of hidden fascist forces in society that manipulate the population and remove freedom of choice and expression. He illustrates the essentially exploitative nature of mass musical production, reproduction, promotion, distribution and consumption. The culture industry which perpetuates this is cynical and exploitative which “...perpetually cheats its consumers of what it perpetually promises. ... the promise, which is actually all the spectacle consists of, is illusory: all it actually confirms is that the real point will never be reached.” Adorno considers music to have lost any obvious meaning or any worthwhile feeling and this is due to the commercialisation of music by the culture industry. The final loss of meaning is simultaneous with how music has become “popular”. He asserts that "the basic culture-industrial principle is affirmation of life as it is." Rock and pop is thus part of a popular culture industry that lacks exploratory capabilities and creativity, providing only the restrictive and the over-familiar to its consumers.

14). When I discuss the above arguments a proportion of people will agree with me about the lack of any great merit in pop and rock music but will say that the words are the most important aspects of the music. However, when we examine this claim we find that this music is mostly lyrically execrable: tending to be repetitive in any given song, expressing fairly limited ideas and feelings because of the limited use of language, and repetitive across the genre because most lyrics are about love relationships, mostly from an adolescent perspective. We find an obsession with the delights of the opposite sex that is notable for its monotony and superficiality of purpose. By and large, the songs in popular culture are escapist or saccharine and sentimental, deal largely with banal approaches to love (or unrequited love), or are deliberately odd or “funny”, perhaps emphasising a peculiar approach or lyric. Alternatively, in the music called “rock” (almost indistinguishable from “pop”) there may be incoherent, vague, and incomprehensible ramblings that are claimed to be “deep” or “significant”, but are actually confused and meaningless. These words usually take a basic, universal theme, denude it of any real individuality, and serve it up for mass consumption, lyrics and music standardised to a pattern. The lyrics do not compare at all in quality with the wit and literacy of popular song lyrics from the middle years of this century. Additionally, most authors of pop music lyrics are under the misconception that what they write is poetry. It is largely not poetry. The lyrics frequently consist of pieces of chopped-up prose, which is quite different to poetry, and the misconception is caused by an ignorance about literature, literary form and constructions, and wider cultural horizons. Compare the quality and range of pop music songs with those in other traditions that rely much more on wider issues and feelings and often connect with and reflect wider literary and cultural preoccupations, and you will notice their poverty and constriction. If the words and sentiments in popular song are expressed with a banality and a superficiality, it may be because the background and the environment and education of the common man has not yet given the ability to be more articulate about their loves and lives. There has truly been a sad decline in the quality of popular song in contemporary times. It is generally, both musically and verbally, boring, insipid, banal, exploitative, and insignificant.

Why Classical Music Still Matters. Lawrence Kramer.

Kramer's argument is that classical music describes a unique kind of complex subjectivity, similar in scope and significance to that represented in the great 19th-century novels.

"Music of this period [1785-1915] is shaped in the form of a narrative." In these musical narratives, "bourgeois audiences could hear something of their own lives enacted in symphonic splendour -- the dramas of desirous, independent citizens, yearning, struggling, loving, brooding, recognising, regretting, learning -- ultimately bound into a single society by the more abstract society of intertwined sounds...."

It was the late Frank Zappa who thought that pop music journalism was an exercise conducted by people who can't write and people who can't talk for the benefit of people who can't read. It took a dimwit to spell it out but, for once in his life, the chap with the goatee beard was bang-on.

Though his background was in classical music, Zappa lacked the talent to master his preferred discipline, so he turned to the less demanding field of rock - or `progressive' music, as it was called in those days. If time has not been kind to his work it has certainly vindicated his judgment of the people who write about it. What a shame he's not around today to enjoy the drivel that masquerades as criticism.

When pop music came of age 30 years ago it was regarded as light entertainment. Nowadays, when it is at best a debased form of entertainment and at worst an aural pollutant, it attracts more coverage in broadsheet newspapers than what its supporters sneeringly call the 'mainstream' arts. Like some mephitic form of pond life it has multiplied and like pond life it stinks. It is virtually impossible to pick up a paper these days without being bombarded by reviews of pop concerts or interviews with personalities that are really puffpieces engineered by record companies.

