Song form as musical material

Dialectic of pop, Agnes Gayraud – book

Dialectic –

- the art of investigating or discussing the truth of opinions.

- inquiry into metaphysical contradictions and their solutions.
- the existence or action of opposing social forces, concepts, etc.

Pop music defined by being contradictory to itself

A hit, Smog (2002) – “it’s not going to be a hit so why even bother with it”

Pop music that resists its own popularness

Pop music is in a relationship with itself, its self-aware and thus contradicts itself

On sight, Kanye West (2013)

Abrasive, obnoxious start – meant to tell you what you’re going to listen to

Lynda Bengelis – material

Theodore Adorno quote on slides + Dialectic of Pop answer

“the song form as the most fundamental of song materials” – in a relationship with itself

Song form as material –

- ‘three-chords’ as material, staple of pop music (Bad Moon Rising, Who could win a rabbit,
etc) – I IV V chord structure
- Songs singing of themselves (No Pressure as a response to Under Pressure)

‘Hyperpop’

- Exploring maximalism and an exaggerated relationship with the poppiest moments of pop
- Contentious term, developed out of Spotify lumping a group of sounds together
- PC music (record label, poptomism movement, Gaga, Nicki – music getting big and
maximalist) and 100 gecs (band that album started the hyperpop spotify thing)
- ‘tropes of pop music that are being played with are not, like, making fun of it’ Umru
- Drop FM (2015), A.G. Cook feat. Hannah Diamond
- Immaterial (2017), SOPHIE reference to Material Girl (1984), Madonna – material double
entendre utilised in the song
- Glitter up the Dark: How pop music broke the binary, Sasha Geffen – Pop music as a site for
destabilising the gender binary, historical and modern contexts through the book
- Crystal Blight: Hyperpop origins and futures, NTS Show (2021)

A reprise is not a copy –

- Agnes Gayraud Quote on slides

- Need to feel your love (2017), Sheer Mag ‘biting at the forbidden fruit of 1970’s hard rock’
- Disco inflected 1970’s hard rock, very particular trend that happened late 1970’s
- Fluidity of genre as a music material to play with, rock as a tool to be utilised by other artists,
for instance – subversion of previous forms
 - Lana Del Rey – referencing an old-fashioned contemporary sound (Nancy Sinatra, etc) and
aestheticizing the past, Americana and Orchestration
- Anachronism of ‘Video Games’ – style in contrast to the lyrics and name – disrupting the
world she’s created
- ‘For those who came of age during the war on terror, for whom adolescence was announced
by 9/11 and for whom failed wars, a massive recession, and a total surveillance apparatus
were the paranoid gifts of our adulthood, Lana Del Rey gives us a patriotism we can act out.
Hers isn’t a love song to America; it’s a how-to manual. […] The cowboys of yesteryear
charged with “taming the frontier” are now just white men in hats with guns. And Lana will
sing about them pretending they’re the most interesting men in the world.’1
- Lana Del Rey engaging with a conflicted idea of America
- ‘Ultraviolence’ engages with ‘He hit me (it felt like a kiss)’ – conflicted past of America,
holistic approach to her own aesthetic
- Referencing the darkness of the aesthetic she is mimicking

‘Walk on by’

- Dionne Warwick (1964) – quintessential 60’s sound

- Isaac Hayes (1969) – 12m, grand scale
- 1968 is one of the most chaotic and tumultuous years in modern American history: Vietnam
war, MLK assassinated, riots following his death, social, political and economic upheaval
- Isaac Hayes ‘Walk on by’ sampled, covered and used a lot – the sample becomes a piece of
musical material

French New Wave Cinema

- Jean Luc Godard, Breathless (1960)

- An outsiders interpretation of American films after ww2

Tension between

- Pop songs singing of themselves vs imprisonment in the past

Seminar assignment – should be announcement

1 Ayesha Siddiqi, ‘Ms. America’, The New Inquiry, 2014.