lecture notes - MUS15 Teen Pop: Image Is Everything

WHAT IS POP?
WHAT DOES POP LOOK LIKE?
WHAT DOES POP SOUND LIKE?
WHO MAKES POP MUSIC?
WHO CONSUMES POP MUSIC?
TEENAGER: wartime invention
1904 – 1938: CHILD LABOR
THE BOY SCOUTS ASSOCIATION
•  Formed by Robert Baden-Powell in 1910
•  Considered a manifesto for taming
young “hooligans”
•  Encouraged patriotism, courage, selfreliance and duty
1910 – 1940: HIGH SCHOOL MOVEMENT
•  Turn of 19th/20th Centuries: Secondary
Education was considered more like
trade school
–  Entrance Exams restricted enrollment to 5% of
population
–  Students should be prepared for work or
family by their junior year
•  1940s: high schools were being built
throughout the country at a rapid rate,
with 73% of American Youth enrolled
HIGH SCHOOL DANCE
EARLY FILM AS LIFESTYLE MODEL
Rudolph Valentino
Clara Bow
TEENAGE TASTES | MORAL PANIC
“The times have made us older and
more experienced than you were at our
age. It must be so with each succeeding
generation if it is to keep pace with the
rapidly advancing and mighty tide of
civilization.”
- A young woman in 1922 wrote an appeal to her
parents’ generation on behalf of the flappers
THE FLAPPER
•  Derogatory term for young, unmarried
girls
•  Loose morals
•  Loose-fitting clothing
•  Rail-thin figure
•  Attended “petting” and “freak” parties
•  Penchant for booze and drugs
HOW DARE THEY
BLACK TUESDAY
JUDY GARLAND
“You Made Me Love You”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFSczLif0q4
•  “Model” teenager
•  Big voice, young face,
little body
•  Relatable: Made you
feel like you knew her.
•  Campy teen film star
with her partner, Mickey
Rooney
•  Drug addict
JUDY GARLAND
•  Teenaged fans didn’t
quite relate to her as
the studios hoped
•  Instead, she had quite
appeal among young
men
•  She was the ideal wife
material, and as such,
became a reluctant
pin-up girl in the 1940s
Seventeen is your magazine, High
School Girls of America — all yours!
It is interested only in you — and in
everything that concerns, excites,
annoys, pleases, or perplexes you.
You're going to have to run this
show — so the sooner you start
thinking about it, the better. In a
world that is changing as quickly
and profoundly as ours is, we hope
to provide a clearinghouse for your
ideas.
As a magazine, we shall discuss all
the things you consider important
— with plenty of help from you,
please. Write us about anything or
everything. Say you agree with
Seventeen or disagree violently, say
we're tops, say we're terrible, say
anything you please — but say it!
- Helen Valentine, Editor in Chief
(1944)
TEENAGE GIRL AS
COMMERCIAL DEMOGRAPHIC
“When is a girl worth $11,690,499?
“...when 1738 advertisers spend just that
much money in four years – to sell her their
product and their name in the magazine
she reads
“...when the magazine devoted to her
interests surveys her needs – sets up a
research department, a consumer panel, a
library of fifteen market studies to determine
her powerful present, her promising future
“...when the magazine she buys on the
newsstands or subscribes to can show a
150% circulation gain – 400,000 copies sold
in September ’44; 1,000,000 in September
‘48
“Seventeen – the magazine that keeps
pace with each new generation of teens.”
- Seventeen Magazine Promotional Brochure, 1948
TEENAGER COMES OF AGE
“As girls entered high school from 1920 to
1945, they exhibited strong interest in
commercially defined ideals of fashion and
beauty...They used mass-produced
commodities to imitate flappers and
college students, but they also used them
to create fads and define themselves as
teenage girls.”
- Kelly Schrum pgs. 170-71
THE BOBBY SOXER
THE BOBBY SOXER
•  The Bobby Soxer is a girl who is aged
13-17, and seeks out the latest fads in
music and dress.
•  She was at the forefront of developing
the relationship between the teen vanity
market and music subsequently
marketed to her.
•  They went to dances and concerts in
droves, but it wasn’t until Frank Sinatra
that the music industry took notice.
FRANK
“SWOONATRA”
•  Frank Sinatra is
widely considered
to be the first “Teen
Idol”
•  Female “hysteria”
•  Music became an
outlet for releasing
any sexual
frustration or
independence
through dancing or
singing
FRANK SINATRA
“Night and Day”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUs-QT6a2gA
•  Previous stars were designed by the
film and record industries to fit within
very specific categories through
rigorous grooming and styling
•  Sinatra’s image was that of genuine
ease, though arguably just as
constructed as the rest.
