Unit 7

Readings and Resources

Textbook or eBook:

Campbell, M. (2019).  Popular music in America. 5th ed. Cengage Learning.

This unit addresses the new sounds and rhythms of rock in the 80s and more commercially dominant music sounds of “Pop” music in this decade. You will read about the positive and negative implications of MTV and how the emergence of the music video brought about changes in the consumption of music.

· Chapter 18: Beyond Rock in the 1980s (pgs. 332-355)

CH. 77

Beyond Rock

77-1 New Directions in the 1980s

The eighties brought new sounds as well as new looks to rock-era music. Much of the commercially dominant music of the eighties sounds as if it could not have been created before 1980, for at least two reasons. One was the use of sounds and rhythms that were not common currency, or even available through much of the 1970s. The other was the integration of style elements from what had been “outsider” styles in the 1970s.

77-2 New Sounds and Rhythms

Advances in electronic synthesis opened up a broad new palette of sounds to the musicians of the 1980s. Digital technology made both the replication of existing timbres and the creation of new timbres easier. It also streamlined the enhancement of conventional sounds through various effects. As a result, music that did not incorporate synthesized sounds became the exception rather than the rule. These sounds are integral to the distinctive styles of acts as diverse as U2 and Madonna.

The music of the 1980s also stands out because of new rhythms. Three were widely used: the energized rock beat derived from punk; adaptations of the afterbeat rhythms of reggae; and, most commonly, the sixteen-beat rhythms first heard in funk, black pop, and disco. These took various forms, often in combination, as in the relentlessly pulsing rhythms in the music of U2 and the syncopated, dance-oriented rhythms in Madonna’s music. As a result, the timeless rock groove of the Stones and others was less common in the middle ground music of the eighties than these new, more active rhythms.

77-3 “Insider/Outsider” Fusions

Punk and disco seem about as easy to blend as oil and water. As they emerged in the late seventies, they seemed to demarcate contrasting ideologies and musical approaches. Punk was real, whereas disco, as experienced in a club, was an escape into a timeless world. Punk was about grit; disco was about glitter. Punk bands hammered out a concentrated rock rhythm on conventional rock instruments; disco featured DJs mixing a string of recordings, most of which combined a strong beat with active sixteen-beat rhythms. The lyrics of punk songs usually said something; disco lyrics often descended into banality.

However, in Christgau’s Record Guide, a 1990 survey of 3,000 recordings from the eighties, Robert Christgau, the “dean of American rock critics,” cited “post-punk/post-disco fusion” as a key development of the decade. He described a synthesis of the two in  DOR, or  , an umbrella term used by DJs in 1980s disco pools to identify an array of eighties styles. Because pools helped spur the sale of nonradio records, some acts made sure there were dance-oriented tracks on their albums.

The fusion of disparate inside/outside styles was nothing new in rock; it had been common practice from the start. However, the innovations resulting from the fusions of the eighties were different from those of the previous generation, for at least three reasons. First, the eighties was the first generation of rock music (and, for that matter, twentieth-century popular music) that was not nurtured by the blues. Second, the outside styles came from within rock-era music. Third, because of the blending of rock styles, the boundaries between rock, rhythm and blues, and pop became more fluid and transparent; the list of the top artists of the eighties hints at that.

Finally, another fusion profoundly affected the dissemination of music. Sound, image, and movement came together in a newly emergent genre—the music video—that became a staple on a new network—MTV—in a new medium, cable television.

77-4 MTV and Music Videos

. The network began broadcasting in 1981. Symbolically, the first music video that MTV broadcast was “Video Killed the Radio Star.” The original format of the network was analogous to Top 40–style radio stations. Videos replaced songs, and VJs (video jockeys) assumed a role similar to radio disc jockeys.

Perhaps because cable originally serviced mainly rural parts of the country, MTV took an AOR-type approach to programming. For the first couple of years, programming targeted a young, white audience. Bands were almost exclusively white—Duran Duran, a British pop group with a keen visual sense, was one of the early MTV bands. Black acts cried “racism” with some justification.

It was Michael Jackson who broke MTV’s color barrier. The demand for his spectacular music videos was so overwhelming that the network changed its policy. MTV started VH1 in 1985 and diversified its programming in several ways, adding documentaries, cartoons, and talk shows. In particular, its segments on rap helped bring that genre out of the inner city.

MTV has affected both consumers and creators. The network became a key tastemaker for young people around the world. It has influenced not only what they listen to but also many other aspects of youth culture: dress, looks, body language, vocabulary, and attitudes. However, its most significant contribution was providing an outlet for music videos.

Rock had been a look as well as a sound from the start, but it wasn’t until the late sixties that the idea of using videos as a promotional tool took hold. At the same time, live performances were captured on video or film. Documentaries of the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock in 1969 remain treasures. Further experiments, especially by new wave acts like Devo, moved closer to the integration of sound and image that characterizes contemporary music video. With the arrival of MTV, the music video became a key component of the music industry.

The music video inverted the conventional relationship among story, image, and sound. In musical theater and film musicals, songs were written for the story, ideally enhancing those moments when the emotions a character felt were too much for mere words. In early music videos, the relationship was the opposite: The visual element was designed to enhance the song. Now the music video is such an essential component of pop success that acts create song and video as an integrated whole. In either form, it is a relatively new expressive medium.

The most obvious, and most widely discussed, consequence of music videos was the suddenly increased emphasis on the look of an act, and the look of the video, as a determinant of success. The two artists who leveraged this new, integrated medium to gain overwhelming commercial success were Michael Jackson and Madonna.

CH. 78

Pop in the Eighties

78-1 Pop in the 1980s

The early eighties ushered in a new generation of pop stars. The stars and their music were dramatically different from the music of the previous decade in several respects. Race, gender, and even sexual preference were nonissues. The leading pop acts of the 1980s were Michael Jackson, Prince, and Madonna. None of them is a white male. Both Jackson and Madonna were multifaceted entertainers. After them, it was no longer enough to be just a good singer or musician; one had to be able to move well, although no one topped Michael Jackson in skill or imagination. Video and film became essential components of stardom. Michael Jackson’s videos broke the color barrier on MTV, and video and film were essential in boosting both Prince and Madonna to superstardom. The three set the tone for the pop music videos of the next decades. Their music was a melting pot. Although the new pop of the eighties and beyond connects most directly to the black pop tradition of the sixties and seventies, the music was certainly open to other influences: disco, punk, reggae, funk, Latin music, dance music, and rap. Synthesizers played an increasingly important role, as rhythm instruments, extra percussion, and string and horn analogs.

This new pop was unprecedentedly popular. Michael Jackson’s Thriller album easily surpassed the sales of the previous best-selling album. As Robert Christgau pointed out, the sheer sales volume of Thriller was part of its significance. Prince and Madonna also had impressive sales figures.

Precisely because its artists drew from so many sources, there was no single “middle ground” style. It was not defined by a distinctive kind of beat keeping, like punk; or a rhythmic feel, like funk; or a special sound quality, like the distortion of heavy metal. Instead, a set of principles, rather than specific musical features, defined the music that topped the charts during the eighties. The songs typically have intelligible lyrics that tell a story—usually about love or its absence or about a slice of life. They are set to a singable melody. The melody in turn is embedded in a rich, riff-laden texture. Most layers—if not all—are played on synthesizers. The songs typically have a good beat, easy to find and danceable, neither too monotonous nor too ambiguous. These features are embodied in the music of Michael Jackson, and especially the nine tracks on Thriller.

78-2 Michael Jackson

Berry Gordy’s vision was a black pop style whose appeal transcended the black community. One branch of its legacy was the post-eighties pop middle ground marked out by Michael Jackson (1958–2009). Jackson is the most direct link between Motown and 1980s pop. As a member of The Jackson 5, he was part of Motown’s last great act. As a solo performer in the late seventies and early eighties, he went beyond Motown by helping to define the new pop middle ground musically, reviving the all-around performer and establishing the music video as a new, integrated mode of expression. Most spectacularly, his dancing went far beyond the stylized choreography of the Motown acts.

Although only 24 when Thriller (1982) was released, Michael Jackson had been a professional entertainer for three-fourths of his life and a star for half of it. He had released solo singles in the early seventies, but Jackson’s solo career didn’t take off until 1978, when he starred in the film The Wiz. During the filming, he met composer/arranger/producer Quincy Jones, who collaborated with him on Off the Wall (1979), his first major album, and Thriller. Jones’s skill and creativity proved to be the ideal complement to Jackson’s abilities.

Jackson was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time. MTV had gone on the air in 1981; Thriller was released a year later. Jackson helped transform the music video from a song-with-video into a mini-film that used a song as the focal point; for example, the video of “Thriller” is over twice the length of the track on the album. Jackson made it work through his exuberant dancing.