Pop Art

As much as I try to love “pop” music I can’t. After nine years of collegiate study in music and after two years of desperation studying the style and trying to recognize its financial contribution to American history, still I cannot love it. I’m sorry. There is nothing to love. “Pop” music is just that. What? Some people consider “pop” a shortening of the world “popular.” “Like, admired, or enjoyed by many people” could be an anthem for the world derivative defined as “having a value deriving from an underlying variable asset.” That is true in the sense of a pure music education. “Pop” music is nothing of itself. It only can be defined by other more tangible underlying musical ideas. Why then must “pop” music exist at all? The reason is simple. Music is an art form, and because music has become such a crucial part of the American ideal an easy way needed to be developed to realize it with no skill. “Pop” music is folk music, music for the folks. The interesting thing is the “folks” in America always seem more intelligent than expected when interviewed on television. Why then must we subject the folks to such inane music? The reason is simple. Money. Commercial music at one time in America was a high art form. In the l930’s through the year two thousand, viable music sound stages existed in film, television, and radio that gainfully employed high level musicians. These were predicated by a high degree of music education and performance skill. Music was operating as an art form, and hence the artistic ideal was part of film, television, and radio. That is not necessarily true today. Modern day music media companies are attempting to clone previous successful music vocations, but without the necessary education and experience producing music, their product is falling short. They are attempting to produce an art form without the meaning, feeling, or substance. It is a crutch. It is substituting for “education,” the process of attempting and failing, an immediate gratification without peering into one’s soul. If one sits in front of a computer all day and never makes an effort to talk to another human being, how can we consider ourselves a social nation? This has been the trend of this entire decade driven by technology that attempts to do just that, substitute a shallow seemingly pleasant mantra for what should be a “hard knocks” school of growing pains. It is soft-core porn. I prefer the hard-core kind where you get your hands dirty and experience a tactile and tangible reward or response from an effort driven by desire. Desire is what motivates, and it used to be what motivated musicians. It still might, but the desire for money is what is motivating commercial music houses today. With a lack of mainstream from which to draw inspiration, the commercial musical community eventually will have to return to the collegiate classroom to find its roots.