July 13 02024
"...Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America."
- Walden, or, Life in the Woods, by Henry David Thoreau
I no longer view popular music as a mere pest. Rather, it is a pervasive poison whose consumption symptomatically reflects a society's sociological ailments. How can a population's diet, including its media diet, be held in a vacuum or ignored? Just as a society raised on a diet of unwholesome food will fail in athletic competition and be generally afflicted by malaise and disease, a society raised on a poor media diet will exhibit similar deficiencies in their spiritual and mental health. I was previously contented to resolve the problem of popular music by notions of "personal taste" - perhaps there's something in popular music I simply didn't "get", or perhaps I was "just not being fun". I no longer subscribe to this point of view.
Like all creation under capitalist rule, music is not incidental: its composition and evolution is dictated by the will of bourgeois; that is, in accordance with the accumulation of money. It's a rather naive point of view to assume that music is created and popularized based on pure merit. Markets, more than anything, determine the quality and type of music that you hear. For a recent example, after the release and popularity of the iPod and Apple's music store, whereas a huge number of users could now purchase single recordings rather than entire albums, the importance of an album's entire runtime became de-emphasized. Artists and record labels no longer had motivation (outside of preserving artistic integrity) to create detailed track transitions, interludes, motifs, or overarching concepts, as their "usefulness" was lost in the paradigm of the "singles" market. Individual tracks stopped being viewed in the context of their albums.
This led to several further developments, namely record producer's Rick Rubin's "Loudness War". Consider the following: you are an artist who has created an energetic, intense track. In the context of your album, the song comes right after an emotional lull, so that the energetic track is shockingly punchy in the contrast you've provided. Next, imagine that in a playlist your song comes right after a popular party song. Your track sounds weak: as their song transitioned into yours, you had to turn up your volume to adjust. The song lost a lot of its energy. What is to be done? Logically, you should make your track louder, so that your track can retain this quality of relative punchiness no matter what song comes before it on any playlist.
Now, a simple exercise in computational thinking: what happens when every artist has the same realization, and everyone turns up their music? That is the loudness war: since the 1990s, (popular) music is blaringly loud, almost by necessity, and has therefore basically lost the elemental dimension of expression that dynamics offer. Music has become homogenized through competition to differentiate itself: the sound of music, like the properties of any creation, is never incidental, it is always related to its technological and social conditions. I can't necessarily disavow playlists, however, I can hold contempt that we all became inexperienced DJs, and rather than become thoughtful and skilled in our new abilities, that is, to adjust ourselves to the music, to learn how to mix it, the music adjusted itself to us.
For another example, see how Tik-Tok's short-term content form proved itself to be superior (in terms of user-retention) to all other modes of social media, and subsequently every major media platform adopted a similar form. Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, notably, have exact counterparts. As a large consumer base began increasingly consuming short-term content, and as short-term content uses small audio clips, record companies began prioritizing the production and release of music specifically designed for this new context. Suddenly, songs had conveniently, (really, horrifically awkwardly), placed witticisms and other curiosities recorded within them in hopes that they would be adopted as viral clips. Other times, songs would consist of just one ear-worm chorus with little deviation: what motivation is there to creatively fill 5 minutes of music if only 5 seconds will be heard? That is, of course, besides the inherently satisfying adherence to your creative impulses.
Let's imagine you're an artist who has recorded an album with 60 minutes of music. Ideally, you want the 60 minutes to be listened to unobstructed, straight through in one sitting. Therefore, your instinct is to release the album as one long track - it communicates your desires to the consumer and it is faithful to your creativity. You're about to release it when your "business-savvy" friend tells you some rules of the game - "Imagine," he tells you, prophetically, "That 600 people listen to your album all the way through. If it is in one part, as you want, that would account for 600 streams. If, however, you cut your album up into 60 one-minute parts, and each person listens to all 60 (the same as the original), you will instead get 600 x 60 = 36,000 streams!" You are conflicted, as the additional streams would perhaps result in more money and notoriety, but your artistic integrity compels you to retain your creation the way you imagined. By this line of reasoning, we can infer why recent albums tend to have more tracks and at shorter runtime. A track above 4 minutes is rare in popular music. You decide to go with your friend's suggestions and chop up your album. You upload your album, feeling happy to have shipped, yet somewhat conflicted at your choice. You check the analytics of your album one month after your release: you notice 750 streams on your first track - not bad! better than you anticipated. You then scroll down to the 60th track and notice it only has 15 streams.
There's other odd ways that music as an artform has been contorted into music as a product.
We see things like a deluxe re-release of an album with negligible artistic difference: perhaps all the tracks are re-released with one new guest feature, one more track, or just an updated album cover. Kendrick Lamar's DAMN was a particularly interesting case of boredom: he released the same album with the track list reversed. I suppose it's clever, as it changes the narrative of the album, however this move was clearly made in alliance with the streaming era. Will even the most diehard Kendrick Lamar fan defend DAMN deluxe? Why are artists motivated to do such odd things? Answer: streams on both original and deluxe versions both count toward total streams, that is, total money. In accordance with Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". If an action is not increasing the quality of the music, why is it being done unto the music?
As art is a reflection of man, and as we aspire that man's growth and development are unobstructed by externally dominating forces, such that his development is in complete alignment with the development of his society, we ought to oppose and illuminate those dark, distorting funnels. As popular music's aim is often retention before all, it is inherently fearful of alienating any listeners. Therefore, to avoid offense, generally, popular music must appeal to the lowest common denominator. What follows is a neurotic aversion toward any experimentation. We get endless four-chord vamps, little to no chromaticism, stiff percussion, less syncopation, and lyrical content interchangeable with astrological copy text - that is, designed to be universally relatable and vaguely positive.
