Category Archives: Popular music

by | November 28, 2013 · 1:00 am

Randy Newman sails away

Sail-Away

For his 1972 album Sail away Randy Newman took practically all pre-rock American vernacular music styles and reworked the genres with ironic, sarcastic, and sometimes caustic lyrics that might have shocked Tin Pan Alley-era audiences.

Because of the elaborate settings of many of the songs—including Newman’s piano, traditional rock instruments, and symphony orchestra—the pieces take on a parallel life as a kind of song cycle that explores the ironies of life throughout much of recorded history. The universality of the subject matter and the deliberately retro style of the song forms, rhythmic styles, and harmonic and melodic vocabulary all combine to make Sail away an album that continues to ring true.

This according to “Randy Newman: Sail away (1972)” by James E. Perone, an essay included in The album: A guide to pop music’s most provocative, influential, and important creations. II: The golden age of the singer-songwriter, 1970-1973 (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2012).

Today is Randy Newman’s 70th birthday! Above, the original album cover; below, Newman performs the title song.

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by | November 22, 2013 · 1:00 am

The Beatles’ white album

white-album2

The Beatles, a.k.a. The white album, contests the arbitrary distinction between popular music and political engagement through its radical eclecticism and self-reflexivity. The album outlines a new way of being political—a postmodern politics—that was and still is to a large extent erroneously seen as escapism.

Critics from the New Left charge that the disparate styles and self-conscious references on the record signal the Beatles’ disregard of politics; but this perspective implies that there is only one way of being political, and fails to consider the historical circumstances that give any use of parody its particular significance.

By 1968 corporate attempts to manipulate rock artists and fans were reaching a peak, and early rock and roll had lost much of its initially subversive allure. Concurrently, the Beatles found themselves lauded for their masterpiece, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The Beatles’ turn to parody then serves not as an escape from but as a specific response to key cultural tensions: the self-reflexivity and ironic appropriation of various styles on the album allowed the Beatles to contest the commodification of rock music even as they challenged assumptions about what constitutes political relevance.

This according to “We all want to change the world: Postmodern politics and the Beatles’ White album” by Jeffrey Roessner, an essay included in Reading the Beatles: Cultural studies, literary criticism, and the Fab Four (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006, pp. 147–158).

Today is The white album’s 45th birthday! Below, documentary footage of the album’s creation.

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by | November 14, 2013 · 1:00 am

Ngariwanajirri (Strong kids song)

Ngariwanajirri

The Strong Women from the Tiwi Islands (northern Australia) are concerned that young Tiwi people are straddling two cultures, losing their language and their Tiwi identity.

To address this problem, the women and their grandchildren have composed a song that emphasizes connection to the ancestors, to country, to language, and to the elders. With lyrics in English, traditional Tiwi song language, and the contemporary spoken language, and with a hip-hop dance-mix sampling an ethnographic recording made in 1912, Ngariwanajirri (Strong kids song) is an example of new music helping to preserve tradition.

This according to “Ngariwanajirri, the Tiwi Strong kids song: Using repatriated song recordings in a contemporary music project” by Genevieve Campbell (Yearbook for traditional music XLIV [2012] 1–23).

Below, a music video of Ngariwanajirri; the song changes dramatically around 2:00.

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by | November 7, 2013 · 1:00 am

Joni Mitchell and 1960s sexuality

Joni Mitchell’s early records mapped the sexual terrain of the mid-1960s—the period during which premarital sex lost its taboo status and became a normative part of maturation and development—from a woman’s perspective.

With their strong storytelling component, Mitchell’s songs put into popular circulation narratives of sexual freedom that engaged with emerging social practices, helping to legitimize the new choices available to young women.

This according to “Feeling free and female sexuality: The aesthetics of Joni Mitchell” by Marilyn Adler Papayanis (Popular music and society XXXIII/5 [December 2010] pp. 641–656).

Today is Mitchell’s 70th birthday!  Below, a 1970 performance of Cactus tree, one of the songs discussed in the article.

Related article: Joni Mitchell’s “Blue” period

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by | November 3, 2013 · 1:00 am

Bert Jansch’s legacy

 

The guitarists’ guitarist and the songwriters’ songwriter, Bert Jansch (1943–2011) influenced musicians as diverse as Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Paul Simon, Sandy Denny, Nick Drake, Donovan, Pete Townshend, Neil Young, Bernard Butler, Beth Orton, and Laura Marling.

Unassuming, enigmatic, and completely focused on his music until his untimely death, he remained singularly resilient to the vagaries of fashion, being rediscovered and revered by new generations of artists every few years.

Born in Edinburgh, Jansch became an inspirational and pioneering figure during Britain’s folk revival of the 1960s. In 1967 he formed the folk/jazz fusion band Pentangle with John Renbourn and enjoyed international success; when they split in 1973 he returned to his solo career, securing his standing as one of the true originals of British music.

This according to Dazzling stranger: Bert Jansch and the British folk and blues revival by Colin Harper (London: Bloomsbury, 2000, 2nd ed. 2006).

Jansch would have turned 70 today! Below, his classic version of Black waterside.

