Here's an idea.
You might enjoy pop music because you
can't get away from it.
[EXPLOSION]
[DING]
OK, before I even start saying the stuff,
I want to make one thing exceptionally clear.
And that is I love me some pop music.
[MUSIC - BRITNEY SPEARS, "BABY ONE MORE TIME"]
I'm not gonna say that I definitely
know all the words to Katy Perry's "Roar,"
but-- [BREAKS INTO SONG] I've got
the eye of the tiger, a fighter.
I'm dancing through the fire.
But objectively, I think we can all
agree that there are some songs in the pop music cannon
that are played--
[POP MUSIC PLAYING]
--with frequency.
There is even a sometimes unshakable feeling
that Rihanna or Lorde or Mr. Timberlake are following you.
At first, maybe you're, like, all right, this is a new song.
Which after awhile could become, OK, I get it.
But before long that might evolve into--
[IMITATING LORDE] And we'll never be royals.
--and it's all over.
They got you.
You know the words.
You're gonna sing along when it's on.
And, oh hey, look, the single's only $0.99 on iTunes.
Perfect.
Then it's just a matter of not pulling a "Macarena"
and saturating the universe so completely that even
a few notes of it--
[MUSIC - LOS DEL RIO, "MACARENA"]
--can send people into a boundless rage.
LOS DEL RIO: [SINGING] Hey, Macarena!
Now, the second most impressive thing
about this whole arrangement, assuming
that the first most impressive thing
is the writing of a song that is worthy of such an effort,
is the aligning of glob knows how many forces to make sure
that no matter where you go, you know that you shine bright
like diamonds in the sky.
Of course, we'd like to believe that the songs we constantly
hear are played so often because we, the music-buying public,
have decided it should be so.
That through record sales and downloads and whatever else,
we've all-- or at the very least,
a large and representative group of us--
have agreed and decreed, yes, Miley Cyrus everywhere, please.
MILEY CYRUS: [SINGING] I came in like a wreck--
But it might not be so simple.
It turns out to be a kind of chicken-and-the-egg problem
that lots of art forms deal with,
but which has been exemplified by music.
That problem is knowing how much music is worth.
Seeing as how it is ubiquitous, arguably the most popular art
form, easily acquirable-- both legally and il-- yet
no less impactful culturally, it can
become very difficult from a business standpoint
to accurately predict which pieces of music
are going to be worth the time and money to promote and have
produced at world class studios by people with golden ears.
Which, incidentally, is why pop records
are so expensive to make.
Golden ears don't come cheap.
So recording industry people, not the ones
with the golden ears, but the ones
with the very thick Rolodexes-- [PONDERING SLOWLY]
Rolodices-- Rolodexi-- phone contact lists--
do some stuff to encourage a kind of market stability
to clearly communicate which recordings have value
and what that value is.
In short, they work very hard to make a certain selection
of music very visible, I guess.
Songs are placed in commercials, TV shows, and movies.
They're specially selected for playlists
played in retail settings.
And maybe, most meaningfully, they are played on the radio.
Now, before you deploy all of your scoffs and are,
like, [SCOFFS] who listens to the radio?
The answer is, like, pretty much everybody.
According to Nielsen ratings, fully 92%
of Americans over the age of 12 regularly listen to the radio.
I know!
I was shocked, too, and I regularly listen to the radio!
Nearly 1/4 of those people say that they love the radio,
so it should be less of a little jagged pill
when Mike Masnick of "Techdirt" describes radio as a key--
if not the key-- way to break an act.
As such, radio air time is a valuable commodity.
And wouldn't you know, the people in charge
just happened to figure that out.
The practice of payola, which is a portmanteau of pay
and victrola-- a name of early phonographs--
is one where record companies pay broadcasters
to play their songs on the air.
And weirdly, though, promotional consideration
in television and movies, paid product placement in music
videos, and tons of other like stuff,
is not only expected, but usually considered necessary,
payola is illegal.
Massive label X can't pay huge radio station Z to play the new
single by band-who's-going-to-make-it-big
Y. Which is, incidentally, also the name of my new
banjo-infused noise rock group that's gonna make it big Y.
However, and of course, there are
tons of ways around these payola laws,
some of them involving implicit understandings
brokered round trips to exotic locations and tons
of other crazy interesting stuff we just
don't have time to get into.
Further reading in the description
if you're interested.
So payola effectively happens, anyway.
And given the surprising influence of radio,
this gives rise to a quote "commodification"
in taste-making.
Put another way, in a paper from "Media, Culture & Society,"
Charles Fairchild cites research which notes, the more difficult
it is to define the economic value of a product, the greater
power that rests in the hands of those who act as intermediaries
for that product to influence the perception of its value.
So through the quote "targeted deployment" of music,
both on the radio and in public spaces, meaning
and therefore value is created within that music.
Which makes sense, right?
Like, if you've never heard a song
and have no positive associations with it,
you might not think of it as having meaning.
But if it's totally your jam because it's
on every time you're out with your pals,
that's pretty meaningful.
And there are, I think, two ways to look at the situation that
arises as a result of all this.
The first is to cynically cast this whole thing
as a kind of media-related Stockholm syndrome.
Stockholm syndrome is a symptom of victimization
where a hostage or prisoner might
start to feel positively towards, and even
defend, their captor.
Clearly, it's hugely irresponsible
to draw a total equivalency between people
stuck in violent or dangerous situations and feeling like,
god--
[MUSIC - ROBIN THICKE, "BLURRED LINES"]
--that Robin Thicke song is just everywhere.
