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?