'A battening sub-art': that is how Anthony Burgess, who was a musician by training, described pop. Yet how reverently its advocates chart its toings and froings, sensing it offers a short cut to intellectual respectability. When words like 'transcendent' are applied to the mewling and puking of postadolescent youths - and they are - what adjectives are left over for Schubert?

Of the many forms of youth fascism this elevation of trivia is the most insidious because broadsheet newspapers, searching for the new (i.e. young) readers, use it as a marketing device. If you quibble about boring things like taste and point out that Mozart was, all things considered, greater than Billy's Bouncing Buttocks, then you're fair game for the foot soldiers who march under the banners of 'relevance'. Last year an American professor put up Bob Dylan for the Nobel literature prize. Who said Americans lacked a sense of irony?

Pop music is not all bad and in the Sixties it was often very good. Wilson, for instance, was a good songwriter until he lost his marbles. Dylan, who was not particularly good, still had his moments. Pop does not have the emotional complexity of orchestral music but it's not supposed to have. It is a young person's enthusiasm, an aide-memoire. The problem is, when you exalt trivia to the level of profundity then words lose all meaning.

To write, as did Michael Gray, a biographer of Dylan, that `the way he shakes his leg is more interesting than anything Anthony Burgess has ever written', gives the game away. On a good night Dylan might have gone a couple of rounds with Oscar Hammerstein. Put him in the ring with Lorenz Hart or John Mercer, however, and he wouldn't reach the first bell. They were genuinely literate men from the golden age of popular music, yet neither was ever described as a 'bard'.

Whereas proper art forms such as theatre, music and painting require qualities of discernment, pop has only ever fed off celebrity. In order to write as well as they do, men like Michael Billington and Michael Kennedy had first to acquire a wide experience of matters beyond their main discipline. These days young men and women who can barely spell their own names use a few smart-alec generalisations as depth charges, to bomb entire tunnels of communication.

No wonder pop, which sees the world through a fog of reflexive anti-establishmentism, has never thrown up a decent chronicler. Instead there is a compound of triumphalism, inverted snobbery and window-dressing. Robin Denselow, the BBC reporter, challenged to justify his choice of `the best record ever made', replied: `Because it is.' Dear, oh dear! Please tell, Herr Hanslick, why Brahms is greater than Wagner. Because he is, you insolent young pup.

Tony Parsons, whose polytechnic cockney brightens many a dull night on The Late Review, has compared one pop writer with Lord Byron. That writer, in turn, compared one group's first pop record with King Lear. James Delingpole, an I specialist who aspires to these giddy intellectual heights, told an American songwriter he reminded him of Joyce, `because you were ahead of your time'. Even the performer, who is not known for his humility, drew breath sharply.

The promotion of trash, and the persistent sniping at what is genuinely serious, accords with the spirit of our times. In Britain today it seems that unless something is immediately understood by everybody then it is somehow 'elitist', and therefore undemocratic. Only here is `the easy, mediocre taste of the multitude', as Robert Tear, the opera singer, puts it, considered a force for social good.

Does it matter? Most certainly. First, there is the corruption of language. Adjectives like important, significant and seminal are tossed around willy-nilly to celebrate the banal. Second, there is the perversion of manners. Pop stars and their lickspittle attendants refer routinely to drugs and anti-social behaviour as though it was all a complete joke, and in the patronising search for younger readers newspapers have chimed in with this grim mood.

In his book, The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom said of pop music that `never was there an art form directed so exclusively to children'. Selfishness, he wrote, `becomes indignation and then transforms itself into morality'. The evidence is all around us, every day of the week. Which brave man will be the first to take away the toys? Michael Henderson, 1997.

Here are some examples, then, of the banality of most pop/rock lyrics:

“I don't want to see a ghost, It's the sight that I fear most, I'd rather have a piece of toast, Watch the evening news”. Des'ree. Life.

"I'm as serious as cancer, When I say rhythm is a dancer." Snap. Rhythm Is A Dancer.

"And I met a girl, She asked me my name, I told her what it was." Razorlight. Somewhere Else.

"Slowly walking down the hall, Faster than a cannonball, Where were you when we were getting high?" Oasis. Champagne Supernova.

"We're heading for Venus, But still we stand tall". Europe. The Final Countdown.

