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]

How many people heard "Body Rock" compared to "Beat It," though? Was it even a major r&b hit? Not at all clear why both songs couldn't have paved the way toward later rap/rock hybrids, and why "Beat It" might not even have been the bigger influence, given how inescapable it was in '82-'83.

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

...and given that, in "Beat It" unlike in "Body Rock," the guitar is undeniably the prominent instrument (not to mention a big part of the story that people told about the song -- don't recall people making an issue of "Body Rock"'s guitar, though I could be wrong.)

[koganbot]

Btw, I'm not claiming that "Body Rock" is particularly important - I like it, but I wouldn't really know its importance, or what part of it kids in the South Bronx or Queens would be making a big deal of. It's more illustrative: rock going into hip-hop and vice versa is going to happen regardless of "Beat It." I guess I'm going by my ears here: the zeitgeist that gets Rubin and Beasties and Run-DMC and LL moving is already so pervasive that a "Beat It" hitting or not hitting isn't going to make a difference, esp. since "Beat It" doesn't sound a lot like the hip-hop rock hybrids that emerge.