Nothing But a Number

I just finished reading Elijah Wald's How The Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music. Despite the provocative title, the book really isn't about The Beatles, nor does Wald really believe that they destroyed anything. The book is mostly focused on popular music in the U.S. before 1960, and his main argument is that we need to pay more attention to the "mainstream" of music that was actually popular with listeners and (especially) dancers, rather than focusing on the artists and recordings that became later critical favorites. So while a knowledge of Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings will undoubtedly improve your life, it won't really improve your understanding of the music that was popular during the 1920s--or even typical of Armstrong's output in the 1920s, since he spent most of his time playing in large dance orchestras. It's a book that spends more time discussing Perry Como, Bing Crosby, and Paul Whiteman than just about any other history of popular music.

Wald has a lot of interesting things to say about race, gender, technology, recording formats, and I have the feeling it's going to have a pretty large impact on thinking about popular music, even if it will probably be under-cited. (It's a history, after all, and when was the last time you saw the Grout or Porter and Ullman cited?)

It's certainly given me a lot to think about for my own work. I particularly appreciate an insight Wald has about age and ragtime, an insight that could basically be generalized to all the styles of popular music that followed it:

"The pop music world that began with ragtime is fiercely democratic. Whatever its underlying commercial foundations, it claims to be the music of all America, rich and poor, country and city, black and white (and yellow, red, and brown, when it bothers to acknowledge such subtleties). The only gap it does not strive to bridge is that of age: Each shift of genre blazons the arrival of a new generation and threatens all doubters with the ignominy of hunching over their canes and mumbling impotent imprecations as youth dances by." (p. 27)

Which brings me to Soulja Boy Tell 'Em. Really.



When I first saw the video for "Kiss Me Thru the Phone" (which I believe was his second single, after the ever-popular "Crank That"), I thought it was absolute crap. The premise seems to be, "Sorry, I can't be with you now, girl, but I'm hanging with my homies." At least in the video they're just playing cards, and not in a strip club. Still, doesn't seem like a very romantic sentiment.

However, I love the part that starts at about 2:20, when instead of being about Soulja Boy and his girlfriend, the video switches to showing a couple of older couples who are also using their cell phones to communicate how much they miss each other. It's a brilliant (and, in Wald's terms, a more democratic) move on the part of the director here.

The message seems to be, "Hey, Mr. White Businessman and his wife, this song is about you, too. Oh, and retired black couple, you guys could kiss each other through the phone, too." I don't know if anyone over 40 would ever actually buy a Soulja Boy record, but the portrayal of older people in a sympathetic light in this video is definitely interesting. How many other contemporary hip-hop or R&B tracks do that?

Music Where You Least Expect It

The gym I go to, the Jewish Community Center here in my neighborhood of Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh, has prompted some surprising music-related thoughts. They play a very small and bizarre selection of music videos on the big television in the weight room, which is mounted right above one of the leg machines. One of the videos they play fairly often is "Soldier" by Destiny's Child (with T.I. and Lil Wayne), which prompted a 70-year old Jewish woman to remark to her trainer, a 30-year old African American guy, that she had seen Lil Wayne on the boardwalk in Florida and had gotten her picture taken with him, to send to her grandkids! How am I supposed to deal with that at 9:30 in the morning? The head spins.



(This is one of the more interesting dynamics at the gym, by the way. The clientele, at least when I show up on weekday mid-mornings, skews quite old and Jewish. But of the 6 trainers I've seen around, 4 of them are black guys around 30, who invariably end up training fairly old white men and women. Everyone seems to get along great, though, and for a bleeding heart liberal like myself, it's always nice to see a bit of interracial interacting and friendship.)

Anyway, back to music. Two other videos that they play fairly often are "That's Not My Name" by The Ting Tings and "Who's Got Your Money" by Tina Parol.






I've decided that these two songs sound a lot alike to my ears. (Also, "That's Not My Name" reminds me a hell of a lot of "Mickey" by Toni Basil--have others remarked on this? The faux marching band percussion, the layered vocals, it seems so obvious to me.)



Anyway, I've decided on an aesthetic judgement of "That's Not My Name" and "Who's Got Your Money." They're both absolute crap.

Puppets!

Not a very good song, but a very cool video.

Put It In a Blog

As I mentioned over on facebook, I'm a big fan of the new Alicia Keys record, The Element of Freedom. I think some of the critics are right that the first half is better than the second. But the first half just has a couple of really killer songs, particularly the one-two punch of "Doesn't Mean Anything" and "Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart." Those are just incredibly elegant, well-constructed tunes. And the second half has perhaps the most obvious hit single on the album, the collaboration with Beyonce, "Put It In a Love Song." Again, the critics are right that this is something of a re-write of "Single Ladies," but I think it's worth noting just how musically weird this song is. (And "Single Ladies" was pretty weird, too, now that I think about it.) Long stretches of this song have only minimal harmonic support from some pretty subdued piano chords--or none at all. The drums are pretty spare, too. No cymbals. The rhythm track sounds like it's basically just like a tenor drum, with occasional handclaps on all 4 beats. Beyonce beats the crap out of Alicia Keys, vocally speaking. Keys sounds out of breath by the time her verse ends, maybe she just needed to overdub it so that she could take a breath somewhere. Beyonce's second verse, in comparison, smokes. Either she's just a much better singer for this kind of music or she's more comfortable using the available studio gimmicks to craft the most convincing performance possible. And then the little piano montuno-like riff that shows up in the bridge (2:21) absolutely knocks me out. I don't know why this only gets 8 bars, it's by far the best part of the song. Evidently they just filmed a video for this song, in Rio, of all places. I really, really hope that there's a choreographed mime dance part to go along with lyrics "Text me on my cell phone."