Universal and Particular

Ever since I really got into British rock music I've been trying to understand why my favorites aren't more popular on this side of the pond. It largely made no sense to me that these bands, which I really liked and considered to be very talented, weren't having more success in my home country. Then once I got into the Kinks I continued to be dumbfounded that this revolutionary band hadn't made more of an impact in the US or in the UK for that matter. This mystery haunted me well into college before I started coming up with a theory of my own for why certain bands make an impact, or succeed at all, while others don't. What I came up with was the universal vs. the particular. Now this theory doesn't take into consideration the business aspect of popular music but instead, at least to my mind, acts as a predictor of what kind of music will be successful enough for the business side to even come into play. This is the first time I've actually written this theory of mine down and is really the first step in long slog of writing a PhD dissertation (or a least I hope it's the first step.) By posting this I'm hoping to help elucidate the kind of research/theorizing I am doing and plan on continuing to do for really the rest of my life. Popular music research can seem so amorphous that I hope that by providing this glimpse into my work that it becomes a little clearer.

Universal: Topics and themes that are well known to everyone; love, loss, loneliness, death. These are ideas that are familiar to everyone who has ever lived or will ever live. These are ideas that have been written about in literature for centuries, have been discussed amongst friends since language first arrived and have been at the heart of culture since the Ancient Greeks. Examples of a universal song in this line include [fill in the blank]. Another attribute that can make a song universal is the overall sound of the song. A danceable beat, an overall sound that is in tune with what is currently popular, or anthem-like orchestration can make a song with lyrics that aren’t very universal sound universal enough to fool a lay listener. An example of this kind of universal song is U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” The song is a reaction the Troubles in Northern Ireland and there is no effort to cover up the overtly political lyrics. However the orchestration of the song is such that if the listener chose not to engage with the lyrics they could be convinced that the song had no particular political message. Furthermore the anthem-like orchestration used in “Sunday Blood Sunday” was very much in line with the over-the-top orchestration that was being heard in popular music at the time.

Particular: One person’s experience of the world around them. Usually a song with a particular view uses more colloquialisms that won’t be easily understood outside of the culture that produced that colloquialism. An example of this is Blur’s use of the phrase parklife for both the name of their 1994 album as well as the title track. The phrase itself, which means “the act of not having a job or any means of gaining money except that of the dole”, would be unfamiliar to audiences outside of the UK who may not have any idea what the dole is. However colloquialisms aren’t absolutely necessary to make a song particular in its point of view. A song need only describe a life situation that isn’t relatable to those outside of a specific social, cultural, or economic situation. An example of this kind of particular song is the Kinks’ “Village Green Preservation Society.” In this song not only do the Kinks describe a very particular social and economic situation, life in middle class Britain after World War II, they also make cultural references that would be unfamiliar to those outside of the United Kingdom. A particular song may not reflect current trends in popular music, instead co-opting a style that has fallen out of style. An example of this would be fun. an American band whose debut album co-opted the sound Queen pioneered which, when it was released in 2010, was not in favor in popular music in the United States.