Adorno on pop music culture

A brief summary of:

'On popular music by Theodor W. Adorno, with the assistance of George Simpson. Originally published in: Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, New York: Institute of Social Research, 1941, IX, 17-48.'

Theodor W. Adorno was a marxist ideologist with a materialistic theory on culture. He argued that all 'popular' music listened to by the mass culture goes by a set of rules and that it is all standardised. Apparently you will know what it will sound like before you've even had to listen to it, yet you still buy it. In other words, you want what you are taught to expect. Adorno believed there were 'two spheres of music', one being serious music that was authentic culture because it wasn't afraid to be different and didn't fit into the standardised category of the other sphere; the popular music, whereby there is a rule 'that the chorus consists of thirty two bars and that the range is limited to one octave and one note...nothing fundamentally novel will be introduced.' (Adorno, T. 1941, pg1)

Pseudo-individualisation is another key point he brought in, whereby you, as a listener, choose to go against the 'pop' culture and think you're different to everyone else but you are actually part of a group that all think like that too, so in the end you're not really an individual at all and still a part of standardisation. Adorno also believed that it became a standardised idea that if we like one genre, we will like all music within that genre. Not only that, but he raised an interesting point about songs deemed as being 'popular'. The songs, however, simply go through a process of promotion known as 'plugging' with the idea that if we hear things enough times it will grow on us and become 'popular'. 'Listeners become so accustomed to the recurrence of the same things that they react automatically'. (Adorno, T. 1941, pg2) A good example of this almost mechanical business of churning out music is the reality TV show X Factor. Each year they look for someone that stands out from the rest and has that unique quality, but they already have a 'winning song' lined up for them as they want to produce a pop star and a song 'that is fundamentally the same as all the other current hits and simultaneously fundamentally different from them'. (Adorno, T. 1941, pg2)

The false idea that the collective experience through the consumption of a standardised product makes you the same as everyone else and the fact that we feel the need to belong and have 'recognition and acceptance' is another interesting theory of Adorno's about the listener. 'He feels safety in numbers and follows the crowd of all these who have heard the song before and who are supposed to have made its reputation.' (Adorno, T. 1941, pg3)


This years X factor winner Joe McElderry: