The stereotypical father has often, no doubt, said these words to his stereotypical teenage son many times, while mother shouts 'turn it down' somewhere in the background. Teenage son retreats to his room, slams his bedroom door, petulantly turns Oasis, The Prodigy, or whatever, to full volume, thinks to himself, 'God, they just don't get it', in the manner of comedian Harry Enfield's "Moody Teenager" character, and then proceeds to dance around his room singing into the hairbrush.
Another example. Imagine watching a film like Scream (Wes Craven, USA, 1996) without any music. The music in this film is of two kinds. Diagetic music (ie: music on car radios, home stereos, and so on) is important in locating the characters' cultural context in time and space. The extra-diagetic music is important, crucial even, in building tension, holding action sequences together, or suggesting imminent disaster, as was classically the case in Jaws (Steven Spielberg, USA, 1975). Film and music have gone hand in hand since the very beginning of narrative non-fiction films, when a jaunty piano would accompany a Charlie Chaplin picture, for example. And now, a film without music would seem incomplete, almost as strange as a film without words.
A final example. Music festivals, gigs, and clubs have been an integral part of the nation's cultural life since at least the late 1960s, and not just for the young. This year over 100,000 people will go to Glastonbury to celebrate and watch hundreds of different pop/rock/dance acts perform. Millions of people go to night-clubs, many every week(end). Going to see a band also continues to be a popular past time, be it in the back room of a local pub or Wembley Stadium. In contrast, only 4.8 per cent of adults regularly go to classical music performances and Scruton admits that the musical avant-garde "persists only as a state-funded priesthood, ministering to a dying congregation."
All three examples highlight that pop music is, more than anything else, good fun. Even if it does all 'sound the same', this does not matter because it is enjoyable. Middleton calls this "the pleasure principle" and Frith concludes that when all else has been said, "the essence of rock is... fun, a concept strangely neglected by sociologists". Leonard Bernstein is no sociologist, but agrees that "pop music seems to be the only area where there is to be found unabashed vitality, the fun of invention, the feeling of fresh air". Bernstein is perhaps the ultimate optimist, who not only mathematically proves that music is infinitely variable, but also argues for the "infinite variety of the creative human spirit"
.In this essay, then, we have begun by noting the current boom in the British music industry, and our culture industries more generally. We have acknowledged the continued importance of popular music within society, but questioned the lack of useful academic enquiry into it. We have moved on to review some of the relevant literature, including the works of Adorno and Frith, and found that their approaches were of limited use to a study of pop music. We then moved on to consider Frith's new approach, which embraces value judgements, and found it useful. In looking at the workings of the pop music industry, although we discovered that it does try and generate demand and manipulate consumers it is only partially successful. However, we did find that institutions such as music charts and music radio function to generate sales and, more importantly, raise the importance of pop music in our minds. We discussed the boy-band 5ive's conception, marketing and sales success and established that although the 'production' of such a band is impressive, it is not all encompassing, and that the target consumer group, in this case teenagers, can generally see beyond it. Finally, we concluded that if we are ultimately talking about the value of popular music it must, in the end, come down to the concept of pleasure, something which is often discounted or forgotten in academia.
Words often cannot describe the enjoyment even the most apparently 'trashy' music can bring, that feeling of wanting to get up and dance or sing along at the top of your voice, and in this sense music is a sensory experience like no other. This is the value of all music, it is true, but only pop music does this quite so effectively. And only pop music manages to successfully combine this with economic vitality - which is why it must be taken more seriously, and valued more highly, in future.