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The Inventor Of Modern Pop

Moggy on MJ (Kids These Days): Except that this morning I've been listening to a 1Xtra tribute show and have realised a) my woeful lack of any kind of knowledge of his back-catalogue beyond a few very big hits and b) exactly how incredibly world-formingly important he was. It sounds pretty stupid but I had no idea that when people said he invented modern pop music, they actually meant he literally invented modern pop music.

Aptly enough, I was talking to my mother only a couple of hours before reading that, and she, having just heard some clips of Michael, said she couldn't hear in the music what was ever supposed to have been so innovative about it, so couldn't understand why he's considered to have invented modern pop music.

I said I was inclined to agree with her, since, while Michael synthesized elements in his work, you can't say that he invented any of its basic vocabulary.

Maybe this underestimates the inventive role of synthesis, but anyway, the story I would tell is this:

Michael reasserted the importance of gospel-based soul in the post-disco dancepop world (more the relatively smooth style of the gospel quartets and balladeers than that of the shouters and stompers, though his truncated yelps certainly drew on the latter), but he didn't create musical vocabulary in the way that, say, James Brown or Sly Stone or Miles Davis can be said to have created musical vocabulary. And postdisco dance music already used a whole hunk of gospel-based soul anyway, albeit more from the diva-shouter side (diva-shouter being another synthesis). The forward motion of music at the time of Thriller didn't seem to be Thriller but hip-hop and dancehall and electrofunk and techno and club music (other motions either had nothing to do with Michael, e.g. hair metal going glitter, or were so ongoingly pervasive that Thriller and Off The Wall can hardly have been said to be stimulating them or leading them: e.g., the integration of soul stylizations into countrypolitan and into Italianate and showbiz showoff pop and the integration of those types of music into soul/r&b; or e.g. the hard-rock guitar on "Beat It," which would only have been surprising to people who'd solidly ignored '70s funk). The actual task of working soul/r&b into that forward motion was undertaken by Prince in regard to synthpop and by Teddy Riley and the New Edition alums in regard to hip-hop. When Michael himself started working with Riley, he was playing catch up.

As I said, maybe this underestimates the role of his synthesis in "invention," and maybe without Michael having gone mega, r&b wouldn't be so pre-eminent today, but that's the work of a lot of hands, without Michael's necessarily being dominant.

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a confident-sounding commentator on one of the now dozens of TV "tributes" i've caught a glimpse of -- don't recall who it was at all -- made a point i'd not really ever thought of (and don't really have the right knowledge to process) which is that the underlying structures and chord sequences of "off the wall" certainly and "thriller" maybe (by maybe i mean i forget if he was talking abt thriller or just OtW) are much more jazz than was the norm in pop at that time, black or white

i have no idea if this claim is true -- or what exactly s/he meant by it (there's the quincy jones backstory obviously, but i think the commentator meant something more concrete than "if quincy's involved it MUST be jazz")

james brown also often said that the centre of his music was jazz, rather than blues or gospel

Just a few random notes:

Michael reasserted the importance of gospel-based soul in the post-disco dancepop world (more the relatively smooth style of the gospel quartets and balladeers than that of the shouters and stompers

This sounds like a really interesting theory, and I'm trying to wrap my head around it, but I'm not sure I buy it. As you say later, "postdisco dance music already used a whole hunk of gospel-based soul anyway," but so had disco itself, all the time -- I mean, I'm no expert at distinguishing blues-shout influences from gospel influences, but certainly Candi Staton and Teddy Pendergrass (and Philly soul-style disco in general) and Loleatta Holloway and all sorts of other disco acts were hugely influenced by gospel. (Maybe somebody like the Trammps were more deep soul shouters, as in Wilson Pickett?) At any rate, it's hard for me to get how MJ could reassert something that had never gone away in the first place. On the other hand, I've always been intrigued by a possibly tossed off parenthetical in Xgau's 1979 Pazz & Jop essay -- "Four 'r&b' acts (the term is returning to favor) made the album list...crossover queen Donna Summer, comeback prince Michael Jackson, disco pacemakers Chic, and elder statesman Stevie Wonder." That was the year of Off The Wall, of course, and I'd never known that the term "r&b" went out of favor. And maybe, somehow, its return to favor coincided with a perceived return of r&b to the music, after years of it being sublimated by disco? Which might support your theory, though to my ears it was only sublimated in certain kinds of disco (the Euro- kind, especially).

other motions either had nothing to do with Michael, e.g. hair metal going glitter... the integration of soul stylizations into countrypolitan

I'm not sure when hair-metal wasn't glitter. Twisted Sister's shout vocals had a lot of Slade in them; Quiet Riot covered Slade (twice); Hanoi Rocks were steeped in Mott The Hoople and the Dolls, and I'm not sure anything earlier than that even counts as hair-metal. Also not clear on how the integration of soul styles into pop country is an '80s-or-later innnovation, when guys like Charlie Rich and Joe South and Billy Joe Royal and Ronnie Milsap (not to mention black sigers crossing over to country all the way back to Ray Charles in 1962) had been doing it all along. If you're saying that soul inflections somehow became more pervasive in country starting in the '80s, I'm not sure I hear that. Though they're obviously still there.

