Blog June 24, 2014
Where We Come From
If you haven't noticed, pop music is changing.
It was always a tricky concept to begin with, but the working definition has long had an element of the pornographic. Not just "you know it when you see it," but in the way that it connects with base human needs through the web of commodified production. And that double connection- to the sublimely, trans-temporally human and to the specifically historically anchored, is what gives pop music much of its importance. At both its heights and at its most mundane, it articulates part of the connection between these spheres- not only working to fix their meanings, but provides the emotional and social soundtrack through which to negotiate them. Form and content both, mind you. It's the reason why pop music is so often about everday life. It helps us think it.
If you look at it too closely, Popcaan's new album can cause this kind of thinking. And it's not just because it's very very good, but because it is unquestionably a pop album. And a dancehall album. And (probably) an album of modern electronic music. And the fact that it can happily be all three suggests that the relationship between these things has begun to shift, or perhaps already has shifted, in a rather profound way.
