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TechnoratiHeartbreak Beat: the lonely state of rock music
Contemporary artists are turning away from social commentary to make soundtracks for navel-gazing.
Last week, Apple sold its millionth iPhone. Two weeks before that, it was announced that Apple and Starbucks were teaming up, making it possible to purchase the now-playing tune in certain Starbucks locations wirelessly through your iPhone. Apple, the company that popularised the image of the hipster wandering around in his or her own, private sonic bubble, is now spreading that isolation to the business person, the car-pooler, and everyone else who uses a cell phone. And the music that people can buy on iTunes is getting more and more lonesome.
Not that the field is shrinking, however. As more and more people buy music through the internet instead of through big box stores, more and more bands—who just couldn’t be crammed onto the shelves at brick-and-mortar stores—are gaining more and more listeners. At the same time, the decline of CD sales in stores is shrinking the music departments in those stores. The mainstream, as represented by those CD sections, is shrinking, even while the music field is opening up to more and more independent artists. Music, both in its production and its consumption, is becoming more and more individualistic.
Today’s songs are the product of a society that’s been splintering ever since the invention of the nuclear family. They enforce the notion that meaning and fulfilment are ultimately personal and subjective quests. They are evidence of rampant relativism.
Musical taste has often been used as a sign of personal identity. Punks, gangstas, Goths, cowboys, etc., all have their own genres of music to go with their senses of personal expression. But with the rise of the internet as a musical search tool, the sense of community that once fostered the growth of such subcultures is fading away or being replaced by virtual communities. Music is becoming less and less a group phenomenon and more an element of the personal quest for meaning and definition.
Don’t believe me? Try listening to some of the up-and-coming rock bands that have released CDs recently.
Individual quests
Some of these bands—like the Arctic Monkeys or Arcade Fire—are the hot new things, still early in their careers. Some—like the Decemberists and Belle & Sebastian—have been around the indie circuit for years. It’s only recently that they’ve gotten big-label recording contracts as the music industry tries to capture more of a market that’s slipping away. And one—Nine Inch Nails—has had a big label contract for a decade, but has only been heard on the radio in the last couple of years. It’s an outsider band moving in, something that’s always been a feature of rock music. And all of these bands play rock of one stripe or another; rock is the most fluid and broadest genre, and changes in its scene are indications not only of the state of music today, but also of the state of the audience.
That state is most clearly gauged by the lyrics. Like the market that sells them, those lyrics are shifting away from discussions of abstract or social phenomenon (love songs and protest songs, in other words) and focusing more on the individual’s search for meaning in the modern world. The transition has not always been smooth; a couple of social-commentary concept albums have come out recently. But the individual quest gets in the way of the social one.
Staring into the abyss
Take Trent Reznor, for example, who records under the name Nine Inch Nails. He’s always written deeply personal lyrics and used to be the voice of the heroin-addicted, anti-establishment outsider. His introspection was the aural equivalent of staring into the abyss and having it stare back at you.
But Reznor sobered up and started writing political albums, and even long-time fans of his innovative industrial style were sorely disappointed in his latest effort, Year Zero. The album depicts a world at war, one whose subjects are ready to rebel against an elected leader who "signs his name with a capital G." (It’s not meant to be subtle.) The first-hand accounts on Year Zero come from the point of view of a soldier fifteen years in the future. Some of the images and emotions in these songs are compelling in brief flashes, but Reznor is too far removed from his subject matter to make it really gripping. He’s trying to impose his political opinions on a different character, one who’s lost in a chaotic world.
Reznor’s confidence in his own opinion and the soldier’s loss of self clash awkwardly and make for some downright boring songs. The album is meant to spur political resistance to the Bush administration, but one man does not a movement make. Without a crowd—without a society to speak for, as well as one to speak against—his social commentary is trite and ineffectual. Individualism here cripples an attempt at painting with a broader brush.
The same problem dogs Arcade Fire’s much-lauded sophomore effort, Neon Bible. The music is mellow for rock, but hard rockin’ for the orchestra and pipe organ that create a densely layered sound behind the vocals. For most of the album, a lone voice struggles to rise over an ocean of noise—the title of one of the best songs, in fact. But several of the songs, in spite of their complex structures and orchestration, suffer like Year Zero from too-vague lyrics of generic social complaint. The mid-album ballad "(Antichrist Television Blues)" is a 14-verse collection of caricatures: a fundamentalist Christian father fears planes will "keep crashing two by two" into the "buildings downtown," and he prays to God to make his little girl a star while he JonBenet’s her on TV.
