Modern Pop Canon - Madonna

If not for Michael Jackson stealing her thunder a year earlier with Thriller, Madonna would be seen as the divisive artist of the 80s, the point at which pop music irrevocably shifted into something entirely new, with the starting point being her
'83 album, Like A Virgin. If Jackson revived and justified disco, merging it with traditional R&B and jazz via producer Quincy Jones in the process to create the foundation for New Jack Swing and contemporary R&B, Madonna did the same thing for kitchy-synthpop and New Wave bands from the late-70s/early-80s.

Unlike Jackson, whose R&B meets disco sound is still novel to this day, Madonna is much more easily described in terms of modern groups. It's apparent from a quick glance at female pop stars that Madonna's shadow is nigh-inescapable. Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Lady Gaga (especially Lady Gaga), and any other sexpot pop star can trace their inspiration and style straight back to Ms. Ciccone.

Madonna's career can be rather neatly split up into three periods, largely defined by the decade in which certain albums were released. Make no mistake; it's all pop music through sheer name-power alone. But each of these periods does have some distinct differences.

The Immaculate-period (early-80s), named after her greatest hits compilation for the 80s, The Immaculate Collection, is comprised of her first three albums, and is defined by singles like "Holiday", "Lucky Star", and "Like A Virgin". Despite the occasionally dark (or at least surprising) lyrical content ("Papa Don't Preach", a positive perspective on abortion) this is her most 'poppy' period, in line with the synthpop that came before and after it. This is the period that Cyndi Lauper and early Britney Spears shamelessly aped.

The Erotica-period (late-80s, early/mid-90s), named after the Erotica album, involved... well erotica. This is the period containing Madonna's raciest videos (such as her virtually-topless appearance in "Vogue" or "Human Nature"'s psuedo-S&M) and the notorious 'Sex' book. Even if her record sales did take a hit during this period, they were so high to begin with that it's hard to really notice. The albums released during this time-frame were generally moodier and closer to trance than the straight synthpop of her earlier albums. This move is best demonstrated by the last album of the period, Ray Of Light, which was musically built entirely within ProTools and effectively marked the end of Madonna's sexpot image. I mean, everyone still wants to sleep with her, but she isn't shoving it in our faces as much anymore.
Most of the time anyway.

Her current period, which has been going on since 2000's creatively titledMusic, is here being termed the Hard Candy-period, after her most recent studio album. As suggested by 05's Confessions On The Dance Floor, the 00s have seen Madonna backpedal from her more atmospheric releases in the late-90s to straight up dance floor hits in the style of "Vogue". I don't have much to say about this period because I have a freakish loathing of modern day dance music, no doubt caused by my intense, pathological hatred of will.i.am and "In Da Club" (which I still contend is the worst best-selling single of all time, tied only with "Boom Boom Pow" and "I'm Yours").

The key thing to note about this current period is that Madonna is still effortlessly keeping pace with the currents of pop music. While many artists lose track of the generational pulse (see: KISS and Oasis, the latter of which did it in record time) or simply decide to chuck all caution to the wind and doing something arty (see: The Beatles), Madonna has stayed comfortably on the groove, so to speak. I'd gripe about it being lazy and uninspired, but I can't exactly claim that making pop music is brainless work.

I'd be more inclined toward bitchiness if Madonna was one of those Tin Pan Alley manufactured cutouts like dear old Britney, but I have to give the woman credit where credit is due; she's written or co-written nearly all of her biggest singles, and is the second best-selling female artist of all time (right beneath Barbara Streisand; go figure). As Michael Jackson is to modern hip-hop and R&B, Madonna is to the modern dance floor.

Modern Rock Canon - Smash Mouth

As much as I like to play up the whole 'music snob' angle (both on this blog and in my day-to-day life) certain bands bring me back down to Earth and make me realize that I am also susceptible to canny pop styles and nostalgia. "Drops Of Jupiter" still brings a smile to my face, "One Week" makes me grin like a loon, and "Walkin' On The Sun" is still one of my favorite songs. My hipster cred is officially gone. Thank god for that; I feel lighter already.

