Task 2.

Adorno on popular music.

Adorno believes that in music there are 'two spheres to music'; serious music such as Bach and Beethoven and popular 'pop' music; presumably from his seperation of the two, he is implying that this is not serious. The first compotent that he believes is completely apparent in all popular music is standardisation; 'The whole structure of popular music is standardized, even where the attempt is made to circumvent standardization' (Adorno, 2002 p 438). By this he means that everything we listen to is pre-accepted; we as the audience know what to expect from popular music and we want what are taught to expect; there is not attention to detail. For example, we expect there to be a chorus in a song, the emphasis placed on that section, the placement of it in the song and repetition of it makes it the most recognisable part but in serious music, the song only works as a whole.

Another area that he considers is pseudo-individualisation. 'By pseudo-individualization we mean endowing cultural mass production with the halo of free choice or open market on the basis of standardization itself...for its part, it keeps them in line by making them forget that what they listen to is already listened to for them, or 'pre-digested'' (Adorno, 2002 p445); when people think they are expressing their indivduality by listening to a certain artist, you're infact just imitating the artist and their other followers therefore not being individual at all.

One of latter points he examines, is the concept of 'recognition and acceptance'. 'Popular music...The basic principle behind it is that one need only repeat something until it is recognised in order to make it accepted' (Adorno, 2002 p452), when it is written clearly it becomes quite an obvious point; if you repeat something so many times, eventually people will start recognising it resulting in it becoming an accepted piece of music; if this is the forumla to create a successful hit, there is no need for music companies to try something completely different. Recognition of the framework in popular music therefore destroys any chance for there to be something 'new' in the songs; if you recognise a piece of serious music, its because it has presented something new.

It is clearly evident throughout the essay that Adorno is by no means a fan of popular music, he believes to be just another product of mass culture and it doesn't appreciate the true art of music.

'On Popular Music' in Adorno, T., Leppert, R. and Gillespie, S. (2002), Essays on Music/Theodor W.Adorno; selected, with introduction, commentary and notes by Richard Leppert; new translations by Susan H. Gillespie, California, University of California Press

My Chemical Romance - Welcome to the Black Parade



I chose this video after reading more into 'psuedo-individualization'. Fans of My Chemical Romance, largely teenagers, seem to make it a way of life; they immitate most aspects of the bands appearance and the band members become their heroes; it got to the point where you could look at a person and preempt that they were a fan of this band just from the way that they looked, presumably they do this to express their individuality yet by doing it, they are simply imitating the artist and their millions of other followers concluding in them being far from individual.