Creativity is a word often incorrectly associated with one’s personality. Despite the occasional misappropriation of its content, ‘creativity’ is usually meant to denote the presence of novelty in a situation, product, or personality style. The word is obviously an adjective derived from the verb to create. There are three dictionary definitions of create listed in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. The first definition is general: to bringing things into existence (à la God or Allah). The second and third definitions qualify the first; to produce, and to produce through imagination and skill. The second and third definitions of creativity definitely apply to music, and may or may not apply to songs cast into the annals of popular music.
The term ‘popular music’ consists of two words, one of which has many connotations. Middlton (1990) outlined four possible working definitions of the term: (1) popular music is inferior to some other kind of music, (2) Popular music is a catch-all for that which is not folk or art music, (3) popular music is that which is produced for or by a particular social group, and (4) popular music is that which is widely distributed by mass media or in a mass market. Definitions one and two are obviously negative or discounting of any intrinsic value in the content of pop while definitions 3 and 4 are more kind.
Morley (2003) provides a different picture of popular music as that which is continuous with more “serious” forms, but that exists to titillate, annoy, persuade, and even outrage others in a social setting. Morely’s definition is less scientific but more consistent with the tendencies of the creators beyond pop songs than those who execute its performance either in the studio or on some giant pyrotechnic-drenched stage somewhere in the middle of a stadium. Morley’s definition is also more positive than Middleton’s, however, the aim of Middleton’s discussion is to legitimize the majority of the trends in popular music as also contiguous with previously established ‘serious’ compositional techniques. That is, Middleton’s definition is from the perspective of the field of critics whereas Morley’s definition is from the perspective of the detached historical viewpoint that has become very popular in Post-WII art and cultural analysis. The two authors converge at a single point: popular music is our music, and is the music that is around whether we like it or not.
Regardless of the definition, popular music is popular. It is subject to a democratic process of election and rejection and everyone has some opinion of its function. Like other popular things (high school prom queens, movies, alcohol) it may make one swoon, despise, think, zone-out, etc. Music (serious and popular) is created usually by one or a group of people in a particular live instant, or written down, recorded, or otherwise documented at a single point in time by one or a few collaborators. Why am I going through these semantic intricacies? Because we use the words popular, music, and creative, all the time, usually together, and because I believe we have a poor understanding of why those terms appear together so often, and the ultimate question is whether or not popular music is by definition creative. That question is easy to answer (yes) when viewed through Morley or Middleton’s lens, but less easy to digest when personal tastes and those aligned with the masses are stirred, boiled, dried, and set by the juggernaut that is the recording industry. Is Lady Gaga creative? Is her music novel? Are other mass produced products equal in integrity to those designed for opposite purposes (e.g., The Rite of Spring). Over the course of the next few months, I’ll attempt to answer some of these questions of taste, value, aesthetics, history, structure, and yes, creativity in popular music. