Pop Music
Gangsta rapper Tupac Shakur
is shot to death in Las Vegas. The British pop group Oasis stirs international
speculation about whether or not it is breaking up. When pop music makes
headlines, many people are forced to admit that they have lost track of it.
Herewith, a guide. Although pop music has grown more complicated, most current
performers continue to recombine elements from the '50s, '60s, and
'70s--sometimes literally ( sampling , a technique crucial to many current
pop genres, involves lifting passages from older recordings and using them in
new ones). "Rock 'n' roll is here to stay," proclaimed Danny and the Juniors in
1958, and it turned out they were right.
In rock 'n' roll's first
decade, songwriters like Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly established
its song forms and subject matter: the lives, loves, and modest rebellions of
newly enfranchised teens. Performers like Elvis Presley , Little Richard,
and Jerry Lee Lewis supplied sexual charisma, abandon, and even menace.
Vocal-harmony groups ( do-wop ) from the Northeast and Midwest prefigured
the style that Motown would soon codify as "soul ," while
Nashville's Everly Brothers anticipated folk-rock .
Refracted
through a British prism, these styles became Merseybeat , the sound of
the Beatles . Bob Dylan and The Byrds expanded rock's themes to
include the poetic and the political, while Eastern influences and psychedelic
drugs changed the music and the culture. The '60s also saw the invention of
art rock , which ranged from the minimalism of the Velvet Underground to
the florid romanticism of Yes. Such music was meant for albums, not singles,
which meant the decline of the medium that had previously held youth-culture
music together: Top 40 radio.
In the '70s, blues rock (a modern white version of
the blues) transformed itself into heavy metal , typified by Led
Zeppelin . Singer/songwriters like James Taylor recorded
easy-listening confessionals, and country-rockers like the Eagles
institutionalized The Byrds' country experiments (and adumbrated the slick
contemporary country sound of Nashville stars like Garth Brooks ).
Funk ( James Brown , Sly and the Family Stone, Funkedelic) made
soul wilder and looser, and disco combined the celebration of Eros and
dancing with beats derived from funk, Latin music, and German experimentalists
like Kraftwerk. Spacey electronic music left the conservatory, and
Brian Eno 's Discreet Music introduced the muted wallpaper music
described as "ambient ."
At the same time, punk
arose in reaction to art-rock pomposity and singer/songwriter narcissism, and
reintroduced political content, derived from both '60s rock and Jamaican-born
reggae . By the end of the decade, punk and disco were tentatively
crossbreeding.
Alternative rock , which grew out of punk, refers to any band that was
nurtured by the underground infrastructure (indie labels, college radio
stations, new-music clubs). Alternative's commercial breakthrough came with
Nirvana 's album Nevermind (1991). The band's grunge
formula, captured in "," combines woozy psychedelic-metal verses with explosive
punk choruses. The recipe has been adopted by scores of bands; most notable:
chart-topping Smashing Pumpkins ' more grandiose version.
To the uninitiated, pop music's most mysterious
form is hip-hop , or rap . That's intentional: Its shifting styles
and private language are designed to exclude. But hip-hop is derivative, too.
Its origins can be found in African-American oral culture. Early hip-hop was
mostly party music, but it developed a political message through groups like
Public Enemy . Tracks like P.E.'s "" gave hip-hop the urgency of an
air-raid siren. The band's black-nationalist stance was followed by forays into
anti-Semitism, misogyny, and anti-white racism.
Public Enemy was eclipsed by
gangsta rap , which glorifies "Thug Life" (as it was deemed by Tupac
Shakur ). Gangsta rap's attitude is disturbing, but it's mostly escapist
entertainment, rooted as much in the blaxploitation movies of the early '70s as
in reality. Gangsta rap shifted hip-hop's center of gravity from the East Coast
to the West Coast, and supplanted Public Enemy's machine-gun attack with a
cooler, jazzier style. Coolio's 1995 hit, "," may celebrate "see[ing] myself in
the pistol smoke," but musically, it's relaxed and sauntering. The big hit of
the Fugees is a remake of "Killing Me Softly," Robert Flack's 1973
easy-listening tune.
