Nothing Is Real - Pop's Struggle with Authenticity
December 24, 2017 6:20 AM Subscribe
Nothing Is Real - Pop's Struggle with Authenticity : Five short radio essays on popular music in the early 21st century (and the late 20th) from veteran music journalist David Hepworth, former Old Grey Whistle Test presenter and editor of Smash Hits, founder of Just Seventeen, Q, Mojo and other magazines.
1. Living the life
2. The terminology
3. The importance of noise
4. Are DJs doomed?
5. The rock'n'roll funeral
The Essay is broadcast on BBC Radio 3 each weekday, unified across the week either by author, as here, or theme. There are literally a thousand of them in the archive, on hundreds of subjects, including more by Mr Hepworth if you dig deep enough (such as this series, reunited with OGWT presenter Mark Ellen).
1. Living the life
2. The terminology
3. The importance of noise
4. Are DJs doomed?
5. The rock'n'roll funeral
The Essay is broadcast on BBC Radio 3 each weekday, unified across the week either by author, as here, or theme. There are literally a thousand of them in the archive, on hundreds of subjects, including more by Mr Hepworth if you dig deep enough (such as this series, reunited with OGWT presenter Mark Ellen).
Then you must have pre-recorded that comment.
posted by pracowity at 8:59 AM on December 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by pracowity at 8:59 AM on December 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
Why do rock fans want their heroes to live the lives their songs describe
And why do poetry readers expect poetry to be entries torn from the poet's diary?
posted by pracowity at 9:03 AM on December 24, 2017
And why do poetry readers expect poetry to be entries torn from the poet's diary?
posted by pracowity at 9:03 AM on December 24, 2017
Thanks for this--US folks can listen for free after creating a BBC account.
posted by Jesse the K at 9:11 AM on December 24, 2017
posted by Jesse the K at 9:11 AM on December 24, 2017
I'm in Poland and I didn't create an account before downloading. Are Americans on the BBC's shit list?
posted by pracowity at 9:15 AM on December 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by pracowity at 9:15 AM on December 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app sans account.
posted by Celsius1414 at 9:20 AM on December 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Celsius1414 at 9:20 AM on December 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
US folks can listen for free after creating a BBC account.
So. It's nothing to get hung about?
posted by thelonius at 9:50 AM on December 24, 2017 [5 favorites]
So. It's nothing to get hung about?
posted by thelonius at 9:50 AM on December 24, 2017 [5 favorites]
4. Are DJs doomed?
I find myself completely disagreeing with what he's saying here. I guess his point is that there are vanishingly few radio DJs of any vision/merit who actually get paid for their time ... but if the interwebs have given us anything in the past twenty year, it's a veritable plague of impassioned, inspired and indefatigable amateurs, doing it for the love of it.
posted by philip-random at 10:50 AM on December 24, 2017
I find myself completely disagreeing with what he's saying here. I guess his point is that there are vanishingly few radio DJs of any vision/merit who actually get paid for their time ... but if the interwebs have given us anything in the past twenty year, it's a veritable plague of impassioned, inspired and indefatigable amateurs, doing it for the love of it.
posted by philip-random at 10:50 AM on December 24, 2017
The first link requires a fair bit of navigation and clicking around to get to Part 1. You can listen (without having to sign up or subscribe) simply by clicking the numbered links.
TLDL; Everything in popular music is fake, from the myths we treasure about our favorite artists, to the pretensions of defining ourselves by our favorite sub-subgenres. The radio DJ is now a vacuous, market-approved algorithm, and the only authenticity is the technoshamanism spellcrafted by DJs at a club. And drugs. So it's not real. But it's all much too loud and no longer carries a distinctive message, now with the focus on digital streaming, sampling, and remixing singles. Everything you like is garbage; pick up an old instrument, strip yourself of the nonsense, and get back in touch with the art. IOW; old man yells at cloud/kids these days.
