Here’s what I want to say about Glee:
Clearly, the success of Glee says a lot about the state of remix in popular culture. For a generation raised on televised karaoke contests judged by failed record industry insiders, and Paula Abdul, Glee is the latest filter from which they are exposed to music. The thing about Glee is that its cast sings popular songs and thus re-contextualizing their meaning in order to address the themes presented in a given episode. While many TV shows incorporate popular music into their soundtracks, Glee does so by stripping the song’s association with the artist who made it popular. By releasing the cast’s recordings, even before they appear in televised episodes, Glee serves to remix all cultural connotations associated with the original versions of these songs.
Obviously, this is a problem!
Clearly, the success of Glee indicates that people like their brand of musical remix. Except Kings of Leon. For those that are unaware, an all out war ensued in the media between Glee creator Ryan Murphy and Kings of Leon. See an excellent recap of the verbal feud here:
http://exploremusic.com/wtf/glee-vs-kings-of-leon-it-gets-better/
We often talk about our freedom to create within remix culture as empowering. Clearly, Ryan Murphy has grown accustomed to the power of re-contextualizing popular music to benefit his own show. For all intents and purposes, Glee is one of the voices of a generation raised on the ideology of free music, Guitar Hero and American Idol, unable to fathom an artist exercising their copyright and limiting the remixing and re-contextualizing of their art. Murphy’s public reaction towards Kings of Leon, whose music he clearly admires, really says a lot about the state of popular music and a generation entrenched in remix culture.
This is an excellent point - I think there are such overbearing notions of entitlement in contemporary culture that even the idea of being 'respectful' towards an artist can get twisted all out of proportion, as in this case (Murphy would probably argue that including Kings of Leon music in Glee is a way of respecting them, an attitude quite contradictory to his overtly ignoring their desire to not incorporate their music into Glee).
ReplyDeleteI also think the point of decontextualization is an essential one which most dialogues about remix tend to skirt over. While popular artists have been covering each others' music for ages, in the past it seemed (please correct me if I'm wrong) that there was more of a reverence towards the source artists than there is now (I have CD of a live Elvis concert in the '50s where he carefully points out the names of the artists of each cover he does before playing the song). That said, Jimi Hendrix's cover of "All Along the Watchtower" attained such rampant popularity that most listeners tend to forget that it was initially a Bob Dylan song, so maybe these mutual shout-outs by artists aren't as much the case as I'm making them out to be.
The defense of bricolage programs such as Glee, I'm sure, lies in the perpetual elephant in the room that is the internet - everyone has the capacity to go and look up who the songs were originally by if they really want to. However, this tends to vastly under-assume exactly how lazy most audiences are, as well as the same process of "the damage already being done" in regards to their relationship with the source text, in the same way that I explained the danger of one's relationship with a movie being affected by watching a bad trailer first in a previous post. How many young audiences will actually know Journey as Journey and not as "oh yeah, they wrote some songs that Glee did"?
But what's the solution? Having some kind of disclaimer before Glee starts, saying "Warning: the following broadcast contains songs by popular artists. Please exercise caution if watching without familiarity with the original songs"? Is it the responsibility of the remix/covering artist to cite their influences, or the responsibility of the consumer to do their homework themselves? I wish I had an answer, but this response has run long enough and gone nowhere, so I'll leave it up for everyone else to decide.
I don't really see this as a problem. Maybe I am missing something, but the idea of a cover is for a new artist to give their own personal take on a song by an artist that they probably have a lot of respect for. The remixing of the cultural connotations of a song is part of creating a cover, otherwise we wouldn't consider it a remix at all. In covering the song, the covering artist makes it their own, and in the case of Glee it is evidently always with the permission of the artist.
ReplyDeleteAlso, with many of the songs the Glee cast sings, they do give reference to the original artist in the show. They have had entire episodes dedicated to particular artists, and they mention Journey in most episodes where they sing Dont Stop Believin.
It is the prerogative of the audience member to seek out the original song if they enjoy the song enough. The show never claims to write the songs themselves.
With this, I think it is interesting to think about where Broadway music fits into this. the show uses a lot of music from popular musicals, which is meant to sung by different artists. It is never intended for the writers of the songs to sing them. I think that removing these songs from their original context is a more of a problem than covering other artist's songs (but still not really a problem). These songs were created with an entire narrative surrounding them. Placing them in a new narrative completely changes every connotation of the song, this is more of a remix than a cover.
I think Anna's perspective here is interesting.
ReplyDeleteWhat I find really interesting/problematic about this story is the way in which love, admiration, and respect for the music of Kings Of Leon so quickly turned into negativity. I referred to Glee as symbolic of a new generation accustomed to getting what they want, when they want, and how they want (which is usually for free). Personally, I don't see Glee as having respect for artist's music unless they can do whatever they want with it.
Oh, I meant to add, I definitely do not agree with Ryan Murphy's attitude toward artists who do not want their music used on his show. But I think that is more of a pompous knave problem than a remix problem.
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