Page 251 - Cultural Theory

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••• Eamonn Carrabine •••

The pleasures of rock texts (combinations of words and music) has always
derived from the voluptuous presence of voices, and rock fans, unlike high art
aestheticians, have always known that music’s sensual truth isn’t dependent on
rules of expression. We respond to the materiality of rock’s sounds, and the rock
experience is essentially erotic – it involves not the confirmation of self through
language (the mode of bourgeois aesthetics, always in control), but the disso-
lution of the self in jouissance.
(Frith, 1983: 164)

Frith (1988: 120–1) has developed these arguments to suggest that future textual analy-
sis of music meaning should take three possible directions. First, studies should not
simply restrict themselves to analysing lyrics, which had become by then a common
feature of pop musicology, but need to pay attention to the way the song is sung, as
this mediates what the singer means to an audience. Second, accounts of pop music
need to situate songs within their respective genres as ‘different people use different
music to experience (or fantasize) different sorts of community; different pop forms
(disco, punk, country, rock, etc.) engage their listeners in different narratives of desire’
(ibid.: 121). Third, detailed attention needs to be given to how songs work – how the
words themselves function as rhythm and sound. While studies in the last decade or
so have shown a greater attentiveness to these issues (good examples include Walser,
1993; Born, 1995; van Leeuwen, 1999; Brackett, 2002), it remains the case that the spe-
cific ways in which music communicates meaning has not yet been fully addressed in
relation to questions of social power, cultural value and historical change.
Moreover, anyone who has an interest in popular music will recognize this preoccu-
pation with the particular ‘grain’ of a vocalist – the distinctive and idiosyncratic way a
voice communicates. For instance, I am with Nelson George (1988) and his preference
for early Aretha Franklin over anything by Whitney Houston, while John Lennon
singing even the lamest of his post-Beatles material moves me in ways that Elvis Costello,
save for one or two performances, cannot. This is partly because I think Houston and
Costello are trying too hard. It is also clear that each genre has its own set of established
conventions. Whether these be ‘the sentimental country whine, the fey mournful plead
of alternative rock, the snarling macho sneer of hard rock, the street wise assertiveness
of rap or the soft sincerity of the singer-songwriter’ (Negus, 1992: 90). Yet for artists, crit-
ics, fans and record company staff alike what is often the most emotionally involving
voice is the one that transcends simple genre conventions to produce a distinctive grain.
However, the vocalists I have just mentioned are not simply singers. They are pop stars.
And I now turn to the ways in which stars not only generate musical meaning but also
operate as lucrative trademarks to maintain sales for the culture industries.

The star system and gendering meaning

Ultimately it is stars – not songs or even records – who are the most fascinating com-
modities produced by the music business. In his pioneering work on film stars,
Richard Dyer (1982; 1991) makes the point that the construction of a star’s image
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