Category: Music
I wonder if this is actually true
Researchers who have scanned books published over the past 50 years report an increasing use of words and phrases that reflect an ethos of self-absorption and self-satisfaction.
“Language in American books has become increasingly focused on the self and uniqueness in the decades since 1960,” a research team led by San Diego State University psychologist Jean Twenge writes in the online journal PLoS One. “We believe these data provide further evidence that American culture has become increasingly focused on individualistic concerns.”
Their results are consistent with those of a 2011 study which found that lyrics of best-selling pop songs have grown increasingly narcissistic since 1980. Twenge’s study encompasses a longer period of time—1960 through 2008—and a much larger set of data.
Here is more.
*Climbing the Charts*
The author is Gabriel Rossman and the subtitle is What Radio Airplay Tells Us About the Diffusion of Innovation.
In other words, there is lots of payola. My blurb is:
Gabriel Rossman is the leading researcher in the sociology and economics of the music industry, and this book shows him at the top of his research and exposition powers.
You can buy it here. Rossman blogs here, and he is on Twitter here.
Is popular music becoming sadder?
Over the past half-century, pop hits have become longer, slower and sadder, and they increasingly convey “mixed emotional cues,” according to a study just published in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts.
“As the lyrics of popular music became more self-focused and negative over time, the music itself became sadder-sounding and more emotionally ambiguous,” according to psychologist E. Glenn Schellenberg and sociologist Christian von Scheve.
Analyzing Top 40 hits from the mid-1960s through the first decade of the 2000s, they find an increasing percentage of pop songs are written using minor modes, which most listeners—including children—associate with gloom and despair. In what may or may not be a coincidence, they also found the percentage of female artists at the top of the charts rose steadily through the 1990s before retreating a bit in the 2000s.
…Strikingly, they found “the proportion of minor songs doubled over five decades.” In the second half of the 1960s, 85 percent of songs that made it to the top of the pop charts were written in a major mode. By the second half of the 2000s, that figure was down to 43.5 percent.
In addition, the songs’ average tempo has decreased over the decades, although this measure is a bit more complicated. “In absolute terms, the slowest-tempo recordings were from the 1990s,” they note, “which suggests that the trend may have leveled out, or started to reverse direction.”
The researchers found this slowdown was more pronounced for major-mode (that is, joyful) songs. This points to “a general reduction in unambiguously happy-sounding recordings,” they write, “as well as an increase in recordings with ambiguous emotional states.”
By the way, the Turtles song “Happy Together” is mostly in a minor key. There is more here, and for the pointer I thank Janice and also Brad Plumer.
Assorted links
1. Via Robert Martinez, interview with Kevin Shields, on labor market hysteresis and other matters. Excerpt:
I’ve got my own studio, just down the road from here. And in the ten years I’ve had it, I’ve only used it in three of them. The other seven years it’s been empty. I feel quite sad about that.
But I made a few big promises to myself when I was a kid, about 17. And so far I’ve managed to keep them. I was discovering all this great music, and I kept noticing this pattern of bands making great records and then tailing off. I thought “I don’t want to ever do that.” If for some reason I can’t make a great record, I won’t make a record at all. Because all you get is a little bit of money, which goes really fast anyway. It’s easier to do nothing and live on nothing than it is to do something and live on something when you’re running around compromising.
It’s better to do nothing than to do bad work.
KS: I think so. It’s like, being on the dole is better than being in a shit job, so long as you’ve got an interest in your life. Because if you’re in a shit job you don’t really have that much more money, and then after a few years your will to live begins to dissipate. The idea that it’s good to do stuff just for the sake of doing it, it’s a myth, I think. It’s a lie. It’s a very 80s concept – everything, everything being about productivity.
My favorite things Romania
1. Schubert pianist: Radu Lupu.
2. Conductor: Sergiu Celibadache. A high variance obsessive, Amazon doesn’t seem to carry his important recordings. At his peak he is one of the best conductors ever and can force a total rethink of the music upon you. He demanded so much rehearsal time, and so much perfection, that he was often impossible to work with. There is a short YouTube bit here.
3. Painter: I can’t name one, sorry. I have seen some nice folk art icon paintings on glass, see the image at the bottom of this post.
4. Sculptor: Constantin Brâncuşi, with a preference for Bird in Space.
5. Chopin pianist: Dinu Lipatti, especially the Waltzes.
6. Producer of maxims: Emil Cioran. I have enjoyed all of his books.
7. Poet: Paul Celan. I am surprised he is not more widely read in the United States. At his peaks I don’t think any 20th century poet is better or more important.
