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

[koganbot]

I think my basic point is that "Walk This Way" or something equivalent was going to occur regardless of Michael because hip-hop was taking up the rock-funk-punk mixtures that were happening everywhere they could in NY, and "Beat It" was hardly the template. LL (or Rick Rubin) isn't going to say to himself, "Oh, because of 'Beat It' I am inspired to sample 'Johnny B. Goode.'" It's not because of "Beat It" but because of Flash and Bambaataa and Funkadelic etc. etc. that sampling "Johnny B. Goode" is an obvious move.

(I always thought "Rock Box" was clumsy and kind of boring, and thought "Sucker MCs" rocked a lot harder, actually, despite the latter's not having a guitar.)

[sm-woods.livejournal.com]

Don't think I was claiming that "Beat It" was a template -- of course it's just one among many. Though I do think because it was so huge and in the air at the time (and I recall lots of talk at the time about how "revolutionary" an idea it was bringing Eddie Van Halen into the fold -- regardless of whether that WAS a revolutionary thing to do or not) it may have been more directly an inspiration than, say, Funkadelic or Flash or Bambaata (the latter two of whom I assume you list because of what they would play as DJs, moreso than what kind of records they made).