1/22/2024 0 Comments Poems for song lyricsOf syllable-counting poetic scansion of Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood”-“Did you High-cultural cred of well-crafted lyrics. Either claimīeen convinced enough by the anti-Rockists that I opened Adam Bradley’s The Poetry of Pop with some skepticism,įearing it would make an English professor’s dated argument for the Transcends pop music because of his distinctly literary qualities. When the Swedish Academy’s Sara Danius told reporters thatĭylan is “a great poet-a great poet in the English speaking tradition,” she was either declaring that pop music as a whole is a literary art, or that Dylan Literature to Bob Dylan this fall therefore produced a moment of ambivalenceįor many fans committed to the principle that pop must never be treated as Instead that performance, charisma, persona, sex appeal, and rhythm should all beĬonsidered at least as important as expressive language. Tradition at the expense of African-American and other styles). The anti-Rockists or “poptimists” emphasized (and, perhaps incidentally or perhaps not, to privilege a predominantly white Rap Against Rockism,” is to overlook much of what is most vital in pop today Wrote in his influential 2004 New York Times article “ The Guitars” and to reject as shallow entertainers those who do neither, Kalefa Sanneh “To glorify only performers who write their own songs and play their own Recent years have seen a wide-scale rejection of the so-called “Rockist” pop-musicĪesthetic that favors singer-songwriter-based music, and its self-expressive lyrics, Was once a truism that the presence of intelligent, “literate” lyrics was the majorįactor distinguishing quality pop music from disposable dross for teens. The page as respectable, intelligent, high culture, purged of its vulgar pop Student that I was, I was laying claim to a favorite band’s music as a form of literature, an austere modernist poem on Representation of it, but was performing an ideologically insidious act. Was not simply violating the song’s integrity, or offering a piecemeal Would go even further than this critique, to suggest that in isolating and thus Interesting as an experiment, perhaps, but false to the song in its totality. ![]() ![]() Pulling out the bass line, or the drum track, and listening to that alone. Piano, and voice, melody and rhythm, in their interrelation. Of words, yes, but at least as importantly, of music: the guitar, bass, drums, Wire’s lovely, enigmatic recording is a complex andįundamentally musical, aural creation, comprised of the singing Miner” into a written text, I had performed a radical reduction, even an act of THE POETRY OF POP by Adam Bradley Yale University Press, 424 pp., $28.00Ĭonventional answer would be to say that in turning the recording of “Outdoor
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |