• Pop Music as Assimilation (Part 2)

  Filed under Thoughts on Pop Music
  Mar 3

  

  As I already talked about last week, pop culture has a knack for assimilating elements of various subcultures and clumping it into a ball of consumer friendly mush called “the mainstream”. Pop music, I mentioned, was no exception to this.

  While this system of assimilation does have its merit, it does present a number of problems.

  The main problem of this prospect is the selective nature of assimilation into pop culture. What is assimilated, more often than not, are the externalities and frills of the subculture and not the driving force behind what makes the said subculture what it is, that is, its philosophical underpinnings.

  A good example of this is the assimilation of punk into pop culture. In relation to pop music, what is generally assimilated from punk is the fashion. Generally, punk is characterized by a healthy distrust for authority and loud, fast music. What pop culture ended up calling punk is Ashley Simpson.

  Although assimilation may have its good points, what it really does is flaunt the ignorance of label execs and marketing teams.

  1 Comment

One Response to “Pop Music as Assimilation (Part 2)”

1. 

   Matt Butts said on March 25th, 2008 at 1:04 am

   Thanks for the great information. *stumbles*