“Be bop a lula, she's my baby, Be bop a lula, I don't mean maybe, Be bop a lula, she's my baby, Be bop a lula, I don't mean maybe, Be bop a lula, she's my baby doll, my baby doll, my baby doll”. Gene Vincent.

"Picked her up on a Friday night, Sha La La La La La Lee, Knew everything was going to be alright”. The Small Faces.

“More Sacrifices than an Aztec priest, Standing here straining at that leash, All fall down, Can't complain, mustn't grumble, Help yourself to another piece of apple crumble”. ABC. That Was Then But This Is Now.

“I've got no self control, Been living like a mole now, Going down, excavation, High and high in the sky, You make me feel like I can fly, So high, Elevation”. U2. Elevation.

“The wild dogs cry out in the night, As they grow restless longing for some solitary company, I know that I must do what's right, Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti”. Toto. Africa.

“And firey demons all dance when you walk through that door,  Don't say you're easy on me you're about as easy as a nuclear war”. Duran Duran. Is There Something I Should Know?

“Before he leaves the camp he stops, He scans the world outside, And where there used to be some shops, Is where the snipers sometimes hide”. Human League. The Lebanon.

“Generals gathered in their masses, Just like witches at black masses”. Black Sabbath. War Pigs.

"If I was a sculptor, But then again, no". Elton John. Your Song.

"Lucky that my breasts, Are small and humble, So you don't confuse, Them with mountains". Shakira. Whenever, Wherever.

"I love you like, A fat kid loves cake". 50 Cent. 21 Questions.

"There's an insect, In your ear, If you scratch, It won't disappear". U2. Staring at the Sun.

"Relentless lust, Of rotting flesh, To thrash the tomb she lies, Heathen whore, Of Satan's wrath, I spit at your demise". Slayer. Necrophiliac.

"Leaving was never, my proud". R.E.M. Leaving New York.

"I have never seen, An ass like that, The way you move it, You make my pee-pee go, 'Doing-doing-doing'". Eminem. Ass Like That.

"There were plants, And birds, And rocks, And things". America. Horse With No Name.

"Time is like a clock, in my heart". Culture Club. Time (Clock of the Heart).

"I wish it was Sunday, That's my fun day, My I-don't-have-to-run day". The Bangles. Manic Monday.

"I'm all out of faith, This is how I feel". Natalie Imbruglia. Torn.

"Now you're amazed, By the VIP posse, Stepping so hard, Like a German Nazi". Vanilla Ice. Play That Funky Music.

"My panty line shows, Got a run in my hose, My hair went flat, Man, I hate that". Shania Twain. Honey I'm Home.

"I don't think that I've, got the stomach, To stomach calling, you today". Saves the Day. See You.

"Your butt is mine". Michael Jackson. Bad.

"But if this ever-changing, world in which we live in." Paul McCartney and Wings. Live and Let Die.

"Young, black and famous, With money hanging, Out the anus". Puff Daddy and Mase. Can't Nobody Hold Me Down.

"I don't like cities, But I like New York, Other places, Make me feel like a dork". Madonna. I Love New York.

"War is stupid, And people are stupid". Culture Club. War Song.

"I shot the sheriff, But I didn't shoot a deputy". Bob Marley. I Shot the Sheriff.

"You're beautiful, You're beautiful, You're beautiful, It's true". Ames Blunt. You're Beautiful.

"I could have another you, In a minute, Matter of fact, He'll be here in a minute". Beyonce. Irreplaceable.

"Like a rock, Charging from the gate". Bob Seger and Silver Bullet Band. Like a Rock.

"Your best friend Harry, Has a brother Larry, In five days from now, He's going to marry, He's hoping you can make it, There if you can, Because in the ceremony, You'll be the best man". Young MC. Bust A Move.

"And there's music playing, But I can't hear a sound, Just the sound of the rain, Falling silently down". Cheap Trick. Ghost Town.

"I'm respected, from Californ-i-a, Way down to Japan". Timbaland. Give It to Me.

"I'm never going to, Dance again, Guilty feet have, Got no rhythm". Wham. Careless Whisper.

"You so crazy, I think I want to, Have your baby". Salt-N-Pepa. Whatta Man.

"I'm hot because I'm fly, You are not because you're not, This is why, This is why I'm hot". Mims. This Is Why I'm Hot.

