'On Popular Music' by Theodor Adorno, 1941.
Adorno discusses the difference between serious music and popular music which is marketed for the masses. Popular music simply refers to a less serious type of music, and has been seen as the one fundamental characteristic of popular music to be 'standardization', which 'extends from the most general features to the most specific ones' (Adorno, 1941, p.73). Standardization also refers to how the song or hit will always lead back to the same familiar beat or experience in order to keep the song simple. Nothing fundamentally new or fresh will be introduced.
Discussing Popular music I have decided to concentrate on music video 'What you talking about?' by Redlight ft. Ms Dynamite. The song was produced in 2010 and shows clear indications of being popular music. The song cannot be described as a complicated or serious song, as Adorno mentions other more specific phrases used to discuss the difference between popular and serious music, such as 'lowbrow and highbrow', 'simple and complex' and 'naive and sophisticated'. It is the simplistic reasoning that Adorno states 'position is absolute. Every detail is substitutable', by this Adorno is stating how nothing used in the hit song has been thoughtfully crafted, it fits into what Adorno says is 'pre-digested'. This is 'pseudo-individualization, giving the masses what seems to be a whole free choice and open market but the standardization of songs 'keeps the customers in line by doing the listening for them'. By buying the music feels like it is us as free individuals, but is actually mistaken as it simply marketed to the masses as 'standardized music'.
It is suggested that those who listen to popular music don't understand music as a language in its self, but merely due to the type of people of listen to Redlight ft Ms Dynamite are only listening to it as what it represents in culture, what it means to them. This is in turn is transformed into an idea of the song as what they think is there own, 'which is served as a receptacle for their institutionalized wants', what the sub-culture of the music presents and appears to talk to its audience.
'There are two major socio-phsychological types of mass behaviour toward music', states Adorno, referring to general and popular music, the 'rhythmically obedient' type and the 'emotional' type. 'What you talking about?' conforms to the rhythmically obedient type, focussing on what any piece of music has, the underlying beat of the song. Adorno talks of how being musical is to follow given rhythmical patterns and not to be disturbed by 'individualizing abnormalities. This expresses the viewers individual response to obey to the standardization. This is entirely different from that of a 'emotional' type which 'What you talking about?' clearly isn't, and has no expression of unhappiness of allow of the consumer of music to be allowed to weep due to the music. This song holds no grounds for a deeper level of thinking, to communicate in any sort of thoughtful considerations.
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