Smash Mouth was one of the 'alternative pop-rock' bands that sprouted up in the post-Nirvana mainstream. They were never challenging and their music never breached a comfortable decibel ceiling. The most subversive thing about them was some minor ska influences, much like the similarly successful No Doubt. They also demonstrate one of the more important aspects of pop music, that often gets overlooked; advertisement.

Advertising music is not a concept that comes easily to most bands. The last ad for a CD I saw on TV was for one of those NOW Music compilations; the last one for a band I saw was one for Nickelback during the early-00s. No band that claims to be 'alternative' or 'independent' will buy direct ad space on television (they will on radio though; that's what a single is, after all) but bands that are labeled 'alternative' or 'indie' will often be featured quite prominently in all kinds of mediums. The most significant? Film.

I've mentioned this before in the context of Roy Orbison's woefully brief comeback during the late-80s and it holds just as true for many other groups. Smash Mouth is a wonderfully textbook example; what's the first song by them that pops into your head? Was it "All Star" or "I'm A Believer"? The key feature of both of those isn't hooks or brilliant lyrics, it's the fact that they were both prominently featured in the blockbuster movie Shrek. At least, that's what I believe.

It's a simple numbers game. Most of the best-selling albums worldwide top out at around 40-50 million units sold (with the exception of Thriller, which sold over double that amount). This is all very well and good, but sales like that put those few albums close to dead last when put into movie terms. Pirates Of The Caribbean: Curse Of The Black Pearl was a pretty big movie, selling an estimated 50,648,900 tickets (Box Office Mojo). This puts it at 90 out a 100 on a list of top tickets sold. Gone With The Wind sold about four times that many tickets (202,044,600) (Ibid), which is twice as many copies as Thriller did (~110 million). The difference is astronomical and very obvious; more people see movies than buy albums.

Similarly, television can achieve the same effect. You know Moby, right? The only reason you do is his impressive campaign to mass market his breakthrough album, Play. Make no mistake, it's a great album but far less people would have bought it if Moby hadn't put every song into ads, TV shows, and other mediums outside of radio. It was a brilliant marketing strategy that ensured that Moby would never have to try again.

This is how songs/artists persist in the public consciousness; exposure. This is why success is not a viable metric for musical quality; because if it was then Whitney Houston is one of the greatest musicians of all time. Even better than the Black Eyed Peas.

Genre Dictionary - No Alternative

I briefly touched on the alternative genre in my write-up of Nirvana, but some of the terms I called up deserve further exploration, mainly to address how similar it is to classic rock. Again, much of this comes from my own knowledge; I'm not putting a lot of research into this and, as a result, my presented history may differ somewhat from reality. If you care, I suggest looking up some authoritative sources, as opposed to an amateur blog.

The easiest source to cite for alternative music is the post-punk movement of the early 80s. Though difficult to define, post-punk can be understood as any group with similarities to Joy Division (except for modern ripoffs like Interpol and She Wants Revenge; they both fit more comfortably into generic alt. rock) or Public Image Ltd, depending on the band's country of origin. Post-punk is noted as 'difficult' music; it owes a great debt to the Krautrock movement of the mid/late-70s and therefore uses a lot of synthesizers, odd time signatures, and abstract/absent melodic structures. There's a lot of focus placed on rhythm and on the twisting of melodies, making it the direct predecessor to drone, shoegaze, noise rock, and No Wave. Important figures include the aforementioned bands, along with the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed's solo career, Kraftwerk, The Stooges, Iggy Pop (especially The Idiot), David Bowie, certain Beatles' songs ("Revolution 9", "Helter Skelter", etc) (proving once again that they had their little hands in nearly everything), Brian Eno, and King Crimson (technically progressive rock).

