If you didn’t take a picture or make a video did you see it? The other day I found myself walking past a house with windows open, a small choir practising inside, something vaguely modern. My first thought was “I wish I’d brought my iPhone so I could record it and take a picture of the window through which the music came”.
I don’t imagine I had the same feelings at 16 about pop music as did someone born in 1900 and I don’t imagine young people feel the same about pop music as I did. But. There seems to be a movement towards admiration of craft and delivery that reflects the insistence of pop guru futurists that artists make sure they have a lot of interesting shit to show, as well as their fine faces and wonderful music. That is, that we like the music, OK, but what sets artists apart is how and what they show about how they live and make their art.
And there are two strands appearing. The first is the pure pop model that is as wet and spongey with its emotional and visual content as hard core porn. Have a look at the Kate Perry Making Of… videos. It’s not what she says or how she acts, it’s the actual tiredness in the eyes after a long shoot and the walking out of studio light into shadow. You never used to see that. The Monkeys did it in their incredible pop deconstruction film, Head, but who saw that? The Beatles tried it but it always came off cute. Both were scripted. I don’t think Perry faked it, indeed, that would be directing and acting worthy of a Cassavetes film. With the connivance of people like Perez Hilton the emotional pimples of superpop people are becoming as essential as the Max Factor that covers the physical ones up for the photo shoot.
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September 23, 2015