"Having my baby, What a lovely way of saying, That you're thinking of me". Paul Anka. (You're) Having My Baby.

"I would do anything for love, But I won't do that". Meatloaf. 'I'd Do Anything for Love.

"I drew a line, I drew a line for you, Oh what a thing to do, And it was all yellow". Coldplay. Yellow.

"Someone left the cake, Out in the rain, I don't think that I can take it, Because it took so long, To bake it, And I'll never have that, recipe again -- oh no!". Richard Harris. MacArthur Park.

"He was a boy, She was a girl, Can I make it, Any more obvious?". Avril Lavigne. Sk8er Boi.

"Sucking on a chili dog, Outside the Tasty Freeze". John Cougar. Jack and Diane.

"My hump, My hump, My hump, My hump, My lovely lady lumps". Black Eyed Peas. My Humps.

"I am ... I said, To no one there, And no one heard at all, Not even the chair". Neil Diamond. I Am ... I Said.

"Have you ever been, To Saint-Tropez, Or seen a brother, Play a mandalay?". Diddy. I Need a Girl (Part Two).

"Only time will tell, If we stand the test of time.". Van Halen. Why Can't This Be Love?

“Soulja Boy Off In This Hoe
Watch Me Crank It
Watch Me Roll
Watch Me Crank Dat Soulja Boy
Then Super Man Dat Hoe
Now Watch Me YUUUAH
(Crank Dat Soulja Boy)
Now Watch Me YUUUAH
(Crank Dat Soulja Boy)
Now Watch Me YUUUAH
(Crank Dat Soulja Boy)
Now Watch Me YUUUAH
(Crank Dat Soulja Boy)

[Verse 1:]
Soulja Boy Off In This Hoe
Watch Me Lean And Watch Me Rock
Super Man Dat Hoe
Then Watch Me Crank Dat Robocop
Super Fresh, Now Watch Me Jock
Jocking On Them Haterz Man
When I Do Dat Soulja Boy
I Lean To The Left And Crank Dat Thang
(Now You)

I'm Jocking On Yo Bitch Ass
And If We Get The Fightin
Then I'm Cocking On Your Bitch Ass
You Catch Me At Yo Local Party
Yes I Crank It Everyday
Haterz Get Mad Cuz
I Got Me Some Bapes"
"Crank Dat" by Soulja Boy.

“You have got to do much
better if you are to dance with me tonight
You have to work your jelly if you are going to dance with me tonight
Read my lips carefully if you like what you see
Move, groove, prove you can hang with me
By the looks I have you shook up and scared of me
Hook up your seatbelt, it's time for take off I don't know where you learned to dance, but you're embarrassing both of us
Seriously, there are a lot of other guys I could be dancing with, so get it together
Now take your eyes off my cleavage long enough to pay attention to what I say
You're not going home with me unless you show me you can handle me on the dance floor
Oh no, am I being too forward? Am I more aggressive than you're used to?
If you think I'm getting a little freaky right now, just wait till I get you in bed

I don't think you are ready for this jelly
I don't think you are ready for this jelly
I don't think you are ready for this
Because my body is too bootylicious for you babe

I don't think you are ready for this jelly
I don't think you are ready for this jelly
I don't think you are ready for this
Because my body is too bootylicious for you babe. Destiny Child's Bootylicious

15). Another proportion will adopt a cultural relativist position and argue adamantly that, as music consists of the organisation of sound, there are no value judgements to be made and that all music’s are of equal worth (and, implicitly, quality). This is akin to saying that The Beano is as good as War and Peace, or a scribble is no different in quality to a Rembrandt, or achievements in higher mathematics are somehow equivalent to basic skills in counting. These irrational and destructive arguments are felt to be valid in contemporary society, they are popularly thought to hold water, when their foundations and assumptions are extremely shaky and questionable. Are we, therefore, functioning in a society that is afraid to take any stance, has the idea of authority and expertise become so devalued and denigrated that we cannot acknowledge the reality of what is in front of us and instead use distorting spectacles to assess reality, are we so much in need of a defence against envy and potential blows to our self esteem that we cling to the fairly desperate defence of saying that everything is equal? There is a sense that, as a culture, we are in retreat from the idea that there might be any authority, expertise, or differences in quality - all must be winners in case someone feels bad or comes up against the reality that we are not capable of all things or even most things, that there are limits, and we are not equal, and neither are the cultural and artistic products we create.

A much simpler version of this argument is simply to assert that the individual in question enjoys popular music - as if I were arguing that enjoyment of pop music is not possible and as if the simple fact of liking something automatically means that it is worthwhile, meaningful, entirely benign, and positive. This position attempts to close down further thought, thus avoiding the issue that liking and taste are not unproblematic. Thus, people who take up this position will say that differences in this area are “just a matter of opinion”. This is an obvious strategy in order to appear to win or claim a draw in an argument that feels lost. It is a weasel argument, the worse and most destructive position that it is possible to take because it seeks to destroy and undermine the capacity for thought and consideration on which civilised life depends. Let’s take some examples and see where this type of argument leads. Proposition: It is right to kill all handicapped children at birth. Answer: Well, that is just a matter of opinion. Proposition: Hitler did some bad things. Answer: That is just a matter of opinion, and it is quite right that people are allowed to have widely differing opinions about this. It’s just a matter of taste. Proposition: The government of the Central Republic of Monsilvania has greatly damaged the economy of the country. Answer: Well you would say that but it is really just a matter of opinion and political preference. All statistics are lies anyway. I don’t think the government has done anything wrong.

As we can see, this type of argument seeks to shut down thought, debate, and serious consideration of the issues, current knowledge, and the underlying assumptions that differing views are based upon. It is therefore a type of argument that is destructive to the democratic process, and indeed, seeks to undermine it. It represents the worse kind of laziness of thought and a complacency about the correctness of one’s assumptions that are then closed to inspection and challenge.

It is obviously the case that many people enjoy pop and rock music. But we should not just stop there and accept the enjoyment as if it might not be problematic. For example, if a 25 year old consumed only Postman Pat books, we might consider that an examination of the content, depth, and complexity of this reading matter might prove illuminating in terms of that person’s state of development, complexity of thought and judgement, vocabulary and intellectual abilities, and personal preoccupations. If a majority of his or her age group were consuming similar literature we might consider that it would be a useful exercise to again think about the content of this material, to worry about the educational system that had given rise to such tastes, the implications for society and for individuals (poorer economic performance, reduced competitiveness in the world economy, significant cultural and intellectual decline, the progressive loss of complex European culture, the decline of taste and discrimination, etc.) and to focus on the system of marketing and demand that had created a need and addiction to such material. Yet we would still understand that the readers were gaining enjoyment from their reading. The point is that tastes are a reflection of social, personality and developmental factors that can validly and usefully be the subjects of thought and analysis. To assert, baldly, that something is necessarily positive because it is liked by many, and therefore it should not be criticised, is to avoid thinking and potentially to retreat from reality.

Tastes are not unproblematic and inevitably involve some degree of judgement about what is good and bad. The ability to fully discriminate between good and bad enables us to harness the power to establish objective standards by which to judge, and challenge, the expression of cultural imagination, and thereby to comment upon the moral, ethical, and developmental level of society.

In a recent TV programme, Jamie Oliver managed to convince a number of children, who witnessed him assembling the ingredients of “Turkey Twizzlers”, that this most enjoyable food was really not good for them, even distasteful. The act of processing turkey skins into a goo resulted in nausea and reactions of distaste. Yet many children who witnessed this are probably now still eating Turkey Twizzlers without a qualm and some, if not most, of the children who reacted with instant aversion and distaste will migrate back, eventually, to eating this food again. A high fat, highly processed, chemically laced diet really is addictive yet we all know it is not desirable. The program demonstrated very successfully that a major factor in children’s reluctance to eat more healthily was peer pressure, being seen to be “uncool” or different. One’s self-image probably also plays a part. The battle only seemed won when a number of children began to eat the healthy food, making it more acceptable to choose this diet, and reducing anxieties about difference. Only then could the children begin to enjoy the new food. We clearly operate within a social context that plays a major part in creating taste. Tastes are not only determined by personal relationships and the developmental level of the society we occupy, but also by personal capacities for appreciation. And this may also be partly determined by the social background we occupy.

Another popular argument is that my position makes an individual feel angry, as if this were a valid argument against it. Well, I have often observed that the truth, strange to tell, frequently evokes anger. One observes this phenomenon in the personal sphere, where an individual might reject a valid observation about themselves with anger, and in the social and political fields, where, for example, a politician might react with anger to information that undermines their own position, beliefs, and strategic plans. An additional argument might follow on from the assertion of anger: that because pop and rock is popular it must be good. Well, Hitler was popular, so was witch burning in the European past, but the popularity of these practices is no recommendation for them. Pornography is also popular but this does not prevent this field of modern business from yielding a number of negative social and personal consequences. I could go on - there are many examples that demonstrate that the popular is not necessarily admirable or recommendable. In fact, a convincing argument might be made to the effect that what is popular is, more often than not, of poorer quality, more tacky, and less complex and differentiated than the available alternatives. Take white sliced bread as an example.

A further argument is to assert that the author of these pages is a “snob” or “snobbish” or to accuse the author of “elitism”. Well, this is no better than name-calling in the playground. Those who resort to this name-calling usually employ it because they are unable to think of other arguments - it is therefore a symptom of desperation. This claim reveals more about the limited cultural horizons and the psychology of the accuser than anything about the author and is not worthy of serious attention. I deal with the issue of “elitism” on the dumbing down pages and it is worth referring to these pages if you are an individual who is at all tempted to employ the elitist name-calling defence.  “All that glisters is not gold” says Shakespeare in The Merchant Of Venice, meaning that just because something may look valuable, desirable or attractive, it does not mean that it is of any value once you discover its true nature. The name-calling “argument” based on the assertion of “elitism” (usually stated without any further arguments) seeks to assert that everything is gold, or everything is gold that is preferred by the originator of the argument, and rejects any attempts by an external observer, by claiming that a counter-argument is “elitist”, to point out that the Emperor has no clothes.

Similarly, it is not at all uncommon for the author to be the recipient of personal abuse from one or other “disgusted” individual who will perhaps state that the author is foolish and ridiculous, has no taste, is a fascist totalitarian ****ard, wants to destroy all music, or is written by a dork who's either never had sex or had girls laugh at him every time he did have sex. Some individuals assert that I am either left wing or right wing, again as a form of name calling. It is impossible, however, to glean anything about the political views I hold from reading these pages. These examples constitute name calling sans argument and they certainly do not meet the requirements of the long tradition of civilised discussion and debate that has given us the right to free speech.

The individuals using the above arguments will also say that it is impossible to apply the critical methods of classical music to pop music, and vice versa. But what are the critical tools used to judge pop and rock? When one examines the magazines and literature of pop and rock we find little serious musical or textual analysis. Instead we find gossip about “personalities”; discussions about fashion, be they fashions in clothes, or the latest musical “style”; and comments on various quirks and oddities of performance by the musicians in question and their followers. All this is trivial in the extreme. These are fashion reports rather than serious and considered discussions about music. And it is also true that documentaries on pop music are usually just shallow panegyrics.

In review of “Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend” in the Daily Telegraph (3rd July 2004), the reviewer writes perceptively that “This must be what passes in rock journalism circles for fine writing. Eschewing any thought-through analysis or scholarly apparatus, Davis enjoys the use of meaningless adjectives such as "legendary" (and risible ones like "studly") and the posing of the unanswered, and unanswerable, question”. He quotes from the book: "Who was he really? Why did he destroy himself? Why was he failed by everyone who knew him?… The Doors at their best were about as good as rock music ever got. At their worst they were one of the most pretentious bands on the planet. But no one had a clearer grasp of the complexities and ironies of the age than Jim Morrison." The reviewer goes on to comment that “What becomes apparent about this subject, though, despite the claims of the writer, is that Jim Morrison had no clear grasp of anything. He was befuddled with drink and drugs, self-regarding, self-abasing, out of control, an accidental star”.

This is classic pop and rock journalism - the idealisation of the ordinary, the confused, the destructive and banal, turning reality on its head through a cascade of inflated and meaningless language.

Another example, taken from Michael Henderson’s piece in The Spectator, quoted above, and I can do no better than to quote verbatim: “Two years ago, when Brian Wilson, the former Beach Boy, came to London to perform his Pet Sounds album, these deadbeats [the critics] competed with each other to acclaim his gifts. “How do you review an icon?” asked one who shall reman nameless. Well, first, you could avoid words like icon, which sound grand but mean nothing. Then you could do what opera critics do whenever Domingo visits Covent Garden: tell readers whether he held the tune, or bumped into the scenery. This critic merely simpered, and failed to mention the not insignificant fact that Wilson sang flat throughout the two-hour show. This year, when he returned to the Royal Festival Hall, they were at it again, some going so far as to pronounce him one of the 20th century’s greatest composers.