8. Novelist: Herta Müller, better in German than English, both linguistically and culturally.
9. Violinist: Georges Enescu, of course he was a composer too.
10. Mozart pianist: Clara Haskil.
11. Movie: I’ve tried a bunch of the famous recent ones, but I can’t get through them and this is from a man who gladly watched the entire 7 hour, 12 minute Sátántangó .
12. Former NBA basketball center: G. Muresan.
13. Economist: Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen.
The bottom line: There is some real beauty here, and aesthetic romance, but I don’t have a good theory for why novels and painting are not stronger.
*Marley*
I have to give this movie an A+. It is an outstanding treatment of the history of Jamaica, the Caribbean cultural blossoming after World War II, possible equilibria in individual human affairs, and of course the protagonist Bob Marley himself, as well as much much more. Marley by the way does not come off as a sympathetic character. The scenes from Zimbabwe and Germany are remarkable. The director is Kevin Macdonald, who also created The Last King of Scotland.
There are trailers here. Here is one good review. If you are seeking to normalize my review, in general I am not fond of “musical documentaries” and I do not consider Marley the peak of Jamaican music (I prefer Lee Perry, Desmond Dekker, and King Tubby, for a start). Think of this as a movie flat out and go see it on a large screen.
Clubsterben, the culture that is Berlin
Not everyone thinks gentrification is a good thing:
Politicians in Berlinhave launched a campaign to rescue the city’s legendary nightclub scene from the spectre of property investors in the hope of salvaging the capital’s reputation as one of Europe’s party hotspots.
A ‘Music Board’ fund of around €1m (£835,000) has been set up to help protect the city’s shrinking club scene, which has been a mainstay of the economy since the fall of the Berlin Wall but has found itself increasingly squeezed out by real estate investors.
Berlin’s clubs have even coined the word ‘clubsterben’ – literally, ‘club death’ – to describe the phenomenon. The €1m fund will be used to help stricken clubs find new locations and hold fundraising concerts.
Around 15 clubs are currently under threat of closure according to Spiegel, while three prominent clubs have closed within the last few months. The nightspots, which are often housed in grungy urban buildings, breweries, or former factories situated on prime land, are increasingly being converted into apartment blocks and loft homes.
Here is more. Here is an article on whether Berlin can afford its billion dollar arts subsidy programs. This sentence is interesting:
Since German reunification in 1990, the capital has seen about half of its population leave and be replaced by newcomers.
For both pointers I thank www.artsjournal.com.
Some Economics of Pay What You Want Pricing
A number of musicians and game developers have experimented with pay-what-you-want pricing (e.g. see the important field experiment by Gneezy et al. and less formal reports from Radiohead, Norwegian composer Gisle Martens Meyer and the video-game makers 2D Boy and Joost van Dongen.)
Imagine that under the pay-what-you-want model consumers choose to split their consumer-surplus with the seller. Here is a neat little proof for the linear demand case that under this heuristic profits are as large as under monopoly pricing! I have also assumed MC of zero which makes sense for digital goods and is also quite important to the result as pay-what-you-want can result in negative profits should consumers choose to pay less than marginal cost.
Split the consumer surplus is optimistic for the seller although splitting the gains does happen quite often in the dictator game so it is not without interest. Probably more importantly, pay-what-you-want pricing is going to be advantageous when the seller also sells a complementary good, such as concerts, which benefit from consumption spillovers from the pay-what-you-want good.
Two CDs in a row
Diamond Mine, by King Creosote and Jon Hopkins,
followed by
Julianna Barwick, The Magic Place.
They sound much better, one after the other, in that order. I will file them together on my shelf, once they leave my living room, and break my usual habit of alphabetizing.
I also like to follow Mahler symphonies with a short Mozart piano piece, in a major key preferably.
Can you think of other sensible combinations of music or CD sequences?
Headlines to ponder
“Whitney Houston: 15 ebooks on singer published since her death”
For one thing, this may blunt the “affiliation demand” to buy CDs or music downloads to honor her life.
Hat tip goes to Bookslut.
Beethoven Violin Concerto #1
Stefan Jackiw, excerpt here. For the pointer I thank Jacob Robbins.
IP Feudalism and the Shrinking of the Public Domain
Creators of intellectual property used to be granted up to 56 years of monopoly before their works entered the public domain. Since the 1976 copyright act (which came into effect in 1978) copyright has been progressively lengthened so it now extends to the life of the author plus an additional 70 years, i.e. an author’s heirs now get significantly more monopoly power than an author did prior to 1978, truly a kind of IP feudalism.
