The Inventor Of Modern Pop

[koganbot]

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.

Comments

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Al Green also obviously a hugely important gospel-rooted soul/r&b vocalist throughout the '70s, though admittely his hits got fewer and charted lower as the disco years progressed. (His great "Belle," from 1978, peaked at #83 for instance.) Trying to think of what the late '70s/disco-era equivalents of, say, the Staple Singers' 1972 "I'll Take You There" and 1975 "Let's Do It Again" (actually that might count as early disco) or the Edwin Hawkins Singers' 1969 "Oh Happy Day" might have been; surely there must have been a couple. (Mighty Clouds of Joy also had a pre-disco almost-crossover almost-hit with "Mighty High," #69 pop in 1976.)

Wonder if Foreigner's 1985 "I Want To Know What Love Is" (feat. the New Jersey Mass Choir) can almost count as "the integration of gospel stylizations into AOR," or if Steve Perry's excursions into Sam Cooke-type singing make more sense from that particular perspective.