"So," the reader may be thinking, "although the arguments you make are difficult to refute, why don't you just listen to your own music?" I do. I do avoid popular music, and do suggest that you search for, support, and listen to wholesome, local folk music (whereas I use the word "folk" to refer to music made by people, no matter the genre, ignoring the connotation of "folk" as defined by record companies. What do you mean the rest of this isn't made by folks?), however the problems of contemporary popular music are inescapable, thus warranting my writing. Three arguments follow.
Firstly, and most tangibly, popular music plays blaringly in almost every public place or private business. Is it my decision that I should hear Taylor Swift inside Target, when I am just here for groceries? Is it my decision to be subject to Ed Sheeran as I'm loading luggage onto a plane? I never consciously researched Drake, but I know his music after I go get my hair cut. Is it wrong that I should feel compelled to exist in my society, to not become a hermit, and simultaneously desire that public spaces be made amicable to thought? I believe that the introduction of externalites need to justify themselves, I am arguing not for the addition of anything, but for the mere preservation of nature. If existing in our society requires constant stimulation in the form of this increasingly short, unrelated, homogeneous medium, perhaps some radical changes ought to be made.
Second, as the arguments laid out above continue to exist, and as we are not immune to the conditions that we live within, all new music, including music made by lay-people outside of the industry, tend to reflect the current moment in music. As a child raised only hearing Hot Cross Buns would seldom make music of superior complexity, it is only natural that fledgling artists act in accordance with what they've heard. We are not immune to propaganda, and our music, consciously or subconsciously, tends to reflect the system we live within. More broadly, independent thinking and originality have network-effects: it tends to self-propagate, teach others that it's safe to experiment, induce psychological safety, and thereby repeat the cycle. In more Marxist terms we might call it cultural hegemony: that fact that it takes bravery to exit corporate-defined norms on audio recordings (understandably, as an audio-artist has voices from every direction urging him to submit), whereas creating as we wish should be anxiety-free and natural, just as a spider spins his web.
Most of all what I'd like to criticize is how the contemporary music scene shapes our (in)ability for depth. Music is clearly incredibly powerful in many ways, so to distort it into homogeneous sound-bites is disturbing on many levels. Firstly, the fact that the art of album creation and subsequent enjoyment has become a lost art is lamentable. Music is an activity, like most activities, that is aided by depth: the longer an individual spends mindfully bathing in sound, the deeper and more rewarding their meditative experience. An irreplaceable, unsubstitutable experience comes only after 10+ minutes of uninterrupted listening. It is an experience that cannot be placed into words, only experienced firsthand. More broadly, the fear of experimentation, preference for the short-term, and increasing homogeneity of music acts as a mere microcosm of the enactment of greater societal change. The foundations of democracy are undermined by the growing chasm away from long, mindful existence and greater toward short term dopaminergic response. If the medium is the message, the message is not to think too hard, and simply be comfortably occupied.
A great evil of popular music, of all short-term content, is its disconnectedness; not only are you observing the content, but you are teaching yourself that it's okay to be in the presence of ever-changing, unrelated stimulation. Above all it must be pleasing. You are killing your capacity for depth, attention span, and focus; those traits that are necessary for any type of great thinking, which is necessary for any type of great relief, which is necessary for education, which is necessary for a well-functioning democratic system. We are teaching ourselves to be contented that something "simply is" without further analysis of its impact or origin. Cybernetic society has induced a wide-ranging low-level of "ordinary schizophrenia" upon the population, a disconnected, isolated reality of fragmenting symbols and their wild definitions, and the dissemination of popular music is a mere instrument in a wider psychological assault, although that is beyond the scope of this essay. I wish to shine light onto one limb of a machine.
Then, what to do? Mindfulness is an antidote to many an ailment: before listening to anything "simply because it's on", ask yourself if that's what you truly desire. Critically analyze the types of music you listen to and why: would you listen to it if your friends didn't? Are you aware of the impact the lyrics have on your mental state? Are you listening to increase your consciousness, or overpower it? Are you changing the songs you play before it finishes? Are you regularly exposing yourself to new music? Have you recently listened to a new album, all the way through, alone, with eyes closed? Do you have any hatred for any music genre you haven't actually listened to? Any artist? Do you play music for no reason? Have you wondered where your music is coming from? Have you created any music? Do you listen to music with friends, or is music simply playing while you're with them? Perhaps these questions can serve as koans or points of entry to analyzing the potentially negative impacts popular music has on your life. I hope they incite some theme of depth. Note that all these questions can be broken into a simple dichotomy: "Have you chosen to think or not think?"
I write this article because I have experienced the incredible power of music - both for good and for bad. Everything powerful is dual-edged. I have shown through a few examples how technological and social conditions inform creation, whose consumption informs the audience. I have explained a general trend away from depth as especially motivated by short term content, and I have provided arguments against its further proliferation. I wish to reinstate the positive, enchanting, emotional impacts of music, and bring awareness to its parallel ability to dredge and interrupt depthy thought-streams. I am optimistic about a reversal of trend, especially evidenced through the works of small record labels and the works of self-publishing musicians. I hope that positive music impacts your life, as it has mine, and that negative music is encouraged into non-production. The great act of revolution begins with a simple moment of simple mindfulness.