•  Lead singer for Tommy Dorsey band
•  Transitioned to mega movie star
FRANK SINATRA
“Girls responded enthusiastically to Sinatra’s ‘helpless’
stage presence. Lear described him as ‘that glorious
shouldered spaghetti strand...[whose] suits hung oddly on
him.’...Fans identified with his projected vulnerability,
solicited his advice on personal problems, and wrote
repeatedly that Sinatra understood them. Swooning for
Frankie offered a safe outlet, a way to admire
independence and sexuality, to imagine being the idols as
well as being with the idol. Swooning in the form of
screaming, fainting, and crying offered an opportunity to
abandon control, to ignore societal pressure that girls
should listen, show interest in others, and contain sexual
feelings or public displays of sexuality.”
- Kelly Schrum, pg. 123
SINATRA’S MUSICAL STYLE
•  Crooning: vocal style that deviates from the
straight jazz intonation and phrasing, and
incorporates more sensual and expressive
phrasing.
–  Sliding up to notes, rather than hitting them straight
on.
–  New microphone techniques used
•  This style of music is deeply rooted in jazz, but
almost exclusively white
–  classical vocal traditions of heavy vibrato usage.
•  Crooning was a product of major record labels in
New York and Los Angeles and mirrored what was
happening in the movies.
ROCK AND ROLL
•  Postwar SOUTH
•  Hiring major swing and dance bands
became very expensive and club owners
were looking for more cost-effective
dance music.
•  Record production became cheaper.
•  Southern musicians began combining
African American blues with the uptempo and white country music
traditions.
ROCK AND ROLL
•  Boom of independently-owned record
companies who released their records locally and
received airplay on niche-oriented radio stations.
•  Of course, once major labels realized that middle
class white kids were listening to the stuff, the
distribution spread like wildfire.
•  Rock and Roll: anything that couldn’t be
categorized as Jazz, Classical, Country, or Blues.
–  Rhythm and Blues
–  Rockabilly
–  Doo Wop
CHUCK BERRY | RHYTHM AND BLUES
“Maybellene”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvKDr8AgvK8
•  Rhythm and Blues: was originally a catchall term for any music played by and for
African Americans
–  Jump blues but sped up
–  “Race Records”
•  Chuck Berry mixed old country songs with
a Rhythm and Blues backbeat, but sped
up
–  Way to get gigs in white neighborhoods
–  Gets people dancing
“MAYBELLENE” lyrics
CHORUS
Maybellene, why can't you be true
Oh Maybellene, why can't you be true
You've started back doin' the things you
used to do
VERSE 1
As I was motivatin' over the hill
I saw Mabellene in a Coup de Ville
A Cadillac arollin' on the open road
Nothin' will outrun my V8 Ford
The Cadillac doin' about ninety-five
She's bumper to bumper, rollin' side by side
CHORUS
It then got cloudy and started to rain
I tooted my horn for a passin' lane
The rainwater blowin' all under my hood
I know that I was doin' my motor good
CHORUS
VERSE 3
The motor cooled down the heat went
down
And that's when I heard that highway
sound
The Cadillac a-sittin' like a ton of lead
A hundred and ten half a mile ahead
The Cadillac lookin' like it's sittin' still
And I caught Mabellene at the top of the
hill
VERSE 2
The Cadillac pulled up ahead of the Ford
The Ford got hot and wouldn't do no more CHORUS
CHUCK BERRY – “MAYBELLENE”
•  Berry adapted an old fiddle tune, called Ida Red
•  Utilizes blues lyrical standards based on an untrue lover
loaded with double-entendre and car-based scenario
•  Released in 1955
•  One of the first major crossover hits for an African
American artist, and considered to be among the most
important Rock and Roll hits.
•  Released a string of songs based on teenage themes,
though he was a man in his 30s by this point:
–  Sweet Little Sixteen
–  School Days
–  Roll Over Beethoven
LITTLE RICHARD
“Tutti Frutti”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kM1khne_sg
•  Born to a bootlegging Baptist preacher
father in Macon, Georgia
•  Was a preacher, gospel singer,
nightclub performer, and was the first
Rock and Roll show to use flashy
lighting on his concert tours
•  First hit single to cross over: Tutti Frutti
CARL PERKINS AND ROCKABILLY
ROCKABILLY
“Blue Suede Shoes”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAa8BW_sR_c
•  Rockabilly began much in the same way
that Rock and Roll and R&B began, by
speeding up the standards.
•  Perkins, however, decided to begin
writing songs with that utilized the country
twang, but with the back beat of early
Rock and Roll.
•  Regional Record labels increased their
output, releasing many one-hit-wonders
but not many with national appeal
–  Sun Studio in Memphis
ELVIS PRESLEY!!!!!!!
