Written by Sheir Clark
German philosopher, musicologist, and composer, Theodore W. Adorno (1903-1969), actively analyzed listening tendencies and listener types with his critique of light, or “popular” music (Bowman, p. 322). Light music is custom tailored to the listeners inclinations and what appeals to them and entertains them, while also being tailored to the economic interests and needs of the wider music industry (Bowman, 1998).
Adorno explained how light music is created to primarily conform to a formula, which is usually standardized and predictable. This process doesn’t add much progress to creating new styles of music. Popular music often pertains to two very simple formulas: (a) the AABA 32-bar song form and (b) the 12-bar blues. Both of these formulas don’t allow for much variation in their technical style boundaries. Because of this, Adorno believes the sole purpose of light music is to be superficial, with “primitive structural foundations” (Bowman, p. 323). In addition, popular music’s lack of progression tends to quickly grow old with audiences and listeners since there is nothing really new to listen to when the same formula is used and repeated over and over again.
Adorno’s view of who, and what types of people, are listening to light, or popular music is quite harsh in that he mostly describes that this type of music is actively targeted toward the lonely and the immature who are trying to experience feelings they think they’re supposed to be having. While I am not a well-renowned musicologist, I think this view is extremely pretentious as he does not know, nor does he experience the feelings of the people who are listening to popular music. As such, he should not have made these types of assumptions based on his own harsh opinions.
There is one distinctive quality that Adorno believes is the most defining characteristic of popular music: in classical music, no one part of the music can be interchangeable with another section of music. This is due to the fact that each piece sounds so different in that they have different chord progressions, different keys, key changes, etc. But with light music, any section of a popular song can be interchangeable with another section of a different popular song as long as they are (a) in related keys or (b) have the same chord progression, which happens more often than it should. Some good examples of these types of songs recently are “Flowers” by Miley Cyrus. Any portion of this song can be directly interchanged with “If I was your man” by Bruno Mars. This is because both songs have the same key and the same chord progression. One music group in Australia called Axis of Awesome made an entire comedy skit based on this entire phenomenon. The video is available on YouTube at the following link, “Axis of Awesome – 4 Four Chord Song (with song titles)” and it goes through a list of 38 popular songs that all have the same or similar chord progressions, with slightly varying melodies. While watching this video, it’s hard not to agree with Adorno as the songs end up getting repetitive and boring.
While Adorno makes a good point that popular music can become repetitive and stale, Bowman makes an excellent counter argument by stating that all music, especially popular music, has a seductive power to it, especially with music’s ability to create a sense of community surrounding a group of people (Bowman, 1998). While Adorno argues that people who listen to popular music tend to be lonely and immature, Bowman has a more positive outlook in that music allows people to escape loneliness, isolation, and alienation. Through music, people can find a community of like-minded individuals. Music allows people to feel alive in a world that is, according to Adorno, filled with numbing, repetitive, and mundane everyday tasks. Music allows for immediate engagement and satisfaction or, in other words, immediate happiness and gratification in a world that is otherwise extremely isolating.
Reference
Bowman, W. D. (1998). Philosophical perspectives of music. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Philosophy of Music 