Notesale: Turn your study into money

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Issues of Pop revision
Politics
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“I wouldn’t even call it political – it was how we was living
...
We were in the suburbs, we had nice
things, but still the police wanted to fuck with us”- Keith Schocklee, quoted in Andy Cowan,
‘Will to Power’, Mojo, August 2012, pp
...
48)
...
” John Street, Politics and Popular
Culture (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997), p
...

“The state creates the conditions under which popular culture is produced and distributed
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19-20
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”
Neil McCormick- Hey Porche
Each generation is a mode of rebellion- Miley Cyrus, Plan B, Kanye West etc
Sex Pistols- BBC banned ‘God save the queen’, “God save the queen, the fascist regime”
Crass- How does it feel 1982 (Same year as faulklands war)
“The rhetorical protest song] stressed individual indignation and dissent but did not offer
solution in a movement”- R
...
was to be a man; to giggle and scream and sigh was to be a
woman”-Simon Frith
Tupac- Keep ya head up, “Since we all came from a woman, got our name from a woman, and
our game from a woman”
Candy hearts- I miss you
“If you act too nice, you’ll be called a flirt; you kiss someone, you’re a slut; or you spend a lot
of alone time and you are a snobby bitch”-Mariel Loveland
“Rock is indeed a technology of gender in that ‘masculinity’ reinforced and multiplied in its
many discursive spaces”- Norma Coats
“Heavy metal rockers, those with the biggest hair and the tightest clothes (including Spandex,
outside of its usual use as female exercise wear), are often held up as the prime
representations of excessive masculinity in rock
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”- Richard Dyer

Music and media: Digital Age
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The Smiths- Shakespear’s sister
o Badly recorded
o 1985
o Bands have taken influence- the Cribs, the strokes etc
o Less rehearsed
Arctic Monkeys- Brainstorm
o 2007
o Perfectly, unnaturally in time
o Digital advances
o Focused tone
Expect high quality now, due to technological advances
“Leaving the computerized manipulation of these sounds to do the work of performance
and recording”- Andrew Goodwin
1980s- sequencers came in, and bands made a point of not using sequencers- Human
League, would write on their albums they didn’t use them
Queen wrote ‘no synthesizers’ on theirs
“Ideally would take a full year and, given the price of top contemporary musicians, could
cost a million dollars”- Andrew Keen
Sergio Vega- Hotel life, recorded an EP in a hotel
o Released for free
Pete Townsend- recorded music should be a representation of live performance
Arctic Monkeys probably recorded everything individually
Style of music suggests meticulous recording
o Intense rhythms
Buzzcocks- Spiral Scratch EP
o Punk
o Paid for album to be recorded, paid for studio etc
o £500 to record in 1977
Chvrches

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“Since then, the blogosphere and social networks have arguably been the key
reasons anyone knows about us at all”- Lauren Mayberry
o “I will not accept online misogyny”- Mayberry
o Neon Gold- music blog
Blogs are used to boost bands
Piracy is much easier to do now
Jay-Z & Coca-cola used piracy to advertise
Spotify etc
Music industry response to piracy
Taylor Swift removed her music from Spotify
Soundcloud & bandcamp
Ed Sheeran’s “Sing” streamed 2millin times online, sold nearly 400,000 in the first week
“Slowly, artists are going to have to let go of the album
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”- Charlotte Richardson
“But raunch is only effective because slut-shaming is still endemic”
o Richardson
“Pop can help young people discover what they need and who they desire
...
7% of music heard in adverts is pop
Happy- most high selling song in 2014, due to syncing
Publishing companies- manage rights for song use
Advertising companies- set a vision to be interpreted
Licensing companies- work to client briefs providing music for syncing needs

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Marmoset music
o Based in Portland
o Provides music for films and advertising
o Use in house composers & pre existing music on file
o Have very specific asks- 90 second long etc
Popular music/advertising relationships
o known companies that break through new music through ads
o known musicians boost a product through already popular music songs
o perfect synchronicity of a music & ad resulting in a new genre being formed
M&S- Food porn
Sonic tags
o Short melodic motif can cause brand association
Popular music/ film and television relationships
o Diagetic- music that’s actually part of the scene (if radio was playing etc)
o Non-Diagetic- music in a soundtrack
o Music is put into film and television as a compliment to the narrative or even a
narrative device
o Main songs from film soundtracks allow vortex of publicity- Let it go
Soundtracks
o Popular music has been used to be soundtracks
o Artists may be asked to write music for a film
o Pre-exisiting tracks can be arranged to suit films

Talent
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What is talent
o A state of being
o A level of skill
o A measure of ability
o A measure of success
How to measure it
o Classical music is measured in grades- has a framework
o Pop doesn’t have grades
o Jazz- taken more seriously because of virtuosity
Measuring talent in popular music
o Talent shows- bullshit
o Extra value- shitty back story
o Tom fucking Jones making up bull
Music industry theory
o Mike Jones – The Music Industries: From Conception to Consumption (2012)
 It’s like when an act is signed they automatically think they’re talented and
good at singing “it is impossible for this not to be registered as the sense of
being recognised as “special”
o Idiomatic currency
 Each person can find individual reason

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Simon Frith about the music industry: “t organised around the management and
exploitation of talent”
Case studies; Eurovision & X factor
Eurovision
o Safe for LGBT community- Consuela
o Sense of national pride
o Offers a large platform for artists within obscure music markets
o National cultural ambassador
o Consquela
o Cultural selections- Inja and Anush for Moscow- traditional dress
o Offers authors
 Show case for writing talent
 An ability for the writer to experiment with voices & national images
 Julie Frost
 Wrote song called Satellites
 Got a load of fame
 Wrote songs with beyonce etc
X Factor
o Audience’s ‘choice’
o Chance to see the progress of picking popstar
o Stories of human interest
o Weekly showcase
o Simon Cowell & Simon Fuller
o Mass marketing and choice making
o Sustained publicity cycle and syncing with other brands to generate more profit
o Sponsored by talk talk- create aps and ads etc
Afghan star
o Controversial
o Quite a few connections to x factor- democratic decisions
o Post-Taliban gov
o Female singer had death threats etc
Talent shows can be a force for good?

Race
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White privilege
Importance of realising privilege within argument
“Ethnicities can never be understood outside of the wider power relations in which they
are embedded”- Martin Stokes
Songs throughout history have been used to comment on race
Fight the power- public enemy
Music had been used to promote collective experience and is utilised for collectivity in
protests
Accidental racism

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Aimed to address stereotypes of white southern American men being classed as
racist
o “just a proud rebel”
o “lookin like I’ve got a lot to learn”
o White privilege gon crazy
Musicians have used priviledge to speak out for minorities
o Azelia Banks- “America owes black people over $100 trillion”
o Lots of musicians have fan bases who support them politically not just due to their
music
o Kanye West- Claimed Bush didn’t care about black people in hurricane Katrina
 Yeezus- “Clean water was only served to the fairer skin”
o Pharrell “New Black”- “Doesn’t blame other races for our issues”- denying that
racism is a thing
 Femenista Jones- “Acting like there is any one way to be Black is as
problematic as acting like Blackness can be redefined because one
celebrity says it is”
o Michael Arceneaux made an argument that it’s the rich, disconnected black men
that claim racism is dead
o $60,000 Kayne West spent on Christmas presents for daughter
“One of the most recurrent types of moral panic in Britain since the war has been
associated with the emergence of various forms of youth culture”- Stanley Cohen
The demonization of hip hop
o Pro Tricia Rose
o Women have been sexualised for rap
Issues of privilege and everything are important
Native American headdresses are worn at Glastonbury
Cultural appropriation-



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