But the songs about personal nightmares and the loss of faith—or just of direction—are poignant. I doubt Arcade Fire have met real fundamentalists—again, personal opinion clashes with art—but I believe they have, at some point, felt lost in the postmodern world. That’s a malaise that the lone DJ, surfing an ocean of information without much in the way of a reliable guide, can identify with.
Character delineation
The individual story and the one-on-one encounter are taking over the genre once defined by events like Woodstock. England’s Arctic Monkeys, one of the biggest breakout acts of 2006, create sharp portraits of blokes and birds who are vividly alive in the band’s manic, two-guitar sound. Their newest album, Favourite Worst Nightmare, is dark, and its portraits are as full of warts as they are of vitality. But there’s more matter in these finely detailed snapshots of club life than in any vague message of serious social import. Here the individuals presented are not the band members, and the clarity and compassion in these portraits give individualism the ability to rise up into universal, if profanity-laden, truth.
Likewise, Belle & Sebastian have released an entire album of individual snapshots fleshed out into narratives. Bookended by a two-part tale of a young woman trying to make sense of life, The Life Pursuit is full of bittersweet tales set to upbeat tunes reminiscent of sixties bubblegum-pop and seventies disco. These are stories of ordinary lives pursued down corridors of unspoken love, declared indifference, and dreams that somehow slipped away with the years. Like the songs on Favourite Worst Nightmare, the music of Belle & Sebastian begins in the individual but carries far more weight than mere personal opinion.
More dramatic yarns are spun on the latest album from The Decemberists, The Crane Wife. Set to a folk-influenced sound that breaks out into rock and roll from time to time, The Crane Wife is full of stories of rape, murder, arson, haunting, and war. These songs are not so much bittersweet as they are violent and depressing, with an occasional glimmer of hope. The stories are also less believable than those recounted on The Life Pursuit, the characters more caricatures than those on Favourite Worst Nightmare. The individual stories here never rise above the individual. The Decemberists favour archaic language and Dickensian settings; the artifice is obvious and weakens the songs’ impact. Belle & Sebastian and the Arctic Monkeys, on the other hand, have created albums that don’t feel like art, but rather like life as we know it.
Introspection becomes self-indulgence
There is a danger inherent in writing about life as we know it: too much introspection quickly becomes self-indulgence. The focus on the individual can devolve into mere selfishness. This is the trouble with indie supergroup The New Pornographers. Their latest album, Challengers, is a musical departure from their previous pop sound. Orchestral instruments and mellower moods dominate this new album, but the lyrics, like those on the previous album, Twin Cinema, are still focused on the search for fulfilment. The New Pornographers never find it, though, getting lost instead in a maze of obscure lyrics, modulating bedfellows, and random digressions.
There are occasional flashes of connection, as on the slow and lovely "Go Places" or the tentatively sympathetic "Adventures in Solitude." For the most part, however, these songs are the epitome of the personal. There are suggestions on Challengers that there’s something more out there, but the protagonists are too vain to forget themselves and go after it.
If rock music is shifting focus, it may also shift form. Sufjan Stevens, on his album Come On, Feel the Illinoise!, creates symphonic reflections out of voices, horns, piano, a drum set, and, yes, guitar. Stevens not only combines instruments; he also combines personal confessions with flashes of American history to generate a call to conversion. He confesses his own weaknesses, his own sins, his hopes and fears, and he sets them against a larger background. The result being that when he asks, "What have we become, America?" the question is honestly probing.
If these lyrics suffer, it is from an overload of detail and reference, not from vagueness and disconnection. If Sufjan Stevens manages to reconnect with larger crowds, it is by leaving his home and walking out into the streets of Illinois (he’s done it to Michigan and says he’ll to it to the other 48 states). Whether he inspires listeners to do the same remains to be seen.
Soundtracks for navel-gazing
That he does inspire listeners is beyond question. Music affects its hearers. The music above lacks the spur to rebellion for which rock has been castigated in days past. It also, for the most part, eschews the kind of heavy beat that makes you want to get up and move. This is not music to dance to, and not music to sin to—at least physically. This is music to drive to, or to sit and listen to and think about. These albums, with their emphasis on the individual, are a soundtrack for navel-gazing. Whether that gaze is honest, therapeutic, or merely self-satisfied depends more on the listener than the artist.
Ultimately, it’s the listener who acts on the music. And what the listener does in terms of sales affects what the next round of artists will do. Music, like any cultural artefact, is as much a product of society as an influence on it. In the case of current trends in rock music and music sales, today’s songs are the product of a society that’s been splintering ever since the invention of the nuclear family. They enforce the notion that meaning and fulfilment are ultimately personal and subjective quests. They are evidence of rampant relativism.
