C4: Music

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Music rules the world

Everyone is influenced by music. Musicians figure highly in the historical halls of fame, from Beethoven and Mozart to Elvis , Queen and Oasis. Many teenagers (and let's be honest, adults too) idolise pop stars. John Lennon, at the height of Beatlemania, made the comment: "We're bigger than Jesus!" That upset a lot of Christians, but what he meant, as he tried to explain later, was that the Beatles' popularity and effect on the modern culture was as significant as a world religion, and he had a good point. Such is the power of music.

BOYS! THE SEARCH IS ON

¤ Are you between 17 and 21 and extremely good looking?

¤ Can you sing and wish to join the next teenage all by band sensation?

¤ Do you want to follow performers such as Take That, East 17, Sean McGuire, Bad Boys Inc. and Boyzone into the pages of Smash Hits and Just Seventeen?

¤ Would you like to see yourself on Top of the Pops, The Chart Show and MTV?

¤ If the answer is YES and you think you’ve got what it takes then read on.

This was the advert that appeared in the tabloid newspapers in January 1995. The full page ad went on to explain how “World Records” was auditioning for a boy band they were creating. A year later, “Upsidedown” appeared. As promised, this totally synthetic, voice tutored, dance trained, fully groomed and image obsessed group has joined the ranks of the major bands mentioned in the advert.

Much of mainstream pop music today is producer and money led. Unoriginal and unmemorable tunes are churned out regularly and are forgotten within a few years. Like anything else, music can be used and abused. Today, it is a sellable commodity and many producers don’t give a damn about quality.

Rock Music is dangerous!?!

Criticising popular culture is nearly always a mistake. The tabloid newspapers come down on you like lightening and anything of value you wanted to say is usually lost. Despite this, in 1987, a book was published in the USA that did just that: it attacked American culture, and yet people took notice. "The Closing of the American Mind" by Allan Bloom was a best seller and was subtitled "How higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today's students". He has a whole chapter on music and he's very forthright. Here are some edited highlights, see what you think:

This is the significance of rock music. I do not suggest that it has any high intellectual sources. But it has risen to its current heights in the education of the young on the ashes of classical music...

Rock gives children, on a silver platter, with all the public authority of the entertainment industry, everything their parents always used to tell them they had to wait for until they grew up...

My concern here is not with the moral effects of this music - whether it leads to sex, violence or drugs. The issue here is its effect on education, and I believe it ruins the imagination of young people and makes it very difficult for them to have a passionate relationship with the art and thought that are the substance of a good education. The first sensuous experiences are decisive in determining the taste for the whole of life, and they are the link between the animal and spiritual in us.

Rock music provides premature ecstasy and, in this respect, is like the drugs with which it is allied. It artificially induces exaltation naturally attached to the completion of the greatest endeavours - victory in a just war, consummated love, artistic creation, religious devotion and discovery of the truth... In my experience, students who have had a serious drug habit - and gotten over it - find it difficult to have any enthusiasm or great expectations. It is as though the colour has been drained out of their lives...so it is with rock music...

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