Rage
Against the Machine , a popular political rock band, derives its beats from
hip-hop. Songs like "," which endorses the Zapatista rebels, marry hip-hop's
thump, punk's wiriness, and heavy metal's roar. Hip-hop also influences the
burgeoning field of electronic pop , which ranges from pounding dance
music that is little more than rhythm to quietly rippling music that's only
slightly removed from New Age sound. Current underground sensation Cibo Matto
offers yet another variation on hip-hop with playful Japanese-accented
commentary on American food in "."
In Britain, electronic music draws on Germanic disco,
hip-hop, and dub , the stripped-down, heavily echoed instrumental variant
of reggae. The array of electronic styles pioneered or embraced in the United
Kingdom-- techno , acid house , jungle , ambient house ,
trip-hop , and so on--features insistent beats and wide-ranging
eclecticism. Add the shrill vocals of former Sex Pistol John Lydon, and the
result is Leftfield's hectoring "." Drench a track in shadowy atmosphere, and
the result is the ominous soundscape of Tricky's "." Combine '50s "space"
music, French pop balladeering, and Marxist catch phrases, and the result is
such Stereolab confections as "." Transpose the cyclical rhythms of dance music
(and work by minimalist composers like Steve Reich) to guitars, and the result
is the hypnotic disorientation of My Bloody Valentine's "." Include reggae
rhythms and quotations from Indian and Arabic music, and the result is the
ethno-techno of Loop Guru tracks like "."
Paul
Simon 's Graceland (1986), which was largely derived from South
African Mbaqanga , helped popularize non-Western music. The
Australian/Irish duo Dead Can Dance mixes dance music with Middle Eastern and
medieval European music (played mostly on traditional instruments) on tracks
like "."
As it has since the '60s, edgy rock coexists
with more easygoing pop: In the mid-'60s, the best-selling albums included
Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass ' Whipped Cream and Other
Delights. Recent years have brought hip-hopped pop-soul acts such as
Bobby Brown, Keith Sweat, Mariah Carey , Boyz II Men, and TLC, as well as
hits for such big-voiced neo-soul singers as Anita Baker, Michael
Bolton , and Céline Dion.
Last
year's pop success story was Hootie and the Blowfish , a Southern
frat-party band. Equally retro but more stylish is Oasis , whose
(What's the Story) Morning Glory? led the Britpop movement and
may prove the best-selling album in U.K. history. Songs like their biggest hit,
"," are sense-less but skillful pastiches of classic Beatles moments.
Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill has sold more
than 11 million copies. Her songs of rage, like "You Oughta Know" (composed
with an experienced collaborator), draw on the styles and attitudes of folkie
Joni Mitchell and experimentalist Yoko Ono . Morrissette rations
the rough edges to create music that will energize but not alienate her young,
primarily female audience. In the '60s, some boosters said that folk-rock had
taken pop away from late '50s commercial songwriters ( Carole King , Neil
Diamond, Phil Spector, Neil Sedaka, et al.) and given it to the poets;
Morissette's following indicates, once again, that the hacks can make music
that resonates as deeply with its listeners as any poetry.
With the dizzying array of
pop hybrids now being cultivated, there is, of course, a reaction. Musicians
return to folk and blues roots, and reject studio techniques with a
low-fi movement (Guided by Voices) that treasures spontaneity and tape
hiss. While Nashville studios make music that's as glossy as any, there's an
upsurge of plain-singing balladeers stressing their Appalachian roots
(real or imagined). When Iris DeMent, the most striking of these singers,
addresses the death of her father in "," the effect is immediate and direct.
But the song also gives notice that pop music, cycling and recycling again and
again, can always go back to basics.