Fortunately, there is also some evidence of hope. The music of the Arctic Monkeys, Belle & Sebastian, and Sufjan Stevens suggests that meaning and fulfilment are quests facilitated by involvement in the lives of others—and possibly completely satisfied by that involvement. They hint at the possible reintegration of society: if we’re willing to become emotionally and poetically involved in the lives they describe, what’s to stop us from putting down the iPod and walking out the front door to get involved with people closer to us?
Kate Bluett hails from Irving, Texas, and is a contributing editor of Salvo magazine.
Comments to “Heartbreak Beat: the lonely state of rock music” have been closed. Thanks to all who contributed.
Meridian,
What I wish for you is joy; true, detached, selfless joy. If joy is not at the center of your jurney, why would you bother; why would any of us? This kind of join can only be seen from the “other” side of where you are standing.
“Does ‘natural law’ explain how to answer those questions? Without being influenced by culture, faith, education, or socioeconomic status?” Very important - the answer is yes.
Your posts (as well and Artemisian’s) suggest that God or faith are ends to a means. That we, somehow can fashion God to our own likeness, or see the creatore of the universe, without relying on faith. God does not exist, because we agree to believe in him. IF he is the creator of the universe, and the arbiter of natural law, then our opinion is not even remotley important to the discusssion. THAT is why Gosd is not popular these days - because we don’t like to be told what to do - what is good and what is bad. But remember, we didn’t make the world, we just happen to live here for a while - there are rules to the game.
In other words, try to examine the world, starting from scratch.
“Something” created all this, it’s to complictaed and too complex to have randomy created itself. Science makes a living out of examining creation, but like it or not scientists, the masters of reason, rely on faith. Faith in the previous generations of science and scientists.
Natural law is no different than any other law of nature. It’s like gravity. When the world was created, it was created with a certain set of standards. So we can have an awareness of good and bad.
We don’t have to re-invent the wheel.
Keep up the journey - but remember there are answers to your questions.
Peace
Artemisian,
You didn’t answer my question about the dog?
Not that it’ll shock, but I’m with meridian when it comes to the existence of objectivity. It always disturbs me just a little to know that I something I consider abhorrent, such as rape, is only bad because of opinion. I mean ... if I carry that view to it’s conclusion, nothing is inherently evil. And that notion, while I would preach it, disturbs me.
I agree that a debate is always good fun, and I hope someone out there appreciates the effort I’m making right now to be literate. I just watched Harsh Times, and every second word in my mental monologue is “dawg”. I’m restraining myself, homies.
what a healthy debate going on in here! :)
Michael, I do understand where you’re coming from. I guess my problem lies in the existence of objectivity. Regardless of emotion, there are still the firmly held beliefs, thoughts, and life experiences all threatening to slant any particular human creation - including art.
I cannot grasp the idea of standards of excellence. There are just so many different kinds of people in this world and what is deemed excellent can vary from culture to culture, and especially from generation to generation. Look at the Sambia from New Guinea and you may see what I mean.
Some folks often cling to what they deem ‘natural law’ when faced with revolutionary movement...People thought it unnatural and immoral for women to work, vote, or control their own reproduction.
How can something so constantly changing ever be absolute?
Some practices that were once considered perfectly acceptable are now illegal, shameful, barbaric. Today, people cannot agree to what is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ concerning reproductive rights, civil rights, war, climate change, marriage, etc.
Does ‘natural law’ explain how to answer those questions? Without being influenced by culture, faith, education, or socioeconomic status?
I think perhaps only a machine could produce objectivity, and maybe not even then, since at one point or another, a human being helped create it. and watch, then the machine would evolve to possess its own conscience & we’d be in an entirely different discussion. :)
Even though we don’t all agree, it’s definitely “good” for our brains to analyze & philosophize like this! But I mean that subjectively, of course. Others may think it’s a total waste of time. :)
I love that assumption that I think I’m more intelligent than Lewis. It has absolutely nothing to do with it; it’s simply that if I had a reading list, he wouldn’t be approaching the top. There are many intelligent authors I’m simply not interested in. That’s called personal taste, my friend.
I’ve been told before I have strange views on faith, but so be it. I don’t think it’s the right of any person to dispute the faith of another. It’s arrogant to presume that your religion is more true than another.It’s all based on the same crap in the end anyway. Personally, I found a deity I have affection for, and that’s that.
The discussion of positive and negative as absolutes could well be endless. I’m refusing to even begin that debate. But I will add that I don’t think pornography is a bad thing; far from it. If you get down to it, sex is supposed to reproductive, and probably at least a little enjoyable (more incentive for reporduction, after all). That’s about it. Intimate and personal is just the emotional spin on it. Not devaluing the act; I think sex between two people can be incredibly precious. I’m just not dressing it up in a way I consider unreasonable.
