[PREV - TURNING]    [TOP]

SUBVERSIVEPOP

                                March 2, 2000 

A strategy for subverting pop-music
that I might try some day:

       Use a deceptively normal
       sounding chorus, but use the
       verses to put it into a
       peculiar context.

            My original idea (now somewhat
            dated) was that you could do a
            "darling please don't leave
            me" song that was really about
            a conservative politician
            lamenting the collapse of the
            Soviet Union.

                               (The video would be
                               funny: tango of the
                               generals.)

From a purely commercial
standpoint, there's a lot to
recommend this approach.


To begin climbing the ladder, you
need to have something to
appeal to the music
snobs.  If you sound like
"just another top-40 band"
none of the people who
actively seek out new stuff is
going to care about you.


But if you want to go all the way
up the ladder, you're going to
have to largely abandon your
original schtick, and start
sounding more-or-less like
everyone else.  But this runs
the risk of alienating your
original audience without
capturing the wider audience
(and when the fickle 'wider
audience' gives up on you,
you'd better have enough money
saved to retire for a decade or
so, because the original core
audience is long gone).

But if you start out with a
dual-level approach you might
be able to run the whole course
without being accused of
being a sell-out.

           Ah, yet another great cynical scheme.
           It's too bad I don't have the heart to follow
           through on them.


(Is it possible that the Beatles
were following a course something
like this, singing things like
"All you need is love".
That could be just another
vapid song lyric, or it could
be a radically anti-materialistic
statement, or perhaps an anti-war
statement...)




--------
[NEXT - MISSING_PIECES]