Single Ladies (Put A Riff On It)

[koganbot]

Something I posted on a comment thread here, about the Turnage-Beyoncé thing:

Just a point in regard to whether one "got" the reference to "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)" [not an issue for me, 'cause I discovered the Turnage piece through one of the mashups, and wouldn't bet on my having recognized the tune otherwise, though probably would have been saying to myself, "this reminds me of something; what the hell is it?"]: loads of melodies sound like other melodies, some deliberately, some from the songwriters' unconscious, some coincidentally, etc. I often miss the obvious references and then hear connections that aren't there, or when I do hear I have no idea what's intended and what isn't. And just to give an example, I've probably heard Hole's "Celebrity Skin" and Ashlee Simpson's "Surrender" over a hundred times each, and I know that Ashlee has covered "Celebrity Skin" in concert, and I saw the episode of Ashlee's reality show where she and her label president, Jordan Schur, are discussing "Surrender" and Schur says that it makes him think of Hole's "Celebrity Skin," my assumption being that he's correctly inferring from the sound that Courtney Love is a huge inspiration for Ashlee, yet I didn't realize, until just a few days ago when I ran into a YouTube mashup that showed it, that "Surrender" uses the riff from "Celebrity Skin." So... well it's not a contest, to see who gets it. No one gets it all.

[Worth clicking the link to see my comment on someone's odd assumptions concerning the authorship of "Single Ladies."]

[Also, though I love "Celebrity Skin," "Surrender" is one of my least favorite Ashlee tracks, Ashlee's most triumphant Hole-style song being "I Am Me."]

[EDIT: I'm speaking loosely when I say "uses the riff," since I don't mean "plays the riff" but "plays something similar to the riff that was almost certainly based on the riff," the rhythm and the style of power-chording being identical but the notes not. I talk a little more about this in the comment thread.]

Comments

[koganbot]

No, I want to be really strict on what we're saying is equivalent to a Kuhnian paradigm/disciplinary matrix, otherwise you're not going to understand his concept of "paradigm." Also, if we are strict in this way, then we can employ the notion effectively in understanding practices that don't have such Kuhnian paradigms because we can use the concept to highlight how these practices differ from the ones with actual paradigms, hence, these practices silhouetted against the background of the hard sciences, we can see highlight details from these practices.

Remember, Kuhn developed the notion of paradigm to understand how it was that science was able to achieve things that the social sciences in particular couldn't: how the scientists could perceive anomalies, know when an idea had been refuted or agree when a questioned had been answered, and periodically overthrow its basic ideas in astonishing reformations of thought. It doesn't do to extend the idea to other discourses that don't achieve these things, since then the concept loses its explanatory power.

And the Bloom example is exactly what I mean. Anxiety of Influence isn't a shared paradigm unless everybody in the social practice - everybody - buys into it. You're not a poet if you're not doing it - not, Harold Bloom, one man, doesn't consider you a poet worthy of the name if you're not doing it, but the entire community engaged in the enterprise doesn't consider you a poet, and you, the poets, can tell the poets from the nonpoets, just as the evolutionary biologist can push to the side the person who doesn't believe in natural selection. Whereas the fact that we get into methodological and taxonomic arguments about who's a poet and what poets are doing is an emphatic reason for saying that poets don't share a disciplinary matrix, or ever have.

[koganbot]

how the scientists could perceive anomalies, know when an idea had been refuted or agree when a questioned had been answered, and periodically overthrow its basic ideas in astonishing reformations of thought

Hmmm. The "its" in that sentence has no antecedent. How about "an periodically overthrow a discipline's basic ideas, achieving astonishing reformations of thought in doing so.

Grr

[koganbot]

"and periodically overthrow..."

So, to collate all my corrections

[koganbot]

"we can see highlight details from these practices"

"know when an idea had been refuted or agree when a questioned had been answered, and periodically overthrow its a discipline's basic ideas, achieving in astonishing reformations of thought in doing so."