Tell you what. Once I’m done with my current book and it’s nresulting essay, and the one that’s one hold for this one, I’ll have a look for Abolition at my university library. I highly doubt it will enthrall me, but I could be wrong. Who knows.
As to my impact on society - ha! Thanks for the high compliment, friend. But I’ve got a vague inkling that I’ll be happy to be earning enough to get myself a nice house. Ambition be damned.
I’m drifting off-topic. Consider that a hint.
Herself,
I’m confused again. Positive and negative are absolutes. But, you don’t believe in them. If you don’t believe in them, does that mean they don’t exist?
To help you; Positve and negative are dispositions. Good and Bad are moral definitions.
Art can be negative and good - Shindler’s List is an example. Just as it can be positive and bad - pornography, for example.
Pornography is not bad, becuse it exposes nudity or the sexcual act - The human body is a thing of beauty and the sexual act is intended to be supremely good. These things are thus positive. Pornography is bad because it exploits what was intended to be intimate and personal.
Dear Herself,
“I believe that any person may have any God they want, and that is true for their faith”.
So , if I want my dog to be my God - does that make my dog my God? Obviously, not wanting to again be redundant, that must be what you mean. So would that then mean that my dog created me? Please enlighten me.
“Why the hell would I read Abolition of Man?… And C.S. Lewis has never enthralled me, whether it’s his writing or his views”.
How would you know about those views of his found in this essay, if you’ve never read it?
I realize you of course are far more intelligent than Lewis, I can tell that by your writing. Perhaps then, you would consider reading these three chapters just because of the millions of copies of books Lewis has sold and his 60 years of continued impact on society.
I realize your impact on society will be far greater than his in the next 60 years, but maybe you could stoop to read it, for our discussion’s sake.
What do you say?
“I love your line that “Beauty is different for every member of the human race”. I suppose you will then tell me that truth is different for every member of the human race, or that each member of the human race has a different God or that what’s good for you may be bad for me. This sounds exactly like the screwed up world we live in.”
You know what? Yes, I do believe that. I believe that any person may have any God they want, and that is true for their faith. And I’ve had that opinion for years.
If you shoot me in the head, I don’t think it would be good. Obviously. Instinct of self-preservation and all that. But someone else thinks it would be, thinks that ‘ignorant’ is the lowest insult in existence. Who knows. But you did hit upon a point with the usage of the word never - as I don’t believe in absolutes, that is a redundant word to use. Thanks for making that point.
I think art can be whatever it wants; just doesn’t mean I’ll like it. Frankly, I’m not overly into most traditional art, I prefer digital creations. But something about the word “good” just has positive implications. Call me crazy. Shoot me in the head.
Why the hell would I read Abolition of Man? Frankly, I’ve got other things on my reading list I consider far more important. If nothing else, I’m tearing through a book for study. And C.S. Lewis has never enthralled me, whether it’s his writing or his views.
Oh, a final little insert. /Her/self, if it’s all the same.
Artemisian,
I am edified by the fact that you know I made a really ignorant statement. I am further edified by your intense illuminations, especially regarding relativism. Boy are you original.
The thing I don’t understand is how could someone as smart as yourself, read that I know art is only art if it good beautiful and true, and from that conclude that I wrote that art can only reflect on positive things. I guess you are too smart to see the beauty in pain. How about the beauty in suffering? Either for the good of someone else or the lessons learned to make the world a better place by witnessing suffering? Suffering is not really positive, but it can be beautiful.
Art is not subjective - crappy art is subjective.
I’ve seen people glue two pieces of strofoam together, paint it red, call it art ands see intelligent people sit around and “marvel” at this pathetic piece of garbage. Self expression is only art if it’s good, otherwise it’s just a self-indulgent pitty party.
I love your line that “Beauty is different for every member of the human race”. I suppose you will then tell me that truth is different for every memeber of the human race, or that each member of the human race has a different God or that what’s good for you may be bad for me. This sounds exactly like the screwed up world we live in.
So, if you were in front of me right now, I could shoot you in the head, because you called me ignorant, and that would be good? Or does “never” not really mean “never” to you. How about if that’s how I want to express myself? I think you may be the one who just damned himself.
BTW, if I’m so ignorant, did you read The Abolition of Man?
Meridian,
I appreciate your attempt to correct the author. I also am glad you stand up for NIN, because you like their work.
I think you can go deeper regarding those who believe in a creator. You are right about there being “nothing new there”, in fact Paul of Tarsus wrote 2000 years ago that there was nothing new under the sun.
