Chapter 2.1: Taking the Initiative: An Introduction to Musical Power Analysis

This post is part of my series on Pop, Power & the Vocal-Subject

> The key terrain of power struggle in the pop song is the moment of transformation between verse and chorus.

>> There are no stakes higher than this moment.

>>> To control this transformation is to control the direction and meaning of the song, and to subjugate it to particular goals or interests.

Over the course of Part 1 of this essay series, I’ve tried to lay out the fundamental opposition – between ‘vocal-subject’ and ‘objective musical forces’ – that produces what we know as songs. I have introduced the notion of a power relationship between these two elements, instrumental in creating meaning and even political potency, but so far I have focused on a power relationship that effectively works in only one direction. The elements which come together to form the band track, accompaniment track, backing, beat, riddim etc. – the ‘objective musical forces’ – constitute a monolithic environment, flow, space-time, lifeworld, habitus, etc., within which the vocal-subject exists, to which it is subject and against which it can resist with varying degrees of success.

Chapter 1.3: Beat Control, Power Chords

This post is part of my series on Pop, Power & the Vocal-Subject

In the last two chapters, I set out the concept of the 'vocal-subject' in the pop song, as it exists within the 'song world' given form by the 'objective musical forces'. The relationship between these two elements of the song produces meaning through the distribution of power and control, agency and domination. In the chapters that constitute Part 1 of this essay series, I focus on just one particular direction of this power relation. This particular chapter will focus on the following two questions:

1. How is the vocal-subject dominated and controlled by the objective musical forces?
2. How does the vocal-subject resist this domination and control?

To address these questions, this chapter focuses on those pop recordings in which the objective musical forces exert a relentlessly dominating and structuring force, against which the vocal-subject has very little power. A vocal-subject can be controlled and structured through being 'contained' within a metre and key, coerced into following a certain structural progression or moulded into a pre-established melodic or rhythmic identity. However, these songs actually materialise their forces of domination sonically, allowing for a more overt playing out of power struggles, quite removed from the 'standardising' coercion evoked in Adorno’s critiques of pop and jazz, which allow an ‘illusory freedom’ to be maintained.

The two key musical dimensions by which instrumental forces in pop tracks manifest excessive power and control are: 1) through rhythmic-harmonic repetition, either on a small scale (beat-to-beat) or a larger scale (looped progressions/motifs), and 2) through ‘heavy’ and ‘powerful’ timbres (or textures). We might, after Michel Foucault (2004), label these as two ‘technologies’ of power by which the vocal-subject is subjugated, ordered and controlled. They vaguely correspond to his two categories of regulatory ‘discipline’ and spectacular ‘punishment’, and can be differentiated as below:

Rhythmic-harmonic    Examples: constant beats, grooves, looped progressions, pre-existent cyclic structures, grounds Dance Control Discipline Regulatory Seductive Centripetal ‘Black noise’

Timbre    Examples: thick, dense, heavy overwhelming timbres, distortion, overdrive, power chords Rock Power Punishment Spectacular Coercive Centrifugal ‘White noise’

In the essay that follows, I will discuss the particular qualities of each ‘technology’ of power, making particular use of the work of Steve Goodman and his book Sonic Warfare (2010), but extrapolating his ideas onto the terrain of the song itself, and the sonic battles fought between vocal-subject and instrumental forces.

Chapter 1.1: The Vocal-Subject

This post is part of my series on Pop, Power & the Vocal-Subject

In the Introduction, I outlined three theses concerning the way in which pop music is experienced as meaningful by its audience. The first part of this series focuses on the first of these theses:

On recorded pop tracks, the vocals constitute a distinct 'vocal-subject' in relation to a non-vocal, musical 'situation'.

For each thesis, I will try to demonstrate a) how they are implicated in notions of power and control, b) how they can be used in analysis and criticism of pop music, and c) how this can inform hearings of political music, as well as political hearings of music. Part One is by far the most theoretical, philosophical section of the series, in that I try to explain what I actually mean by these terms, and how they might compare to existing theories of musical phenomenology: not only in the academic realms of musicology, philosophy and cultural studies, but also in everyday fan discourse and journalistic pop criticism.