Bradleigh.

Hosea 7:7

All of them are hot like an oven,
And they consume their rulers;
All their kings have fallen.
None of them calls on Me.

The King of Pop is dead. The problem is that he didn’t die with that title still in his hands, & the implications of this for pop music are more astounding than most are willing to admit.  Because we live in a snobbish culture of The Outsider, & mine is the generation of the outcast forlorn soul; we all want to like what no one else likes, or in ways that none can appreciate, & so much of our artistic output reflects that wonderfully (or perhaps unfortunately).  The only issue is that mine is also the generation of blanket preferences – the inhuman tendency to accept or reject an entire viewpoint or packaged product without careful examination of its complexities.  This combination of hip elitism & uninformed taste is an ultimately dangerous one, & the fact that the King of Pop’s death does not signify the death of Pop itself should be a wake-up call.

Because this isn’t about Michael Jackson, in the end. If anything, it’s about Justin Timberlake, the somewhat unofficial new King of Pop; the crown was controversially turned over to JT with the release of his Futuresex/Love Sounds album a few years back, & it was a move that he accepted with relative pomp, as any good king would.  The change was only logical: Michael hadn’t released a competent album in more than ten years, & the ex-boyband dreamboat had all the necessary voice, moves, & sexual songwriting prowess (the latter much more so than his predecessor, but that’s to be expected; we are, after all, living in the soon to be outdated age of internet porn & Pam Anderson).  Such is music, though: time passes, artists fade, & legacies are maintained.  No one would argue Thriller, Bad, & even most of Dangerous were not phenomenal pop albums (for sheer grandeur if nothing else), & so this post, really, isn’t even about history.

What I’m hoping to get across here is that pop is not just something to be appreciated by the culturally “high class” in hindsight. It is living now in much the same way it has lived in the past &, just the same as pop has always been, there is the good, the bad, & most certainly the ugly.  Pardon the cliché, but my point is that the way most music listeners approach the radio is two-fold & usually two-dimensional: they either refuse to even turn it on (unless it’s AM or NPR, which I have no problem with but should in no way be the end-all; the way I see it, talk radio is cultured only in that it is one small piece of a huge cultural tapestry. To neglect the rest of your radio is to plug your ears & say “na na na” when an adult is speaking to you; it is, ultimately, rather childish), OR they refuse to listen to anything else.  Just like every other aspect of day-to-day life, whether it be politics, film, food, or the opposite sex, there are complications to pop music for worse & definitely for better.

I want to offer first off that everyone should at some point take time in their lives to work in an office in which a pop music radio station is playing all day long, every day.  If nothing else, you begin to find sweet harmony in its regularity, a rhythm to when songs are played & why.  I have no experience in communications, & don’t know anything of the science of broadcasting, but it’s no secret that the DJs aren’t just popping in CDs & going on break.  They have a purpose, & there is obviously some reason certain songs are played at certain intervals.  I would also recommend this exposure to radio as a way to find out what you like & don’t like as an alternative to simply embracing or tossing all of it aside.  Just like your favorite kind of music, there are songs that are good, songs that are bad, & clearly (CLEARLY) artists that are doing the whole thing right.

The magic of the pop song, then – or perhaps I should say one of the magic tricks – is in its structure, & more specifically in the way the really golden tracks stand out by building on themselves like a novel.  For the best example of this, & because I’ve really wanted to write about this song for awhile, look at the reigning Princess of Pop, Taylor Swift’s “Love Story”:

Taylor Swift – Love Story

The story is familiar, & Shakespearan, and the use of the names Romeo & Juliet is rather genius: why try to hide what you’re saying? It’s clearly the age-old story of forlorn lovers (only with a happier ending, duh), & to romanticize it as anything else would be nothing but a false step.  The structure, though, is the most complex piece of this pop puzzle, due in large part to its dual-narration technique headed by a female voice speaking both as narrator & girlish lead.  There is a story being laid out through conversation & conflict, & this makes it easy to signify as country music & shed it of artistic merit. This, perhaps, is warranted, but my point is that artistic merit is fruitless & the rules have to change when considering pop.  Taste is not an art, & shouldn’t be.

The song, however, is the issue here.  Because “Love Story” builds like no other song of this year, & when the climax comes it almost feels like stepping outside after one of these Virginia evening storms.  There is resolution, grinning, & general, triumphant ease.  This is a song about emotions, about getting what you’ve fought for, & no one struggles for this kind of answer more than an 18 year old girl.  This, after all, is what Taylor Swift is, & it’s exactly the lens through which we should be listening to her music.  I was lukewarm to her voice coming through the airwaves until this song began playing 8-9 times a day (or maybe more!), & it clicked.  Hers is a song I can feel in the gut, & that should be okay.  That should be enough.

I don’t want to belabor my point as I’ve been apt to do in the past, but the radio is full of this stuff, it practically pours like hot lava out of the speakers.  Look at David Cook’s “Light On” (the chorus of which is a fist-pumper like you wouldn’t believe) & “Come Back To Me” – both songs with stories, pleading, & climactic peaks pop music has been searching for ever since “My Heart Will Go On” (this is an exaggeration, of course, it is perhaps impossible to touch the climactic absurdity of that song).  Maybe I don’t even need to mention Miley Cyrus‘ latest – “The Climb” – which is the first single of hers I’ve actually grown to like; it is her most adult matter, certainly, though the vague topical nature falls a little flat.  I don’t suppose that that’s the point though; if you aren’t moved, the song wasn’t written for you, & you can be certain there is one somewhere that was.

On that note, I still don’t like any song Kanye has come up with since “Jesus Walks,” & he is THE prime example of the elite music culture latching on to one pop artist to laud forever, through thick & thin, just to prove they they “like pop music” (see also Jay-Z & even Kelly Clarkson, if you can believe it. Clarkson, by the way, has just released her two best pop singles, & they sound very little like what she’s been releasing for the past five years. This shouldn’t necessarily be a surprise).  The best song on the radio right now, to absolutely no one’s shock, is Beyoncé’s “Halo.”  That girl, I swear, can do no wrong, & time will only tell how long she can keep it up.

There is, of course, a lot of crap on the radio: the softly-hard rock bands like Shinedown & Nickelback who muddle their production so badly you can’t tell a guitar from a high hat from a vocal line (not to mention their cummings-ian way of smushing words together to make band names), the falsetto soft-rockers with a similar production issue & very little in the creative writing department (see The Fray, O.A.R.), & the faux-punk knockoffs who traded their attitude for skinny jeans & knit caps.  For the most part, these are the ones who take themselves too seriously for pop music, & not seriously enough for the art of elevated musical stylings; they are the middlings, & they give pop radio a bad rap.

I think while writing this all out finally, I’m coming to the conclusion that the radio can be frustrating because it doesn’t have a Skip Track button.  If someone doesn’t like the song, they assume it’s all this bad & reject it outright.  One trick is to find a smattering of stations you like, all with different styles of music.  Program your car radio with a button for pop, one for bluegrass, one for NPR, classic rock, Motown, whatever.  The point is to come to an understanding that pop music is as complex as anything else, & though it might not be compared to the complexities of abortion or the Iranian election, perhaps it should be.  This is your daily enjoyment & cultural awareness we’re talking about, & if anything is important in living a well-rounded life, it just may be the knowledge of what’s happening around you.

Michael Jackson is dead, but what he lived for did not die with him.  Pop is the lynchpin of our musical culture, & its importance as tasteful litmus test cannot be overstated.  Now if you’ll excuse me, Taylor Swift’s new song is on & I don’t wanna miss this one.