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 10:50 AM on December 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
TLDL; Everything in popular music is fake, from the myths we treasure about our favorite artists, to the pretensions of defining ourselves by our favorite sub-subgenres. The radio DJ is now a vacuous, market-approved algorithm, and the only authenticity is the technoshamanism spellcrafted by DJs at a club. And drugs. So it's not real. But it's all much too loud and no longer carries a distinctive message, now with the focus on digital streaming, sampling, and remixing singles. Everything you like is garbage; pick up an old instrument, strip yourself of the nonsense, and get back in touch with the art. IOW; old man yells at cloud/kids these days.
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 10:50 AM on December 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
Eponysterical.
posted by Pinback at 11:42 AM on December 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by Pinback at 11:42 AM on December 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
And why do poetry readers expect poetry to be entries torn from the poet's diary?
If they do—do they?—perhaps they expect it because of the history of confessional poetry and because of the still current confessional style in poetry.
posted by kenko at 3:35 PM on December 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
If they do—do they?—perhaps they expect it because of the history of confessional poetry and because of the still current confessional style in poetry.
posted by kenko at 3:35 PM on December 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
Fascinating how he got to "We should call all this music what I heard it called when I was a kid."
posted by coberh at 3:35 PM on December 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by coberh at 3:35 PM on December 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
Misread the title as, "Nothing Is Real - Pope's Struggle with Authenticity" so you can see how I was surprised by actual content.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 9:38 PM on December 24, 2017 [6 favorites]
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 9:38 PM on December 24, 2017 [6 favorites]
Me, I'm so old, at first I thought (hoped) this would be about Louis Armstrong.
posted by charlesminus at 10:33 AM on December 25, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by charlesminus at 10:33 AM on December 25, 2017 [1 favorite]
This is extremely up my alley. Gimme a few to digest them and I'll be back with a supply of impassioned minutiae.
posted by rhizome at 12:37 PM on December 25, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by rhizome at 12:37 PM on December 25, 2017 [1 favorite]
Everything in popular music is fake, from the myths we treasure about our favorite artists, to the pretensions of defining ourselves by our favorite sub-subgenres. The radio DJ is now a vacuous, market-approved algorithm, and the only authenticity is the technoshamanism spellcrafted by DJs at a club. And drugs. So it's not real. But it's all much too loud and no longer carries a distinctive message, now with the focus on digital streaming, sampling, and remixing singles. Everything you like is garbage; pick up an old instrument, strip yourself of the nonsense, and get back in touch with the art. IOW; old man yells at cloud/kids these days.
I dunno. I quite liked it. I think he does a reasonable job of skewering the pretensions of fandom and he's on the money in identifying the gendered distinction of Pop vs Rock. He doesn't go quite so far as to acknowledge that Pop might be as worthy a subject for critical examination as Rock, and all the more authentic for being so resolutely superficial. I expect he's jealous that former Smash Hits colleague Neil Tennant became a Pop star and he didn't. I loved Smash Hits, but he was the same cynical old fart back then as he is now.
He's not entirely wrong about manufactured music and the controlling agendas that shape it, but he appears so ignorant of how and where the innovations are happening that I wonder if he's even paying attention. Could be he's proving his own point, but I think he needs to get out more and see some live bands. There's a new generation of amazing musicians out there, but a lot of them are girls making Pop music and they don't always play really loudly.
(Random trivia: I seem to recall Mark Ellen once naming metafilter as one of his favourite websites. Maybe he's lurking in here somewhere.)
posted by Elizabeth the Thirteenth at 6:26 AM on December 26, 2017
I dunno. I quite liked it. I think he does a reasonable job of skewering the pretensions of fandom and he's on the money in identifying the gendered distinction of Pop vs Rock. He doesn't go quite so far as to acknowledge that Pop might be as worthy a subject for critical examination as Rock, and all the more authentic for being so resolutely superficial. I expect he's jealous that former Smash Hits colleague Neil Tennant became a Pop star and he didn't. I loved Smash Hits, but he was the same cynical old fart back then as he is now.
