London, Paris, New York, Munich; everyone listen to the same pop music.
I remember a television interview with Jeff Beck from a few years ago, when he described a generation of rock guitarists who were ‘trying to play the same guitar solo’. That’s one of the problems that comes with heroes – but heroes set benchmarks and inspire achievement. In contrast, Simon Cowell’s X Factor ‘talent show’ places musical ambition low on its agenda...
Away from pockets of inspiration and ingenuity, the pop flotilla has shipped so much water that it’s now dragging along the bottom. Even yesterday’s gems are feeling more than a little damp – the UK’s Gold radio station claims to play ‘the greatest hits of all time’, but the brevity of its playlist quickly makes some old classics grate. Surely there is something more?
You could read into this that we have simply mined all there is from pop’s format – how much can you do with a few chords in four minutes that hasn’t been done (probably better) already?
Certainly, Cowell’s approach to the music business further undermines both the value of talent and its best interests. Rather than creating good music, he’s exploiting people’s lust for fame. It is also true that the X Factor final drew a third of the UK’s population as its viewing audience, and that a 30-second ad slot during the X Factor final would have cost you a cool £250,000. Maybe people don’t care too much about music any more…
Personally I don’t think the pop formula is all used up. Why?
Cry freedom
Sitting in a recording studio decorated with children’s bedroom wallpaper I interviewed Stewart Copeland about his album The Rhythmatist back in 1985. Following something of the brief set by David Fanshaw with his African Sanctus a decade earlier, Copeland had toured Africa and brought back recordings of some of its indigenous music to incorporate into his own compositions. Astutely and significantly, Copeland discussed his inability to properly represent music that might have taken 12 hours to unfold using First World recording technology and techniques.
It was a point that I later put to Peter Gabriel during a press conference at one of his Real World recording sessions during the 1990s. Having invited artists from around the world to his studios in England, Gabriel set them loose to collaborate and sat back to see what would result from the likes of Jah Wobble and Papa Wemba sharing ideas.
I asked Gabriel if he felt his recording set-up would force a Western shape on the recordings in the same way Copeland had implied. He said that when his British multitrack ran out of tape, his Japanese DAT machine would keep on recording. The press rewarded him with appreciative laughter. I wasn’t certain whether he’d missed the point or neatly evaded it.
Both were looking for new angles on what ‘pop music’ might be, and both were having trouble.
In my own recording experience, I often found restrictions to have beneficial effects – working an over-ambitious arrangement down to fit a limited number of tracks is a good way of identifying the most essential elements, for example. This line of thinking surfaced in conversation recently, and I was swiftly directed to advertising guru David Ogilvy’s request for ‘the freedom of a tight brief’. To ram the point home, this was followed up with a quote from TS Eliot: ‘When forced to work within a framework, the imagination is taxed to its utmost – and will produce its richest ideas’.
So now we have it. The best artistry on offer to X Factor final viewers wasn’t Cowells’ Carnival, but more probably the work of the ad agencies shown in the commercial breaks.
And with fresh insight, I’m resurrecting my musical career. I’m off to take the liberating formula of punk’s three chords and 4/4 time signature and distill it further. I’m already working on an album of songs using a two-chord groove and waltz time. I can see it sitting very well next to Dave Brubeck’s Time Out.