I'm sure by now we've all seen one article or another (see Dangerous Minds, Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, AV Club, etc.) that posted this mashup of six country songs:
Let's put the mashup itself on hold for the moment and focus on the articles that presented this video. These articles were being passed around Facebook a week or so ago, and I made a point of not clicking on any of them, because they were all accompanied by titles with extreme value judgements, like "VIDEO DEMONSTRATES HOW MIND-NUMBINGLY FORMULAIC AND SHITTY COUNTRY POP MUSIC HAS BECOME." (That's the title of the Dangerous Minds article.) But I finally clicked on one when a colleague, Gene Willet, posted it on my wall and asked my opinion. Here is my comment:
Me: So, in general, I have a problem with "modern pop music is so formulaic and therefore crappy" claims. First of all, that places a value judgement on something being formulaic, which is an opinion statement. But second of all, it's not just today's music that follows formulae. Think about the 12-bar blues. Or Baroque opera. It's an interesting video, and does prove a point, but it smacks of "Back in MY day when music was good!" :-)
Gene: Agreed Christine! I think it's a good demo of a formula but you're spot on about the value judgement and 12 bar blues is a great example. I also wonder if anyone would complain about Mozart's first movements of piano sonatas being too formulaic? It is more interesting to me to explore what it is about this formula that has produced so many #1 country hits. Similarly, regarding value judgements, I once had a student complain that one of the reasons they didn't like pop music was because it was so repetitive but the student was a big fan of minimalist music. ??? ;-P
Do I like country music? Irrelevant. Formulaic does not necessarily mean good or bad. And honestly, good and bad are horrible words to use with regards to music, anyway. Dee Lockett, a Slate blogger, wrote a short post that actually did the issue justice - my one complaint is that her post was far too short!