He's not entirely wrong about manufactured music and the controlling agendas that shape it, but he appears so ignorant of how and where the innovations are happening that I wonder if he's even paying attention. Could be he's proving his own point, but I think he needs to get out more and see some live bands. There's a new generation of amazing musicians out there, but a lot of them are girls making Pop music and they don't always play really loudly.
(Random trivia: I seem to recall Mark Ellen once naming metafilter as one of his favourite websites. Maybe he's lurking in here somewhere.)
posted by Elizabeth the Thirteenth at 6:26 AM on December 26, 2017
but he appears so ignorant of how and where the innovations are happening that I wonder if he's even paying attention.
I think that makes sense especially for a codified genre like 'rock', whereas 'pop' is allowed more innovation as its actual boundaries are not quite so limited and the very idea of creating pop 'flavors of the month' requires endless innovation. But then again I don't think innovation is the point of music, and I'm not that impressed in the direction the majority of 'innovation' has taken pop anyways (where's my 20 minute pop radio song (for example)? )
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:03 AM on December 26, 2017
I think that makes sense especially for a codified genre like 'rock', whereas 'pop' is allowed more innovation as its actual boundaries are not quite so limited and the very idea of creating pop 'flavors of the month' requires endless innovation. But then again I don't think innovation is the point of music, and I'm not that impressed in the direction the majority of 'innovation' has taken pop anyways (where's my 20 minute pop radio song (for example)? )
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:03 AM on December 26, 2017
Ok, maybe innovation is the wrong word. Zeitgeist is maybe better.
The point is, the way music is made and distributed is changing very rapidly and it's obvious he's not keeping up. For instance, I like what he says about club DJ's, but that was already true 20 years ago and a lot has changed since then. Meanwhile, it's increasingly difficult to make a living from record sales so live performance becomes the main way for many artists to connect with an audience. This is where the rubber hits the road, because it doesn't matter how authentic you are or how many YouTube hits your video got, if you can't entertain a paying crowd, you're toast. Harder for the artists, harder for the people who want to hear them, but I don't know if I've ever seen so much great live music in small spaces as I have in the last couple of years or so.
The other side of this, which deserves deeper examination, is the extent to which mainstream culture is shaped by a vanishingly small group of influencers, to the point where relatively few interesting artists can hope to reach a broader audience. He talks about this in terms of control and manufactured musical product. Again, true 20 years ago and things have changed significantly since, but not necessarily for the better. A lot of talented musicians spend their career in this very exploitative environment, unable to take risks or express themselves effectively, and end up making boring music or no music at all.
There have been quite a few pop tunes of 10+ minutes made by crazy risk takers over the years, and every single one of them got edited for airplay. Where are they now? You may well ask.
posted by Elizabeth the Thirteenth at 9:59 AM on December 26, 2017
The point is, the way music is made and distributed is changing very rapidly and it's obvious he's not keeping up. For instance, I like what he says about club DJ's, but that was already true 20 years ago and a lot has changed since then. Meanwhile, it's increasingly difficult to make a living from record sales so live performance becomes the main way for many artists to connect with an audience. This is where the rubber hits the road, because it doesn't matter how authentic you are or how many YouTube hits your video got, if you can't entertain a paying crowd, you're toast. Harder for the artists, harder for the people who want to hear them, but I don't know if I've ever seen so much great live music in small spaces as I have in the last couple of years or so.
The other side of this, which deserves deeper examination, is the extent to which mainstream culture is shaped by a vanishingly small group of influencers, to the point where relatively few interesting artists can hope to reach a broader audience. He talks about this in terms of control and manufactured musical product. Again, true 20 years ago and things have changed significantly since, but not necessarily for the better. A lot of talented musicians spend their career in this very exploitative environment, unable to take risks or express themselves effectively, and end up making boring music or no music at all.
There have been quite a few pop tunes of 10+ minutes made by crazy risk takers over the years, and every single one of them got edited for airplay. Where are they now? You may well ask.
posted by Elizabeth the Thirteenth at 9:59 AM on December 26, 2017
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I died laughing.
posted by phlyingpenguin at 8:51 AM on December 24, 2017 [2 favorites]