Ho-hum. If you genuinely think that Wilson is a “great” 20th-century “composer” - in other words a man fit to stand comparison with Sibelius, Mahler, Janacek, Debussy, Ravel, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Bartok, Prokofiev, and Britten, to list only the most obvious names - as opposed to a songwriter with a pleasing harmonic talent who wrote perhaps a dozen good songs, then you shouldn’t be writing about music. You should be digging roads”.

Yet another example: in the Daily Telegraph (February 21st 2004), David Lasserson claims that World Music is, and should, steal the show from Classical Music. His argument boils down to the claim that World Music has more energy and momentum and “embraces the real-world concerns” of a modern audience (actually, much “World Music” is in fact “World Pop” and its followers have little time for the classical and unamplified parts of “World Music”. The implicit demand in Lasserson’s piece is that all music should become more like pop music). His argument against Classical Music consists of a claim that it is out of fashion, outmoded and outdated, stuck in a past that is now gone (i.e. the crime is that it is unfashionable, has been written more than five years ago or that it is not considered “hip”). Nowhere does he even try to take a considered look at the musical qualities and standards of these different bodies of music. Instead, he presents a caricature of Classical Music, saying that “musicians find themselves playing the 1812 Overture, Bolero, Nimrod, and Nessun Dorma, alongside Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory”, and in so doing immediately reveals his abysmal ignorance.

This is just one example of a common enough attack on cultural products that are older than even ten or twenty years ago. Thus, the classics of literature are no longer read, classic black and white films are unknown to the young, the older literary culture is increasingly neglected and unknown, and all are attacked as elitist and unfashionable. Never mind the quality, never mind that many of these works represent some of the highest, most complex and rich cultural and artistic works humankind has managed to produce. They are not “cool”, they are “out of fashion”, they are “elitist” (read “complicated”), and as such open to denigration.

Few people would take issue with the fact that some football teams are better than others and that this depends on the individual skills of the players, how they work as a team, how they control the process and dynamics of the game, and how they react to opportunities and challenges. Few would question that these components of the game are related to the degree of pleasure and excitement experienced by the spectator. Similarly, a “one-off” building, such as a great cathedral, the Alhambra, the Taj Mahal, will produce more pleasure, awe, wonder, a perception of wholeness and beauty, etc. than any one of a million standardised estate homes built with ease of construction, cost of materials, and replicability in mind. Yet, when we talk about art and culture a strange kind of thought disorder emerges - we are not supposed to make judgements of better or worse or allowed to make discriminations based on perceptions and reasoned judgements. “Taste” and personal liking becomes the determinant rather than discrimination and critical judgement.

The attitude to sexual love in the 'pop' song is so ugly and mechanical as to seem schizoid, and psycho-pathological. Exposed as they are to such powerful cultural statements, young people are being encouraged to forfeit genuine commitment in love in favour of depersonalised sexual activity, with an undercurrent of violence, and to take false solutions in which they must deny their deepest needs, by hate. David Holbrook, quoted in The Sociology of Rock by Simon Frith, 1978.

Most rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read. Frank Zappa.

In fact rock, rather than being an example of how freedom can be achieved within the capitalist structure, is an example of how capitalism can, almost without conscious effort, deceive those whom it oppresses.... So effective has the rock industry been in encouraging the spirit of optimistic youth take-over that rock's truly hard political edge, its constant exploration of the varieties of youthful frustration, has been ignored and softened. Michael Lydon, quoted in The Sociology of Rock by Simon Frith, 1978

Pop/rock is music written by people who know little harmony and no counterpoint, for performers who have no understanding of singing and can barely manipulate their instruments - having deliberately chosen electric guitars and drums, the least expressive of all. It is music that cannot sustain a structure beyond the length of one side of a single, that is wedded to the banal form of a verse and refrain and has no notion of how to escape it. It is music with intellectual pretensions - but only through the ignorant pretentiousness of its proponents - but with no intellectual merit whatever. To set it on a pedestal over genuine art music is to advocate ignorance over knowledge, stupidity over understanding. Stephen Follows.