For the alternative genre, post-punk is best understood through the lens of the seminal New York group, Sonic Youth. More likely to walk on their instruments then play them, Sonic Youth helped bring the genre more into the light of the day via a few surprise successes in the late-80s, particularly Daydream Nation. If you've ever read Pitchfork than you've no doubt heard enough fellatio for Thruston Moore and Kim Gordan, so I'm going to leave things at that. Other majors groups falling under the post-punk umbrella are Dinosaur Jr, Pavement (another favorite of Pitchfork), Nine Inch Nails, The Birthday Party, and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.

This is all very similar to the rise of punk in the late 70s; the post-punk/proto-alternative bands had some popularity and a lot of notoriety, but they were largely ignored within the pop scene. Sonic Youth were hardly a match for Madonna; after all, you can't really dance to "Teen Age Riot".

Also notable, but not fully under the banner of post-punk due to their more conventional song structures, were the Pixies. I've mentioned them before and I'm bound to mention them again; the Pixies are, in my mind, the modern equivalent of the Velvet Underground. While VU inspired punk and post-punk, the Pixies inspired the modern interpretation of alternative rock by way of Nirvana.

I've covered this before so I'll stick with a summary: Nirvana basically took the basic formula used by the Pixies (soft-loud-soft song structures) and combined it with melody, thus defining alternative rock for the early-90s.

I'm avoiding the use of 'grunge' because it's a terribly misapplied. Grunge only describes one Nirvana album (Bleach) and refers to a lo-fi sound best equatable to garage rock. Dinosaur Jr was grunge; The Meat Puppets were grunge; PJ Harvey's first two albums were grunge; Nirvana was only grunge when Sub-Pop forced them to be.

Which brings me to my next point; alternative rock is horribly bloated. The same genre contains any number of groups that sound nothing like one another; the link between Soundgarden and Smashing Pumpkins is tenuous, at best. One owes a debt to Led Zeppelin and other first-wave metal groups, while the other pays homage to baroque pop with post-punk sensibilities. Do you realize Bjork is considered alternative? How does she sound anything like VU (aside from the Nico comparison)? It's all nonsense, just like classic rock.

The 'grunge' of the early-90s gradually gave way to the much maligned adult alternative of John Mayer and the Dave Matthews Band, as well as the even more bizarrely named post-grunge genre, which was basically alt. rock with the piss taken out of it (Matchbox 20, Nickelback, Goo Goo Dolls). Post-grunge is best compared to New Wave in terms of genre relations; a follow-up movement specially calculated to be mainstream. I'd call it No Wave, but that one's been coined already. How about fuzz pop? It sure as hell isn't 'alternative', considering it was manufactured for the radio.

That last bit, by the by, is the reason I think alternative rock imploded in on itself; the artists involved didn't want to be popular. They were alternative after all, it was the same pitfall punk hit back in the late 70s, and it was solved by radio in the exact same way.

I should also bring up the fact that alternative rock technically includes nearly every genre that emerged in the 90s, including rap rock and funk rock. This is ridiculous for reasons I shouldn't even have to address.

Alternative Canon - Nirvana

Had things been a little different, I firmly believe that Nirvana could have been yet another divisive artist in pop music history. The 90s were, thanks mainly to the bizarrely large success of "Smells Like Teens Spirit" and Nevermind were the home of the now collapsed alternative rock genre, along with his sibling/child sub-genres of grunge, No Wave, post-grunge, noise rock (to a minimal extent), Brit rock, and post-punk (all those Joy Division rip offs basically; Nick Cave has never been mainstream). This gave way to rap and, later still, hip-hop, club, and contemporary R&B, essentially a backtracking to Michael Jackson. Somehow, the alternative genre experienced a disco-esque lifespan; a monumentally large success matched in degree only by its brevity.