Just because something is objective does not make it emotionless. Art can not be created without emotion but emotion is fleeting, only truth is firm.
It’s the difference between a one night stand and a golden wedding anniversary. You speak of values but then seem to be arguing that the objective reality required to identify what is of value is dead and emotionless.
Art is a detachment from gratification and sentimentality. Art is grafted to the pain and difficulties of life. These things are not sappy and fleeting, they are sturdy and noble and solid.
Men without chests are void of character; attached to relativist sentimentality; determined to avoid all pain and gravitate to all pleasure.
If there are no moral absolutes, there is no natural law. If there is no natural law, there is no standard of excellence. If there is no standard of excellence, there is no possibility of good or bad, behavior or art. If the same art can be both good and bad - what’s the point of art? Objectivity can not be a product of subjectivity.
I do not turn off my heart or mind. I know that love (and art) is more than just a flirty feeling, it is a dagger to the heart, it is true sacrifice, true suffering for someone other than myself - for everyone other than myself.
I understand the point you are trying to make about 1000 people appreciating art 1000 ways. What I am saying is that we we have the ability to like what is not good (because we sensual beings). But just because we like it does not make it good (evil people like what they do). There needs to be a stardard to compare art (and behavior) against especially in these dark times. Peace.
Who wants an antidote?
No navel-contemplation here.
Just passion for sharing the Catholic Truth.
http://www.oremusmusic.net
“Oremus” means “Let us pray.”
I meant to comment on this before.
“If art does not address objectively what is beautiful, good and true, then it’s not art - and those criteria are certainly not objectively open to interpretation by each and every one of us.”
Wow ... that’s a really ignorant statement. I’m going to hope that you didn’t /actually/ mean to say that art can reflect on positive things, because if so then you’ve just damned yourself.
Of /course/ art is subjective. It’s usually self-expression. And of /course/ your “criteria” are open to interpretation. Beauty is different for every member of the human race.
“There is a good and bad; there is a right and a wrong and these things can not be “democratized” by the likes of Trent Reznor or Kanye West.”
Again, ignorance. Right and wrong are never absolutes, /never/. And everyone is free to express what they consider either one.
To address the scope of this article, however, “Year Zero” represents Reznor’s most ‘socially-involved’ album to date. It explores varying political opinions, if you actually listen rather than jump to conclusions on the basis on one song. It is a warning but also a treatise of hope - for by the end of this futuristic installment, he whispers, ‘you’re the reason I am not afraid,’ which to me implies faith in the human race for taking care of itself before things get too out of control. He’s hoping for a positive outcome reliant on individuals taking part in the lives of others.
The writer here states that ‘one man does not a movement make.’ That might be true if Reznor were stating completely new individualized ideas. He is not. He is adding to the well of ideas put forth by George Orwell, Huxley, and many more - contributing socially aware artwork to the world at large. So sure, one man does not a movement make—but one man most definitely can join an already established and thriving movement seeking change. And for many, he will be welcomed with open arms and encouraged to continue.
Michael,
I never said multi-layered songs were necessarily ‘better.’ I only shared my personal opinion that I tend to enjoy them and gain a more stimulating musical experience from them. I wanted to shed light on the inaccurate information presented in this piece, not to defend Reznor’s work. As a NIN fan, I’m used to people disliking and misunderstanding the music. Especially among the religious. Nothing new there.
I disagree with your statement regarding the objectivity of art. If art were created by emotionless cyborgs, sure, maybe it might have a chance. Since we are, as C.S. Lewis argues in sickly religious and misogynistic undertones, sentimental beings, how are we to create art absent of our own feelings, beliefs, “values?” Wouldn’t that make us in fact, ‘men without chests?” As you can tell, I also disagree with the moral absolutes to which Lewis desperately clung - b/c they too are but products of subjectivity.
We cannot turn off our hearts or minds, no matter how hard we may try. And thus, it finds its way inevitably into all facets of life, including art. But that’s what makes art so important and wonderful - though it is often created by one individual (in NIN’s case), or a small group of individuals (Belle and Sebastian), a thousand different people could view it in a thousand different ways. It enriches our existence and encourages us to analyze many perspectives.
I view ‘Year Zero’ as an artistic allegory, not ‘PC’ or ‘democratizing.’ Reznor is not afraid to allude to manmade religions as ‘pieces of wood,’ and he’s not afraid to inhabit different personas on this album—even personas some of us would find highly undesirable. He’s merely holding up a mirror of a potential future. That in itself is the pursuit of beauty, goodness, and truth, thereby art, IMO. Especially in these dark times.
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