It is, however, an unfortunately useful shortcut
to evoke a perceived imbalance of power.
[MUSIC - LADY GAGA, "BAD ROMANCE"]
I cannot escape this song!
And the eventual maybe somewhat guilt-laden change of heart.
You know, that Gotye song actually is pretty good.
It's the process we've probably all experienced at least
once of learning to love a pop song because we kind of feel
like we have to.
Which might come before never wanting
to hear it again for as long as you live, so help you Pete.
You could also say that this is just how pop music works.
If you consider popular music as capable of having
meaning in the first place, maybe one of the ways
it gains that meaning is how it's used
and where it's played, seeing as how it is, by definition,
popular.
Context and prevalence are part of the equation, maybe
even more so than sound itself, because Drake and Mumford
and Sons are both equally pop music.
Maybe "Get Lucky" gains just as much meaning
from its content and the personal space
it creates in your headphones or your car
as it does from being played in other contexts,
like in the club, at the grocery store, on TV, at the mall,
or in the hundreds of covers on YouTube.
And the people working to make sure that happens
are simply pushing the best, most promising, songs.
Though why they decided on "My Humps" at one point
is a little beyond me.
I'm sure they had a great reason, though.
What do you guys think?
What are the ways that pop music gains meaning?
Let us know in the comments.
And since I know you're going to ask, it's a Dan Deacon shirt.
Please subscribe.
So new Google+ integrated commenting system.
It's going to be a little while until we get our sea legs.
Let's see what you guys had to say about "Ender's Game."
So first and foremost, an apology.
In last week's episode, we showed a picture
of a bunch of white gentlemen in a demotivator
that was captioned, fascism.
What we didn't realize is that that photo was
of the general counsel of the Church of Latter Day Saints,
and we therefore implied that we thought Mormons were fascist.
That was absolutely the last thing
that we intended on doing.
We just simply did not know that that picture
was of the general counsel.
And that is no excuse.
We should not be putting things up on the show,
we should not be using assets, if we do not
know what they depict.
But I want to apologize to all of our Mormon subscribers
and anyone who was offended.
I'm really sorry.
We're going to just try to be better at that,
and I hope you'll forgive us.
t4mercustomz says that the problem with getting hung up
in a piece of art's politics is that it stops you
from having that authentic aesthetic experience
of experiencing the thing as itself,
as a work of art, which, yeah, totally.
And I think that is the problem that a lot of people had,
that they wanted to enjoy "Ender's Game" as a film,
but just got stopped dead in their tracks.
John Needy 5 says that if we have
to take into account the political stance of the people
making everything we consume, then
we will eventually be naked, hungry, and not entertained
at all.
And yeah, I think you can't be expected to know everything
about everything, though there are certainly
some people who think that that state of being is preferential.
It gets complicated when people feel
as though a decision that they're making
or a thing that they're supporting
is actually going to affect a structure of power in some way,
or is going to sufficiently comment
on that structure of power.
And that is the question with "Ender's Game."
It is a very visible movie made by a very visible man
with very well-known politics.
And so the combination of its visibility and politics
makes some people uncomfortable about supporting it.
To Thomas Humphrey, I honestly don't know whether or not
it is possible to not bring politics into things.
I think that, yeah, it would be a very difficult thing
to make-- especially as far as media is concerned--
an apolitical piece of media.
To Starius2, it's fine.
This is a very common mistake.
It happens all the time.
You'd be surprised, actually.
PewDiePie is four doors down and to the left.
Veronica Bourgeois said that the most important thing to her
was not Orson Scott Card's politics,
but how the movie was going to be,
and says that basically anybody can make the statement
they want by choosing or not choosing to go see the movie,
but that it is unfair when someone
is made to feel like a bad person
for making either of those decisions.
Agree.
Furthermore, Rocket Possum, who has an awesome name,
said that Orson Scott Card could have insulted her directly,
and she would still go see "Ender's Game."
That's dedication.
Woo, woo, woo, Brian Downes!
I just want to be totally clear that we're not
advocating any stomping out of anyone's opinions, rather,
just saying that however you orient yourself
towards seeing "Ender's Game" or not
seeing "Ender's Game," the reason that you
have is important.
Period.
Andrea Elise writes a really thoughtful comment
about the complexity of the decision
to go see "Ender's Game" if you have
been the victim of homophobia, and goes on
to say that it might not be about money,
but it might be about not wanting
to contribute to Card's cultural relevancy,
to keep him in the spotlight.
Which is, yeah, that's totally valid.
Michael McGee says that, as someone
who is somewhat conservative, if he were to only consume
media that expresses his political viewpoints,
especially in the sci-fi genre, there
wouldn't be too much for him to read or watch,
and says that he will respectfully
ignore the political stance of creators
if people who disagree with him respectfully ignore him.
That's one way to do it.
Erin Moore points us towards a really thoughtful blog post
by Neil Gaiman who tackles this very issue.
It's super great.
We'll put a link in the description.
Jack Connell said that Card's politics influenced him heavily
in his decision to go see "Ender's Game," but in kind
of the opposite way that we've been talking about.
In that, after he learned that Card is conservative,
that made him more interested in seeing the film.
Which, yeah.
Fair enough.
This week's episode was brought to you
by the hard work of these diamonds in the sky.
We have an IRC and a subreddit-- links in the description.
And the Tweet of the week comes from Duncan MacLaury,
who points us towards the "TARDIS Eruditorum," which
is a critical history of "Doctor Who."
In preparation for our episode next week
about the 50th anniversary of "Doctor Who,"
we recommend that you read all of it.
Better get started.
[EXPLOSION]
[DING]