Like a Broken Record: a Critical Analysis of Popular Music
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LIKE A BROKEN RECORD: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF POPULAR MUSIC by MARISSA JANELLE ZAK B.A, Eastern Illinois University, 2017 A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Colorado Colorado Springs In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of Communication 2019 ii This thesis for the Master of Arts degree by Marissa Janelle Zak has been approved for the Department of Communication by Christopher Bell, Chair Maja Krakowiak David Nelson December 16th, 2019 iii Zak, Marissa Janelle (M.A., Communication) Like a Broken Record: A Critical Analysis of Popular Music Thesis directed by Associate Professor Christopher Bell ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to assess the diversity of two different categories of popular music, Rock and Roll and Hot 100, while applying concepts from Horkheimer and Adorno’s ‘The Dialectic of Enlightenment’. This study looked at the tempo, time signature, key signature, song length and song format of 50 songs from each genre, 100 songs total, and compares them across genre and within genre to determine how similar or different the songs are. What resulted was the determination that no matter the genre, there was no major differentiation between songs. From Horkheimer and Adorno, the concepts of pseudo-individualism and standardization are used, and from Benjamin, the aura of the music is also discussed. It was concluded that due to the monetary success of the music industry, consumers do not want music that is diverse, or music that is authentic. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION…………………...………………………………………..1 Statement of Problem…………………………………………………...………1 Specific Purpose……………………………………………………………..….2 Significance of Study………………………………………………………...…2 I. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE……………………………………….…..4 Critical Theory and the Culture Industry……………. ………………………...4 The Culture Industry and Music………………………………………………..7 The Music Industry and Song Ranking…………………………………..….10 Rock and Roll……………………………………………………………..…..11 Hot 100………………………………………………………………………...14 II. METHODOLOGY…………………………………………………………..18 Sample………………………………………………………………………..18 Procedure………………………………….…………………………………18 Tempo………………………………..…………………………………..18 Time Signature……………….…………………………………………..19 Song Length………………….…………………………………………..19 Key Signature……………………………………………………...……..19 Song Structure……………………………………………………..……..19 Measurement…………………………………………………………………20 III. RESULTS……………………………………………………………………21 IV. DISCUSSION…………………………….………………………………….34 v Pseudo-Individualism……………….……………………………………….37 Authenticity………………… ………………………………………………42 V. CONCLUSSION……………………………………………………...……..48 Limitations……………………………………………………………...……48 Future Research…………………………………………………………...…49 References……………………………………………………………………51 vi LIST OF TABLES TABLE 1. Active Rock 2014 Song Data…………………………………………………….21 2. Active Rock 2015 Song Data…………………………………………………….22 3. Active Rock 2016 Song Data…………………………………………………….23 4. Active Rock 2017 Song Data…………………………………………………….24 5. Active Rock 2018 Song Data…………………………………………………….25 6. Hot 100 2014 Song Data…………………………………………………...…….26 7. Hot 100 2015 Song Data…………………………………………...….………....27 8. Hot 100 2016 Song Data……………………….…………………......………….28 9. Hot 100 2017 Song Data…………………………………………………...…….29 10. Hot 100 2018 Song Data…………………………………...…………………….30 11. Tempo Category………………………………………………………………….34 12. Key Signature…………………………………………………………………….34 13. Major and Minor…………………………………………………...…………….34 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION According to Nielsen, the content that is most likely playing if someone were to turn on the radio would be some kind of music (2018). If someone sits in a waiting room or walks through a store, music is probably there to accompany the shoppers (Yalch, Spangenberg, 2000). If someone has their headphones in while sitting at their desk, taking a walk, or working out, music notes are more than likely pouring out of their mobile device, through their headphones and into their ears (Edison Research, 2018). Music is very pervasive in today’s society, and almost everyone has an opinion on what genre of music is the best, as evident in album sales as well as radio station performance. Every week, Billboard.com puts out list after list of the newest and greatest songs that make it to the top of the charts for a variety of genres, from Rock and Roll to Pop to Holliday music. However, even though these new songs have different titles and come from a variety of artists, are they really that new, or has the world already heard them before? Statement of Problem Horkheimer and Adorno (2002) expressed a concern that every artifact that the cultural industry has to offer is lacking in any originality. They claim that thanks to standardization in the culture industry, very little individuality can be detected between different television shows, movies, music and more. Applying this concept to modern music may seem unrealistic to some people; there are new songs released every day and new artists being added to every genre almost as often, so how can music all be