ELVIS AND THE
COLONEL
•  Colonel Tom Parker
was Elvis’ ruthless
manager
•  Brought him from
Sun Studios to RCA
Victor for a $40,000
recording contract
•  Parker managed
every aspect of
young Elvis’ life.
•  Made sure to get
Elvis on TV right
away
ELVIS PRESLEY
“Blue Suede Shoes”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uke1B0FpIZ8
•  Elvis’ first commercial release in 1956
was a record made almost exclusively
of covers of rockabilly and blues
standards.
•  His first televised performance was of
Perkins’ Blue Suede Shoes, on the
Milton Berle Show (which was filmed
on the USS Hancock here in San
Diego).
“HOUND DOG” AND
CONCERNED ADULTS
“Hound Dog”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU4i5gyFK1s
•  Cover of a Big Mama Thornton blues
standard.
•  Presley had been busy touring the South,
playing county fairs and picking up
legions of teenage fans along the way.
•  Performance on the Milton Berle show
1956, again, but this time to a much
wider audience.
•  Media backlash to his suggestive pelvis
and frenzied girls!
ED SULLIVAN
•  Ed Sullivan was nervous
about booking Presley on his
show, and agreed to have
him appear only if he were
shown from the waist up.
•  Medley on Ed Sullivan: 1957,
Waist-up, the sneer, seeming
amused by the girls’
reactions.
•  A year later, a book called,
On Becoming a Woman: a
frank, modern discussion of
everything a teen-age girl
wants and needs to know,
was released.
DOO WOP
•  Multi-part vocal harmonies and onomonopoeric
backing vocals, meant to mimic the sounds of other
instruments.
•  Comes from the vocal jazz tradition, but with the rise of
Rock, these groups started to incorporate more
instruments into the acts.
–  Sax, drums, guitars
•  Doo Wop remained largely a vacuous territory of onehit- wonders until groups like The Platters, The Coasters,
and the great Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers.
•  Later, this style would get a white makeover in groups like
the Four Freshmen, Dion and the Belmonts, Frankie Valli
and the Four Seasons...more to come on those guys...
FRANKIE LYMON AND THE TEENAGERS
FRANKIE LYMON AND THE TEENAGERS
“Why Do Fools Fall in Love”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q96ylFiQK_I
•  The first bona fide teen-aged pop star
–  Frankie was 13 years old when they recorded
“Why Do Fools Fall In Love”
•  Notably integrated group whose
members were of Puerto Rican and
African American descent.
•  George Goldner, producer/manager
•  Frankie left shortly after the first record
was released to try his hand at a solo
career, with mediocre success.
FRANKIE LYMON
•  After “Why Do Fools Fall In Love” was released, puberty began
to affect Frankie’s vocal range.
•  Worried that fans wouldn’t respond to him if he were to
perform without his signature boy soprano voice, Frankie
trained his falsetto register and recorded exclusively in that
range.
•  However, he couldn’t perform consistently in his falsetto
register, and as such, lip synced many of his live appearances.
•  Controversy: In an appearance on a live taping of ABC’s The
Big Beat, Lymon spontaneously began dancing with a white
girl. Southern states revolted, and the show was immediately
canceled.
•  Lymon also became addicted to heroin as a young teenager,
and passed away at the age of 25 of an overdose.
TEEN IDOL vs TEEN STAR
TEEN IDOL: ELVIS
•  The teen idol is
threatening to the
moral fabric of society.
•  Young girls screaming
their heads off,
fainting, swooning,
crying are all
disruptions to the ways
a self-respecting girl
should behave.
•  He is candid about his
personal life and
pleasure pursuits.
TEEN STAR: FRANKIE LYMON
•  Frankie is a nonthreatening peer with
well-kept, dark secrets.
•  He sang songs about
puppy love, with no
indication that
amorous feelings
might be acted upon.
•  He inspires nothing
more in teenagers
than to dance and
bounce around.
TEEN POP FORMULA
1. Must be cute.
TEEN POP FORMULA
2. Sexiness is dangerous and also your most powerful weapon.
TEEN POP FORMULA
3. Know your audience and sell to them accordingly.
TEEN POP FORMULA
4. Possess mature talent beyond your years,
while still playing up your youthful personality.
TEEN POP FORMULA
5. Maintain an active media presence.
TEEN POP FORMULA
6. Embrace the emotional instability of your fan base.
TEEN POP FORMULA
7. Your growing pains are our entertainment. Make money by
showing us how adult you’ve become.
TEEN POP FORMULA
8. A public breakdown can ultimately be good for your image.
TEEN POP FORMULA
9. Everyone loves a comeback.
SEE YOU THURSDAY