Adorno primarily criticised popular music on the grounds that it was a means of making money, a device which churned out mass produced, inferior commodities and was symptomatic of the destructive nature of the capitalist mode of production. I feel Adornos theories of pseudo individualization are very generalised and unfair to an ever changing market.
It would be impossible for an artist to be completely unique as we are influenced by many things which have been done previously and therefore an artists work will always contain similarities to work which is past and present. I also feel that comparing popular music to other mass produced products is unfair as it is comsumed in a different way. We buy a single or album once, not many times like other products which we like. For this reason i feel a popular music artists work is art as it is a form of expression, even if it is ultimately as a means of making money.
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1 comment:
A very good and rather balanced analysis.
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