It’s hard to believe that the extension of copyright for decades after an author’s death can appreciably increase artistic creation and innovation, thus the public has gained little from copyright extension. What has been lost?
If the pre-1976 law were still in place then as of Jan 1, 2012 the following books, movies and music would have entered the public domain (from the Center for the Study of the Public Domain):
- J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Return of the King, the final installment in his Lord of Rings trilogy
- The Family of Man, Edward Steichen’s book of photographs showing the diversity and universality of human experience
- Michihiko Hachiya’s Hiroshima Diary: The Journal of a Japanese Physician, August 8–September 30, 1945, translated by Warner Wells, md
- Evelyn Waugh’s Officers and Gentlemen, the second book in his Sword of Honour trilogy
- C.S. Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew, the sixth volume his The Chronicles of Narnia
- Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita
- Jerome Lawrence & Robert E. Lee’s play about the Scopes “Monkey Trial,” Inherit the Wind
- Isaac Asimov’s The End of Eternity.
- Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers
- The Seven Year Itch, directed by Billy Wilder; starring Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell
- Lady and the Tramp, Walt Disney Productions’ classic animation
- Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief, starring Cary Grant and Grace Kelly
- The thriller The Night of the Hunter, directed by Charles Laughton; starring Robert Mitchum and Shelley Winters
- Two of James Dean’s three major motion pictures: East of Eden, directed by Elia Kazan and co-starring Raymond Massey and Julie Harris; and Rebel Without a Cause, directed by Nicholas Ray and co-starring Natlie Woods, Sal Mineo, and Jim Backus
- Hollywood versions of major Broadway musicals such as Oklahoma! and Guys and Dolls
- Richard III, Laurence Olivier’s film version of the Shakespeare play, co-starring Claire Bloom, Cedric Hardwicke, Nicholas Hannen, Ralph Richardson, and John Gielgud
- Unchained Melody (Hy Zaret & Alex North)
- Ain’t That a Shame (Antoine “Fats” Domino and Dave Bartholomew)
- Blue Suede Shoes (Carl Perkins), Folsom Prison Blues (Johnny Cash)
- The Great Pretender (Buck Ram)
- Maybellene (Chuck Berry, Russ Fratto, & Alan Freed),
- Tutti Frutti (Richard Penniman (aka Little Richard)
Under the old law these works and many others could today have been read, seen and played at low cost throughout the world. Consumers have certainly lost from copyright extension. What about creators?
We typically frame copyright and patent strength as an issue between consumers and creators, with consumers assumed to favor weaker rules and creators stronger. But, as I discuss in Launching the Innovation Renaissance, that is the wrong frame. A vibrant public domain can be good for consumers and for creators.
Under the old law, the above works could not only have been consumed they could also at low cost and without requiring the express permission of the original copyright holder have been remixed, reworked and extended in new directions. Under the new regime, innovators will not be able to easily build on these works until 2051 and it could be well into the 22nd century before we get Star Wars prequels worthy of the name.
Are we stagnating aesthetically?
Some of you have been emailing, asking for my opinion of this recent Kurt Andersen Vanity Fair article. Here is the summary introductory paragraph:
For most of the last century, America’s cultural landscape—its fashion, art, music, design, entertainment—changed dramatically every 20 years or so. But these days, even as technological and scientific leaps have continued to revolutionize life, popular style has been stuck on repeat, consuming the past instead of creating the new.
There is plenty more at the link. A serious response would require a book or more, so let me offer a few conclusions, noting that it’s not possible in blog space to defend these judgments at any length. This is all about aesthetics, and it is distinct from the TGS technology argument, though one might believe that technical breakthroughs are needed to usher in aesthetic innovations, and that slowness in the one area would lead to slowness in the other. That’s not a claim I’ve ever made, but it’s worth considering even if it can’t be settled very easily. In any case, here’s my view of the evidence:
1. Movies: The Hollywood product has regressed, though one can cite advances in 3-D and CGI as innovations in the medium if not always the aesthetics. The foreign product is robust in quality, though European films are not nearly as innovative as during the 1960s and 70s. Still, I don’t see a slowdown in global cinema as a whole.
2. TV: We just finished a major upswing in quality for the best shows, though I fear it is over, as no-episode-stands-alone series no longer seem to be supported by the economics.