the same? 2 Every song, whether it comes from Beethoven, Ariana Grande or Metallica, can be reduced down into some individual parts, and it is their individual parts that, when fleshed out and compared, can begin to seem all too similar. These aspects of music might fly under the radar for some listeners who might be unknowingly buying into the same song over and over again. Some people, however, are quite keen to the small musical elements that make up every song. Specific Purpose This study aims to determine if two different genres of music from two Billboard lists, Hot 100 (sometimes referred to as Pop or Top 40), and Active Rock, fall to the concepts of Critical Theory that Horkheimer and Adorno talk about. The two genres will be compared against each other as well as themselves to see if the songs and genres are very similar or maintain some sort of individuality in modern times. Significance of the Study While television and film often take the center stage in media studies, music is something that lacks the quantity of modern research that some other media have. This study will hopefully bring a medium that is often thought of as a passive activity (Pluskota, 2015) into the focus of other scholars in media and critical studies. It is already known by many scholars that one Western film will be nearly the same as another Western film due to formula and clichés (Andrae, 2005), but will one Rock and Roll song mirror another Rock and Roll song for the same reasons? In the last handful of years, music, particularly popular music that is heard on the radio, has been accused of sounding all too much the same. Studies show that as music becomes more popular, it also begins to homogenize and sound like things that 3 consumers have already heard before (Barnes, 2015). For some people, this is no mystery, and it has even become a point of comedic effect. The Australian comedy music trio, The Axis of Awesome, makes fun of this with their song ‘4 Chords’, where they identify 47 popular songs that use the same four chords in succession (Davis, B., Naimo, L., Raskopaolos, J., 2011), and comedian Rob Paravonian points out that this chord progression dates back as far as the 1600s with Pachelbel’s ‘Canon in D’ (2006). 4 CHAPTER II REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE Critical Theory and the Culture Industry It was Horkheimer and Adorno who first posited the idea of the Culture Industry in their book, Dialectic of Enlightenment (2002). Here, they explain that everything that could be counted as a cultural artifact, be it film, television, music and so on is nothing more than a carbon copy of something else. Every new film is a copy of the last successful film that came out; every television show is the same with only slight changes in characters; every song could easily be swapped out for another song and there would be no difference. Culture, they say, is no longer well-thought-out art, but “trash” that businesses constantly pump out to make a quick buck off of those consumers who are none the wiser (p. 95), and no matter what anyone tries to do, there is no way to escape this phenomenon. The concept of the culture industry gave rise to two supporting terms: standardization and pseudo-individualism. Standardization makes everything very familiar to consumers and makes it easier for the consumer to know if they like or dislike that particular cultural product. Genres of music and television shows and plot tropes of films are examples of what standardization gives to the culture industry. If there are horses and cowboys and the setting is in the American West, then it is definitely a Western film or television series. If there are two main characters, one male and one female, and a series of silly yet serendipitous events happen to bring them into a romantic relationship, then it is more than likely a romantic comedy. According to Andrae (1979) 5 “gags, formulas, and clichés were calculated for their effects by special teams of experts, the lengths of stories rigidly adhered to, and the endings of films wholly predictable from the outset” (p. 5). Standardization begets formulas, and formula begets the very core of the culture industry, with pseudo-individualization keeping the consumers of the culture industry blissfully blind to the formulaic content that they are consuming. Pseudo-individualism is what makes cultural products just different enough to pass for something completely new and unique, and if standardization were to be realized by the consumer public, there could potentially be some sort of resistance. That is why standardization must be hidden in the culture industry by way of pseudo-individualism. Pseudo-individualism keeps consumers eager for more by helping them forget that the thing they want to see next is something that they have more than likely already experienced (Adorno, 2002). In two Western films, there might be a lone wolf cowboy trying to hunt down a band of bandits in order to keep a town and a particular saloon girl safe from harm; but as long as the towns have different names and the shady cowboys have different, vague backstories, there is no doubt in the consumer’s mind that they are two equally unique and special movies.