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by | October 25, 2013 · 1:00 am

Songs of Sam Lucas

sam lucas

Songs of Sam Lucas by Sandra Jean Graham is an open-access resource that streams recordings of 12 songs attributed to Lucas (ca. 1840–1916), one of the most celebrated entertainers of his generation, supplemented by a background essay, extensive liner notes, and illustrations.

Lucas created a significant body of black popular song that serves as an important window into the post-Civil War era. His songs illustrate a range of strategies: conformity to minstrel stereotypes, an attempt to recuperate the dignity of black traditional song, and ultimately liberation from minstrelsy through the adoption of white popular song style.

Recordings of Lucas’s songs are extremely rare; this site gives the public a chance to become acquainted with the music of this performer whose career spanned minstrelsy, variety, vaudeville, theater, and silent film.

Above, a newspaper photograph of Lucas from 1911; the full article is here.

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by | September 17, 2013 · 1:00 am

Hank Williams’s subversive narratives

 

The extraordinary popularity of Hank Williams’s songs in the late 1940s and early 1950s played a crucial role in transforming country music from a regional and class-bound genre to a staple of mass popular culture.

Yet Williams’s narratives exuded a fatalism and despair about personal relationships, resisted romantic optimism, and avoided the kinds of closure and transcendence historically associated with male subjectivity.

His refusal to embrace dominant cultural narratives gave an individual voice to collective fears and hopes about the body, romance, gender roles, and the family.

This according to “‘Everybody’s lonesome for somebody’: Age, the body and experience in the music of Hank Williams” by Richard D. Leppert and George Lipsitz (Popular music IX/3 [October 1990] pp. 259–274).

Today is Williams’s 90th birthday! Below, a live recording of his classic expression of male vulnerability.

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by | July 5, 2013 · 1:00 am

Phonetic translation

kylling-softice-poelser

The first generation of Danish rock musicians started out as fans of international stars, learning the songs by listening to the records. The lyrics they sang often were nonsense,  as they had been written down from the recordings by teenagers with only limited English skills. The sound of the words and the language was more important than the semantic meaning of the lyrics.

This practice was highlighted in the mid-1970s, when two bands, Shu-bi-dua and Bamses Venner, released debut albums that contained Danish versions of rock classics and contemporary international hits. Both bands employed phonetic translations, translating the sound of the words instead of the meaning. A well-known example is Shu-bi-dua’s Kylling med soft ice og pølser (Chicken with soft ice cream and sausages), which is the title of a Danish version of Roberta Flack’s Killing me softly with his song.

Kylling og softice og pølser/Chicken with soft ice cream and sausages
Det er min favourite menu/That’s my favorite menu
Mon der noget bedre/Surely there’s nothing better
End pølsegrillens røg/Than grilled sausage smoke
Og så en herlig hot-dogs med brutale løg/And then heavenly hotdogs with raw onions
To tykke og en kage/Two fat ones and a cake
Og godt med begge dele/And good both ways
Kylling og softice og pølser/Chicken with soft ice cream and sausages
Det er min favourite menu/That’s my favorite menu …

You can hear the song here.

This according to “Kylling med soft ice og pølser”: Populærmusikalske versioneringspraksisser i forbindelse med danske versioner af udenlandske sange i perioden 1945–2007 by Henrik Smith-Sivertsen, a dissertation accepted by Københavns Universitet, Institut for Kunst- og Kulturvidenskab in 2007.

BONUS: In 1972 Adriano Celentano’s Prisencolinensinainciusol (below) poked a stick in the ribs of Italian singers who pretended to speak and understand English. Celentano’s song consisted of nonsense lyrics that in many cases sound remarkably close to North American English speech.

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by | June 30, 2013 · 1:00 am

Malmsteen and classical music

 

Two televised performances galvanized the young Yngwie Malmsteen: one by Jimi Hendrix when Malmsteen was 8, and, when he was 13, one by a violinist playing works by Paganini.

Malmsteen has openly embraced the premises of classical music more than any rock musician before him. With his fetishization of instrumental technique and his move toward absolute music he adopted classical music’s style and vocabulary, models of virtuosic rhetoric, and modes of practice, pedagogy, and analysis; he also adopted the social values that underpin these activities.

This according to Running with the devil: Power, gender, and madness in heavy metal music by Robert Walser (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1993, pp. 94–98).

Today is Malmsteen’s 50th birthday! Below, the birthday boy holds forth.

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by | April 30, 2013 · 1:00 am

Willie Nelson goes to pot

 

“I was about six when I started smoking cedar bark and grapevine, and rolling up Bull Durham” writes Willie Nelson. “I was trading a dozen eggs for a pack of Camels.”

“Then I ran into beer and whiskey, pills, and then pot. By then I was twenty-five years old and my lungs were killing me….So then I said to myself, “Hey, you’re not getting high on cigarettes, and they killed half your family….”

“So I started quitting everything. No more cigarettes at all. I started running again and getting back in shape.”

“I took my cigarettes and threw them away. I rolled up twenty joints and put them in the cigarette package, and every time I wanted a cigarette, I smoked a hit or two off a joint instead. One joint would last all day and it worked for me.” (Roll me up and smoke me when I die: Musings from the road [New York: HarperCollins, 2012] p. 121).

Today is Nelson’s 80th birthday! Below, the book’s namesake.

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