How to Create a Pop Star

I know this is off topic but...

STEVE! Where did your monkey go? 

He got the grand order of the boot, stemming from that entertaining debate we had about adding bands on the CZ, where I did a skit about Yes Minister.

I changed it on a whim.

But, fear not monkey fans. He might well make a blistering return one day!

/edit: ¹ Plato even called for the Lydian and Ionian modes to be banned because they were so frivolous.

Yep. Rumour has it that it will be a compulsory round in this season's X-Factor.

Sorry for the late reply here Dean, I've been busy and not able to spend much time on PA lately.

Catharsis isn't merely a temporary release of emotion; if we go back to the original sources and look at the writings of Aristotle, who first defined catharsis, we see that the concept of catharsis implies a purification of emotion; that is, the release of emotion and identification with the emotions of characters or musicians in a story or song teaches us to "align our loves and hates correctly," as Aristotle would put it.  This isn't a temporary effect; it's a lasting one, and the whole idea of catharsis was meant to codify the way in which music affected human character.  

Bieber is not "non-art" because the intent was to produce entertainment; he's mere entertainment because the compositions have almost no artistic value.  That could have been because the songwriters' intent was to mass-produce some light fluff that the masses would latch onto (in his case, I imagine that was probably part of it).  It could also have been just because the songwriters were bad (artistically), regardless of their intent.  It's very possible for someone to intend to create a great work of art, and for his music to have almost no artistic value because he is a terrible composer.  It is also possible for someone to intend merely to create something entertaining, and for the result to be a great work of art because he is a good composer. 

I believe that music has higher and lower purposes because certain effects of the music are more profitable to the listener than others.  It's more profitable for a listener to listen to music that improves his character and teaches him to deal with his emotions than to listen to music that merely distracts him for the moment.  Therefore, I think that catharsis is a higher purpose than mere entertainment (as I defined them).

 

But hey, I like seeing an exception that proves the rule, it encourages us all to keep chipping away at that damn.

 

I'm not saying that a piece of entertainment is limited by the definition; as I said before, something can be entertaining - a pleasant amusement and diversion of the mind - while still posessing qualities beyond that, which are often the artisitic qualities that I discussed earlier.  I'm saying that the "entertainment" aspect of any piece of music involves only what entertainment itself is.  Catharsis, the communication of emotion, etc. are not excluded by the definition of entertainment, but they are not part of entertainment, either.

 

As for the intent distinctions thing; don't worry, we just misunderstood each other.  I can give more examples; Coldplay, One Republic, Journey; in the end, neither of us can really know every purpose these musicans have for making music, so it's impossible, in the end, for me to make these distinctions based upon intent.  I do believe that the intent of a musician is going to effect his work, but not for a moment do I think that a piece of music becomes something less if the intent was "lesser."

 

If you don't see music as having higher and lower purposes, do you see it as having a real purpose at all?  Or is there only one purpose for it, or is the purpose determined by the intent of the artist or the desires of the listener?  I can't really respond to that unless I know where you're coming from on the issue.

 

I never said that Mozart was better than Rush.  I just picked a pair of classical artists and a pair of prog artists, not intending to elevate one over the other.

I have no intention of ever trying to convince you of anything - no one has ever had their mind changed by an internet debate. If hard-work is not rewarded then the person is doing something that people don't want enough for them to be rewarded. That may sound harsh but it is a reality and complaining about it won't change a thing. The utopia you dream of actually does exist, it exists in parallel with the world you don't like, the difference is the market place for the so-called wizard of oz stuff you don't like is just so much bigger, and that's never going to change. Back in the "Golden Prog Era" of the 70s when Prog Rock was selling well, manufactured pop in the form of Teenie-bopper pin-up bands, Bubble-gum pop, Motown Soul, Philly Disco and British Glam Rock sold more, a lot more.

I could make the most exquisite audio amplifier the world has ever seen, and take hundreds of hours crafting each part to make it absolutely perfect in every way, then fine-tune it to produce a sound so transparent and crystal clear it would make the angels weep and then I could spend another few hundred hours hand-tooling a case made from titanium and solid silver with custom made knobs using the rarest hardwoods that only grow on a remote island in the Indian Ocean and use military grade switches that would not look out of place on a million dollar yacht moored in Monte Carlo bay and wire it all up using the purest oxygen free gold wire that can only be made in the zero-gravity environment of the International Space Station. To recoup my costs I would obviously have to charge a kings ransom for it, but even that exorbitant price tag would work to my advantage because the people who would buy it are as impressed by a gold-plated price ticket as they are by workmanship that went  into it and the audio clarity that comes out of it. I would probably sell less than a hundred of those in my lifetime but I could never sell thousands because the market for such an audiophile piece of equipment is so small. Yet even though I may never sell very many, the selling price will make me rich.

 

Alternatively I could take the same circuit design and get it manufactured in China for $20 using cheaper components and a mass-produced case with knobs made from domestic grown wood etc., - it would still look and sound the same and the choir invisible would still be crying rivers of tears whenever they heard it but my audiophile fans would hate it with a passion even though I could prove scientifically that the two amps are identical in every way. However, I could now sell it in Best Buy for less than a hundred bucks each and sell thousands of them, perhaps a million over my lifetime throughout the world so they would still make me rich.

 

Now the problem with music is that regardless of the amount of hard-work that goes into making it, every CD retails for the same price; regardless of how artistically perfect it is; regardless of the workmanship and talent involved; each and every CD sells for (let's say) $15 no matter who made it or how long it took to produce. This does not fit into the two business plans of the audio amp I've just described because I cannot hike-up the selling price for the album that cost more to make and I cannot charge more for the album with the higher artistic integrity value (whatever that is). What I have to do is sell more of them, a lot more, and to do that I need to promote them so that more people will hear it and therefore buy it... yet I can also do that to the album that was cheaper to produce and I would make even more money. But that still does not explain why manufactured pop records sell more than hand-crafted "art" records because if I sold the two versions of my audio amp at the same retail price the hand-crafted ones would fly off the shelves while the mass-produced ones would sit in the warehouse still in their shipping crates. The difference is very simple - the people who buy music neither know nor care how much hard-work has gone into making it, they don't care about talent (no one has to convince them that an artist has talent, just watch one of those reality make-me-a-star tv programmes to see that) - they only care how it sounds - if they like it they buy it, if they don't they don't. And this is true of the manufactured pop as it is for the hand-crafted "art" music. The bottom line is the people who buy manufactured pop simply don't like hand-crafted "art" music.