Everything Is Interpolated: Music’s Nostalgia-Industrial Complex
pitchfork.com
pitchfork.com
>In 2016, they presented a skeptical Smokey Robinson with the idea of a national holiday centered around the Temptations’ 1964 classic “My Girl,” which Robinson co-wrote. “He looked at us like we were crazy,” Lowenberg remembers. “We just asked him, ‘Do you like the idea? Because if you do, challenge accepted.’” Robinson announced the first-ever “Father-Daughter Day” on October 8, 2017, along with lullaby renditions of “My Girl.”
Yet when you look at the origin on Wikipedia, it claims:
> The U.S. holiday was originally conceived by Smokey Robinson to honor his relationship with his only daughter. [1]
And the reference used points directly back to PrimaryWave's press release. The claim that Smokey conceived the holiday was originally made unattributed. But later the attribution was added to point to the press release. Yet the press release doesn't even support Smokey conceiving it, just announcing it.
How much other stuff do we "celebrate" [2] just because some corporations wanted to leverage intellectual property? yet if I argue this, it sounds like I'm against father-dather relationships... brilliant! BTW, i'm trying to update the wikipedia article but can't remember my login details...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father%E2%80%93Daughter_Day
[2] This "national holiday" is not federally recognized.
I think this isn't true in 2023. I would encourage you to start talking about this, I bet most people will agree with you.
In the meantime, I think my exploration is more about our inability to organize meaningful events without corporate power. And when I drove to the supermarket and back, I remembered a former co-worker who would look into the national holidays. In fact there are many, many of them. It doesn't take anything except a performative utterance[1] . In fact, today is about 10-20 national holidays[2]!!!
A band that might have really benefited from this approach would be The Verve in the UK. "Bittersweet Symphony" in 1997 was a worldwide hit, but they made £0 from it as the majority of royalties had to be paid to the Rolling Stones' label as the iconic melody was a rework of 1965's "The Last Time".
In 2019, Jagger and Richards gave the publishing royalty rights back the Verve -- 11 years after the band broke up.
Ironically there's barely any audible similarity to the original Stones recording, which the Stones freely acknowledge borrowed heavily from an earlier gospel song
so when he died Jagger and Richards gave the publishing rights back.
Every few years this thing comes up and people make it sound like The Stones screwed over the Verve and then someone comes along and clarifies the issue but for some reason the next time it comes back up it is still the same confusion.
I'm emerging with a fact check: the strings in Bittersweet Symphony were in point of fact a heavily reworked sample of a hook contained in an obscure 1960's symphonic version of "The Last Time". The hook and its melody does not appear anywhere in the Stones' original version.
Everyone eventually agreed The Verve got shafted and Jagger/Richards in the end showed magnanimity and moved to grant The Verve rights to the song.
It’s why a lot of artists can’t continue to make great music. They’ve exhausted their unique style and are unable to progress it further or cultivate a coherent successor style.
I'm not sure it's that they "exhausted their style", as often even after a band stars making duds, other bands can continue to make great new music in the same style.
And for many bands the style wasn't really "theirs" or unique to begin with (e.g. it was typical rockabilly or garage rock stuff or techno or whatever), but those bands did made some good tunes before they started to making duds.
It's more about the ability to write good or bad songs, than about the style still having "unexmplored" corners. People can write good new song in the most established styles and manners - including good new traditional-sounding folk, blues, gospel, etc.
I think for bands that stop making good music, it's more that they exhausted their own inspiration, rather than exhausting the potential of their (unique or not) style.
And usually also that other stuff, like addiction, animosity between members, boredom, middle age concerns, despiriting lack of money/success (or too much money/success to focus on music), came into play.
Metallica is a good example of this. They started in a sub-genre of Rock named Metal and pioneered a sub-genre of that called “Thrash”. There were other thrash bands and they each had their distinct style of thrash. Metallica developed their style over the 1980’s and by their 4th album had determined they had exhausted their style as it got to the ultimate, complex expression of it. They could continue seeing minimal returns by pumping out the same thing or try and evolve their style.
They evolved their style out of the Thrash genre and possibly out of the Metal genre and had their most successful album in terms of listeners. A huge risk really.
They kept developing this style for the next decade. And then as you pointed out, life happens (addiction, money, fame, etc in their case) and they released a total dud.
They’ve since cultivated yet another style they’ve been developing since 2008. Firmly back in the metal genre.
Point being the “good” thrash metal bands were all playing in the same genre but they each had distinct styles. So although one band exhausts their style, other bands can continue to cultivate theirs and new bands can introduce new styles and even create sub-genres.
The overall genre is more important, because it imposes more constraints to the songwriting. Style is basically just spice on top, nothing you can't change at will based on different playing, production, and orchestration.
The problem with tired bands isn't that they exhausted their style, but that they can't come up with decent new songs.
Other bands in the same genre (or even different genres) can and do however come up with new songs - and if the former band was able to write them (exactly the same as the second band has), then changing them to their own style would be super easy, barely an inconvenience.
For example, to take two bands in the same genre, if the Rolling Stones couldn't write decent songs in 1988-1998, and Black Crowes could (they put out a series of good records then), it was not because the Stones exhausted their style and Black Crowes still hadn't exhausted theirs.
It's just that the Stones had no inspiration, whereas the Crowes could still come up with good songs. The difference in style isn't really important, as the same same songs could trivially be turned to the style of the other band.
(Hell, even complete different style && genre songs can be turned into the genre and style of a band covering them, just need a different orchestration, production, and small stylistic flourishes - the core of the song, the chords, melody, lyrics remains the same).
Things are changing. Remember when you could read every newspaper in the world online without a paywall?
Dr. Dre wouldn't have made a cent from The Chronic today, half of the songs feature melodies lifted directly from '60s and '70s soul and funk.
He says they shouldn't mix it "with OTHER commercial music" not as in "because hip hop is not commercial music", but because hip-hop, while still commercial music, has its own rules regarding copying or sampling parts of songs.
It even happened that I played the same melody from a song I had created myself without realizing it.
That is not the issue and it is unavoidable. Musical youtube however is full of "Use these three chords to create great music" recipes. There is just so much stuff that doesn't even try to do anything interesting.
Sounds awfully familiar, like the discussion about synthetic art and generative text. They threaten the professionals with lower barrier to entry, but only take the new comers so far.
Does that detract in any way from the anti-fascist song? Of course not. Folk music has always done this, and that has never taken anything away from its creativity (talking about actual folk music with collective authorship, not commercial music in the "folk" style).
For example parts of the famous Christmas oratorio are originally from a secular cantanta:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tönet,_ihr_Pauken!_Erschalle...
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_of_the_Vampires_(musical...
And it doesn't have to be the original recording either. Consider how jazz works.
There's money in promoting it because people don't necessarily find new music to listen to on their own.
If the music is too familiar to you, find some other music that's new to you. The catalog is vast and we're never going to run out.
these people are on to something, but it's not music in the 'art through sound' sense.
nonetheless they do express out real novelties and make money while at it
Edit: or maybe I would be disappointed if I liked an 'artist' but it was an ai so live events would be weird.