Politically engaged pop stars have a long pedigree: from Woody Guthrie, through Joan Baez, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, to Chuck D, musicians have acted as lightning rods for wider social movements. But pop in the 21st century feels like a field thats been played out. Some of this is down to changes in technology, with tectonic shifts in the way music is produced and consumed. More important, neoliberal reforms in work, housing, social welfare, and education have drastically curtailed the space in which music was able to thrive. Its not just that pop music now circulates like any other commodity, organised by corporations and delivered by identikit graduates from the Brit School for Performing Arts. More tellingly, pop has also become the playground of a privileged elite. Music journalist Simon Price, for example, has written of the poshification of pop, with the privately educated now exercising a growing stranglehold over this cultural form: Since the millennium, wave after wave of privately educated rock and pop acts have come through, Coldplay, Lily Allen, Jamie T, Jack Peñate, Florence Welch, the Maccabees, Laura Marling and Mumford & Sons being just a few prominent examples. We can add acts such as James Blunt, Eliza Doolittle and Frank Turner to this list. At the same time, with the rise of unpaid internships, record companies A&R departments are becoming evermore the domain of those with independent means. Amen.
Posted on: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 22:47:13 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015