3. Books/fiction: It’s wrong to call graphic novels “new,” but they have seen lots of innovation. If we look at writing more broadly, the internet has led to plenty of innovation, including of course blogs. The traditional novel is doing well in terms of quality even if this is not a high innovation era comparable to say the 1920s (Mann, Kafka, Proust, others).
4. Computer and video games: This major area of innovation is usually completely overlooked by such discussions.
5. Music: Popular music has been in a Retromania sludge since the digital innovations of the early 90s, but classical contemporary music continues to show vitality and it is even establishing some foothold in the concert hall and in nightclubs too. Jazz has plenty of niche innovation, but it’s not moving forward with new, central ideas which command the attention of the field.
6. Painting and sculpture: Lots of good material, no breakthrough central movements comparable to Pop Art or Abstract Expressionism. Photography has seen lots of innovation.
7. Your personal stream: This is arguably the biggest innovation in recent times, and it is almost completely overlooked. It’s about how you use modern information technology to create your own running blend of sources, influences, distractions, and diversions, usually taken from a blend of the genres and fields mentioned above. It’s really fun and most of us find it extremely compelling. See chapter three of Create Your Own Economy/The Age of the Infovore.
8. Architecture: Slows down after 2008, but there were numerous innovative blockbuster buildings prior to the crash.
Today the areas of major breakthrough innovation are writing, computer games, television, photography (less restricted to the last decade exclusively) and the personal stream. Let’s hope TV can keep it up, and architecture counts partially. For one decade, namely the last decade, that’s quite a bit, though I can see how it might escape the attention of a more traditional survey. Some other areas, such as the novel, global cinema, and the visual arts are holding their own and producing plenty of small and mid-size innovations.
Although that is a relatively optimistic take on the aesthetics of the last decade, it nonetheless supports the view that aesthetic innovation relies on technological innovation. Most (not all) of the major areas of progress have relied on digitalization, and indeed that is the one field where the contemporary world has brought a lot of technological progress as well.
Favorite popular music of 2011
Here goes, in no particular order:
1. Abigail Washburn, City of Refuge.
2. Lykke Li, Wounded Rhymes.
3. James Blake, James Blake and also Enough Thunder.
4. St. Vincent, Strange Mercy.
5. Shabazz Palaces, Black Up.
6. Miles Davis, Live in Europe 1967.
7. This May be My Last Time Singing: Raw African-American Gospel on 45 RPM, 1957-1982, assorted artists.
8. Wilco, The Whole Love.
9. The Smile Sessions, The Beach Boys.
10. Indeed, by Oren Ambarchi and Jim O’Rourke (LP only, a real winner, beautiful sound).
11. Opika Pende, Africa at 78 RPM.
A few observations: Lots of good music this year, but I haven’t yet heard anything path breaking. Most indie rock is overrated and overall it is a less vital genre than pop, although since the latter is centered around songs rather than albums it is underrepresented on this list. The artist I listened to the most this year was probably Lonnie Mack, followed by John Fahey. The two best concerts I saw were Satyagraha at the Met and Brad Mehldau and Joshua Redman playing together. Indian classical music lost some of its leading lights. I like both P.J. Harvey and Tom Waits, but at this point do I need to buy more music by them? I still listen to Gilbert O’Sullivan sometimes. Beck seemed like a distant memory.
Addendum: Here is a favorite music list from Angus.
The music is over
With clouds over Europe darkening, managers like Mr. Burnstein are increasingly turning their long-term focus to places with stronger currencies, like South America, Southeast Asia and Australia. When Metallica ended their “World Magnetic” tour in Australia a year ago, they played not just Sydney and Melbourne but also harder-to-get-to Perth.
“We’re a U.S. export the same way Coca-Cola is,” he said. “We look for the best markets to go to.”
“Right now Indonesia is on my watch list,” he smiled.
And get this:
Eight months before Metallica takes the stage in Germany, Mr. Burnstein decides whether the band should be paid in dollars, euros or a combination of the two. If exchange rates swing in a way that hurts Metallica’s earnings, he buys derivative financial instruments to lock in a preferred rate. Sometimes ticket prices are hiked to compensate for possible currency-related losses, though Mr. Burnstein shuns this strategy.
“Nobody is looking to make a foreign-exchange trade to make money, but you don’t want to be a loser,” the scraggly bearded manager said.
Here is one conclusion:
“A weak dollar is the best thing for American rock ‘n’ roll,” said Bill Zysblat, partner at RZO Productions, which has handled tours for the Rolling Stones and the Police.
The article is here, interesting throughout and for the pointer I thank Kanishka Kacker.