A column questioning the assumptions of popular music
You’ve heard it once; you’ve heard it a million times: the upcoming election offers the starkest contrast in memory between two distinct visions for the country. What you don’t hear is how that contrast is echoed in the nation’s popular music. If we’re being asked to choose between two very different philosophies in our government, perhaps we should be asked to make a similar choice in our music.
When most people talk about politics in popular music, they’re almost always talking about that tiny number of songs whose lyrics address political issues directly. What about the great majority of songs that address romantic relationships, work, family and friendships? Can we draw political implications from them?
I believe we can. A romantic relationship is many things, but one thing it is is a power arrangement. When someone sings about love and/or lust, are they proposing a democratic sharing of power or a fascist domination of one person over the other? Maybe you don’t want to think that’s political, but it is. When someone sings about money and/or luxury goods, do they imply that these things should be shared far and wide or reserved for the superior few? That’s political too.
What if we leave lyrics aside entirely, can we identify political aspects to the sound of popular music? Sure. How is an arrangement constructed? Is it a democratic venture where the lead singer interacts with the instrumentalists and harmony singers in a give-and-take fashion? Or is it an autocratic, top-down situation where the lead vocalist dominates and the musicians—or machines—in the background merely play anonymous, repeating parts?
The three main branches of American popular music—rock’n’roll, country and R&B—began as working-class folk musics, bubbling up from the streets and drawing from different cultures and regions to create unprecedented hybrids. Even without lyrics, one can get a sense of a song’s political instincts by asking how much it departs from or remains true to the music’s roots in blue-collar aspirations, folk traditions, street credibility and multi-cultural integration.
To simplify matters, let’s say that the three main strains of political allegiance in America today are Fundamentalist, Libertarian and Communitarian. Their mottos might be: “Stick to the Bible,” “Stay out of my way and let me do my own thing,” and “Nobody Wins Unless Everybody Wins.” The Fundamentalists aren’t well represented in popular music because an anti-sex philosophy is so antithetical to the sensuality of the art form. Even gospel singers are forever sending mixed messages because their puritanical lyrics are so often contradicted by the funkiness of the music.
But there are plenty of Libertarians and Communitarians in pop music. The Communitarians are obvious. You see them at benefit shows for family farmers, Tibetan freedom, famine relief in Africa, Earth Day, public schools, reproductive rights, Amnesty International and same-sex marriages. You not only hear them singing about egalitarian relationships, cross-cultural friendships and the down-and-out, but you also hear them making music democratically—with obvious interaction between the lead singer and backing musicians, with obvious multi-ethnic mixing and with a welcoming respect for the listener. When journalists write about politics in music, they always write about these usual suspects: Bruce Springsteen, Steve Earle, Stevie Wonder, Tom Morello, Chuck D, Ani DiFranco, Bonnie Raitt and so on.
But there are plenty of Libertarians in the music as well. They’re most obvious in country music, where it has become an obligatory cliché to make fun of government bureaucrats, rude young people and uptight city folks while insisting on the right to shoot guns, drive fast, spank children, avoid taxes and bully the unorthodox however and whenever they want. Toby Keith, with his attempt to bully the Dixie Chicks and their allies, is the most obvious figure, but the National Rifle Association has recruited Blake Shelton, Trace Adkins, Luke Bryan, Rascal Flatts, Pat Green, John Rich, Easton Corbin and Hank Williams Jr. for its NRA Country Tours.
Since the ’50s there have always been rock’n’rollers claiming the right to get as much sex, money and attention for themselves as possible, no matter who they have to offend along the way. Whether you call it bold individualism or selfish egoism, this message is delivered not only by the lyrics but also by music that insists on pushing without pulling, on closing off rather than opening up, on dominating rather than collaborating. The term “rock’n’roll” was slang for the sexual act, but if the rocking denoted male pleasure and the rolling denoted female pleasure, the change of nomenclature from rock’n’roll to rock was significant.
And we’re talking not just about geezer blowhards such as Ted Nugent and Sammy Hagar but also about acts like Kid Rock and Axl Rose. From the late ’60s through the early ’80s, rock’n’roll’s libertarian wing was represented primarily by heavy-metal, cock-rock bands, but since the mid-’80s the caucus has been best represented by gangsta rappers. It would be inaccurate to paint all hip-hoppers as conservatives—just as it would to paint all hard-rockers—but over the past quarter century, gangsta rap has been the most right-wing element in pop music, further to the right than even mainstream country.