The actual task of working soul/r&b into that forward motion was undertaken by Prince in regard to synthpop

This is interesting, too, and seems obvious in a way, but I'd strangely never thought of Prince that way. But while new wave synth-pop was clearly an influence on Prince starting at least with Controversey, he was hardly alone. Zapp's first album came out in 1980 (same year as Dirty Mind), and George Clinton's early '80s solo LPs had a lot of synth pop in them as well, even to the point of a Thomas Dolby collobaration or two, I believe. Though they never sold as well as Prince's biggest, I guess, and I do guess he was more influential in the long run (at least until Zapp-style robot vocals were revived by T-Pain AutoTune types decades later.)

hard-rock guitar on "Beat It," which would only have been surprising to people who'd solidly ignored '70s funk

This might be true, but I'm not sure that bands like Funkadelic and the Ohio Players (much less Black Heat or Black Merda or whoever) had worked hard rock guitars into a concise pop-oriented funk context in the way "Beat It" eventually did. What are the precedents for that? Possibly Rick James ("Super Freak"?); maybe the Isleys ("That Lady," 1973.) And okay, Donna Summer circa "Hot Stuff," I guess. So maybe it wasn't entirely new. But "Beat It" does seem to have briefly opened the floodgates for a more explicitly popwise (whatever that means) and crossover-viable rock-funk than had existed in the '70s -- Shalamar's "Dead Giveaway," Kool and Gang's "Misled," Philip Bailey's "Easy Lover" with Phil Collins," Teena Marie's "Lovergirl" all came out 1983-84.

The actual task of working soul/r&b into that forward motion was undertaken... by Teddy Riley and the New Edition alums in regard to hip-hop

Which would only have been surprising to people who'd solidly ignored Lakeside's "Fantastic Voyage," Teena Marie's "Square Biz," Denroy Morgan's "I'll Do Anything For You," New Edition's "Cool It Now," and any number of other pre-new-jack-swing '80s r&b hits that had already incorporated rap/hip-hop elements. If anything, to me, New Jack seemed like a letdown after those sorts of hits -- or a codification of them, maybe.

if Cab Calloway and Louis Jordan are jazz, then why aren't the Drifters and Chuck Berry?

I totally get your point here, but was Louis Jordan considered jazz? I honestly don't know, but I've always assumed that "jump blues" of his type would have been considered to have fallen more under the "r&b" than "jazz" banner, even in the '40s. Though obviously, musically, he was bridging the two genres -- and picking up to a certain extent on where Cab Calloway (who strangely I do assume was considered jazz) had left off. (And what about Louis Prima, who was probably the Italian equivalent of Jordan? Was he considered a jazz guy? Again, I'm not sure. I expect it depends on who you would have asked, even back then.)

Another odd thing about considering Prince the primary r&b + synthpop guy, of course, is that r&b and synth-pop had obviously also been merged all through the disco era, especially in Europe, since 1975 ("Fly Robin Fly" by Silver Convention) at least, only the synth-pop in question then was Kraftwerk rather than, say, Duran Duran or Soft Cell.

This probably won't shed much light on the issue (it doesn't for me personally), but in the Rolling Stone tribute issue, in his piece on the making of Thriller, Alan Light refers to "the loose, swinging 'Baby Be Mine' (which, Jones points out, has a melody similar to a John Coltrane-style progressive jazz line)..."

("Jones" of course meaning Qunicy.)

In response to the question of "inventing" modern pop, I don't know, it's a conundrum. In the '80s and '90s, Prince's impact seemed more obvious and prevalent; direct homages to his sound seemed to show up in all sorts of places (of course, I can't recall a whole lot of them right now... I'm thinking obvious stuff like Ready for the World and Natural Selection and less obvious things like "Boys of Summer," which could be a Purple Rain backing track), whereas Michael's impact seemed harder to gauge (except, as noted, in some of the hard rock-dance fusions... I recall at the time making the connection between "Beat it" and "Rock Box," for instance). Maybe his impact was more diffuse, probably it was more in the vocal side (Ann Powers recently suggested that his vocal stylings can be felt deeply in today's female r&b singers). Maybe what he "invented" wasn't a sound or a style, but a mindset? A he-opened-dozens-of-doors sort of thing? (But was he particularly unique in this regard, or merely the most celebrated or famous example?)

Last point: one of the things that has struck me most regarding Jackson's death is finding out just how strong his appeal continues to be to younger people, by which I mean kids, people not even born during the era of Dangerous, never mind Thriller. Kids seem to be genuinely aware of and interested in the guy in a way I don't think they are of Prince or any other pop icons of any era earlier than the present one. Doubly strange as he hasn't had a bona fide hit in eons. (Some of this may of course be due entirely to the fact of his death; I was distraught when Nixon resigned from office in '74, despite not fully grasping any of it. Still, there seems to be a genuine appeal and interest in him well beyond people who grew up with his best music.)

Michael reasserted the importance of gospel-based soul in the post-disco dancepop world (more the relatively smooth style of the gospel quartets and balladeers than that of the shouters and stompers, though his truncated yelps certainly drew on the latter)

This is the crucial story, nonetheless (I mean, as far as Continuing Impact On Pop Music, not necessarily the crucial story of what moved me most about his music). Which isn't to say that the sweet vocal soul style wouldn't have been reasserted without him (Prince or New Edition could have done it anyway*). But there's also the possibility that, without the success of Off The Wall and Thriller, this stuff ends up getting relegated to "urban adult contemporary"/"quiet storm" and doesn't remain linked to the youthbeat.

*and of course the diva/shouter soul was already imprinted into club music, proto-house, proto-techno etc.

I haven't been searching through this week's and last week's onslaught of Michael commentary. Have people like Ryan Leslie, The-Dream, etc. been offering their insights?

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