A large part of this was no doubt the apparent instability of the genres major groups. Nirvana dissolved when Kurt Cobain passed away, Alice In Chains went into limbo when Layne Staley overdosed, and none of the other major groups in the grunge wave seemed to have any staying power (Stone Temple Pilots and Pearl Jam only really made two good albums each, Soundgarden fell through when Chris Cornell went crazy, Temple Of The Dog had similar problems with deaths, etc).

The other issue was one of size. Even at its peak, grunge was a very tiny genre compared to other mainstream flavor-of-the-months. Its fellows in the alternative rock umbrella also suffered from the simple fact that they identified themselves as alternative. Melodic hooks served as an exception to oftentimes off-putting cacophonies of sound, especially in the noise rock and No Wave movements captured by groups like Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine. Each of these groups had a few radio-friendly unit shifters peppered in amongst a sea of feedback and distortion, like "Where Is My Mind?" on Surfer Rosa. They didn't want staying power; they wanted obscurity, like punk before them.

Nirvana seemed the major exception to this rule. While Layne Staley seemed to have a similar love for sheer melody, Kurt Cobain embraced it in a way that no other alternative musician ever did. Pearl Jam was the closest band in terms of approach but, lets face it, they never had anything on Nirvana. The best you can say about Eddie Vedder and his merry men is that they had better solos.

I'm sure music fans are getting in a tizzy reading this, but you have to look at the facts. Even on Bleach, probably the least radio-friendly album Nirvana made, you can see Cobain's touches of melody. The only real differences between that album and the landmark Nevermind are production and approach; the group's debut was tailor made to fit into what was then considered grunge at the behest of their label, Sub-Pop, while Nevermind was more unsupervised due to the recent success of Sonic Youth. On that album, and even on the deliberately uneven In Utero, melody was king. It was that contrast, along with the terraced dynamics that Cobain ripped from the Pixies, that made their music interesting.

Pop Music Canon - Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson is the second-most recognizable artist/group of all time, standing neck-and-neck with The Beatles. Unfortunately, much of this attention is based more in questioning his personal life than admiring his oftentimes brilliant musical output. Because of this, I again encounter the problem of a topic covered once too many, so I'm not going to waste time with a summary of what everyone knows. Instead, I'm going to focus on Jackson's significance in my overall flowchart of pop music.

I've mentioned earlier that The Beatles represented a divisive moment in pop history. There is pre-Beatles pop (crooners, vocal jazz, rockabilly, and rock and roll) and post-Beatles pop (what we understand as classic rock, blue-eyed soul [also popularized by Roy Orbison], and psychedelic rock). In the same way, there is pre-Jackson pop (disco, New Wave, synthpop) and post-Jackson pop (contemporary R&B, neo-soul, R&B, new jack swing, modern dance music). Both groups were important in how they combined the elements that came before them into what came after them; you could consider the two groups as bottlenecks in simplified schematics of pop music (note that this excludes metal, punk, and goth, which are basically small sub-groups of the mainstream).

In radio terms, Michael Jackson brought about both the end and beginning of classic rock. Before Jackson and the pop music of the late 80s (think Madonna), classic rock existed as AOR stations (previously discussed in the Roy Orbison post), which played the same basic music but with a slightly larger setlist. The name change, I suspect, was due to a shift in perspective; before Michael Jackson, AOR still existed on the fringes of pop music. Artists fitting into the genre were still accumulating (and would continue to do so through the end of the decade, albeit at a slower pace) and were exhibiting influences from the rest of the pop spectrum (AOR + synthpop = Steve Perry's Journey, for example). After Michael Jackson, pop music consolidated/collapsed around him and R&B as a whole, leaving AOR in limbo. AOR was no longer pop, but there was still some demand for it. Therefore, canny corporations created classic rock, and DJs perpetuated it.

This was the last major divisive moment of pop history. Modern pop (contemporary R&B) carries the indelible mark of Michael Jackson, and will continue to do so until the next breath of fresh air comes along. My guess? Synthrock.