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.
Think about it: the Tea Party and gangsta rappers share nearly identical political platforms. Some members of both groups believe women should assume a subordinate position in the workplace and the bedroom. They both believe in the unfettered use of guns and the display of conspicuous consumption. They’re both dismissive of government regulation and employees. They can both be homophobic and anti-immigrant, sometimes implying that their particular race and culture is superior to any other.
They both believe in settling conflicts with force. They both believe in laissez-faire capitalism unchecked by burdensome laws and taxes. They both believe the winners of economic competition should reap the rewards with no responsibility for the losers and other suckas. How is 50 Cent’s philosophy of life any different than Mitt Romney’s? The context is different but the values are the same.
Back to the stark contrast between two competing philosophies this year: It’s as if the twin pressures of the Bush Recession and the gay-civil-rights movement have forced the two major parties to stop hedging their bets and to spell out their differences. Many wring their hands over the large gap between the two parties, but I celebrate it. We now have the best opportunity since the Great Depression or the Civil War to decide what kind of country we want to be.
But just as we now face defining choices about our politics, we face similar decisions about our popular music. Will it be a realistic music that depicts human beings struggling to overcome their own weaknesses or a daydream music that promises magic rewards for good intentions? Will it be a music that acknowledges vulnerabilities or one that projects a fantasy of machismo? Will it be a multicultural music where people of all races, genders, ages, classes and sexual orientations are reflected not only by the performers on stage but also by the characters in the songs? Or will music splinter into isolated monoculture niches?
Will it be an egalitarian music focused on songs by, for and about the working class or a music focused on tabloid celebrities—the one-per-centers and their luxury lifestyles? Will it be a universal pop music that combines rhythm and melody or will it devolve into subgenres that emphasize rhythm without melody or melody without rhythm? Will it be a music that affirms all members of the audience or one that denigrates those who are too poor, too old, too urban, too rural, too weak or too queer?
These choices about the meaning of American popular music will be settled not only on the Billboard charts but also in the ongoing discussion that goes on in newspapers, websites, books, box-set liner notes and documentary films and magazines like this one. I urge you to vote on November 6, but I also urge you to take a stand on the future of music. I urge you to consider this famous quote from the Communitarian musician Woody Guthrie:
“I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood.
“I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you.
“I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think you’ve not any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I’d starve to death before I’d sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.”