16). Some individuals will argue that pop and rock music is not based on standardised templates, and that “the market” and commercial interests encourage variation and creativity. However, they tend to argue by assertion rather than by supplying musicological evidence, and they are usually unable to apply a comparative analysis of different musical traditions and forms (i.e. their knowledge is restricted to pop and rock music and they are therefore unable to provide an adequate analysis of pop and rock or any other musical genre). These individuals are like the grub in the worm who imagines that the dark, homogenous centre of the apple is all that exists and is oblivious to the universe outside. They also ignore and avoid some potentially embarrassing and difficult questions such as “Why has pop and rock shown enormously less development, in musical terms, in it’s first 50 years, than jazz produced in the first 50 years of it’s history”? or “Why is it acceptable for basic melodies to be endlessly recycled and passed off as newly minted, as if the audience had no memory for the past, or as if they had no desire for anything other than sameness”?

These individuals may also assume that the word “template” implies that these templates cannot be varied. This is an absurd argument. A template merely restricts the possibilities that are available, and these possibilities are more or less available for any particular template. However, all templates restrict possibilities. The important questions to ask are how much variability does any one template allow and what are the number, range, and variability of the templates that are available. Particular types of music will be more or less dependant on templates. My argument is that pop and rock is reliant on a relatively small number of relatively invariant templates: i.e. there is a high degree of standardisation. It is in this sense that the term “complex” is used here: simple forms are dominated by a small number of simple, relatively invariant templates, complex forms have available a larger number of potential templates using a wider variety of dimensions and that show a greater differentiation of form. Tolstoy, then, rather than Beatrix Potter. Or a football team that is able to utilise a greater number of ball skills, complexity and variability of team organisation, and game play. A local club of a small village, then, as opposed to the club that wins the World Cup.

Many of these individuals will not consider the argument about complexity and will therefore avoid a further embarrassment. Consider the games of draughts and chess. It will be readily agreed that draughts is less complex than chess and that the number of possible moves and strategic possibilities are limited in comparison with chess, where the number of possible moves from any position and the strategic complexities increase exponentially, compared with the simpler game. Things are even more complicated when we enter the realms of 3-D Chess. We can transfer this analogy readily to, say, compare pop and rock with jazz or classical music. The “rules of the game” makes pop and rock much less complex, the number of strategic possibilities is more limited, and the areas than can be explored is more restricted. It is as if the rules will only allow moves of one square either forwards or diagonally, rather than allowing other possibilities and more complex “rules of engagement” and patterns of interaction between individual pieces and patterns of pieces. When seen in this light it is obvious that pop and rock, although allowing for variation and change, severely restricts these possibilities. All musical forms allow for variation and change. The interesting question is how much variation can be allowed by the structural and cultural rules of a particular artistic form.

It should not surprise us that pop and rock repeats it’s material endlessly with relatively little variation - folk music also does this and one can hear the same melodies recycled over and over with relatively little variation in apparently different songs and tunes. This is because the “folk idiom” uses just a small region of the entire musical universe of language. If musicians were to go outside these restrictions, and the modal language they usually employ, the music would not sound like folk music. Pop and rock is just amplified American folk music and is just as restricted in complexity, scope and variation as all other folk music. As such, given its pervasiveness, it is just another aspect of a general closing down of cultural spaces in which complexity or difficulty might thrive. The substitute for complexity is commodification - the work of art reduced to mere gratification and subject to the chill winds of the homogenisation of the market economy.

 

News

Celebrating the Out of Tune: As rap music became more commercial, it sounded more produced. So in the spirit of "keepin' it real", many of today's performers are eschewing the "fixing" of things like pitch and tone. And guess what? There's a lot of off key singing... The Observer (UK) 02/22/04.

 

 

Web sites With a Similar Theme/Mission

Youth and Regression in an Infantile Society

American Art's Adolescent Identity

Meditations on a Post-Literate Musical Future

On the gulf between "high" and "low" in music

Music and Art Aesthetics

What Makes Good Music Good

Why Do So Many Smart People Listen to Such Terrible Music?

Statement to Music Majors

Classical music: Why bother?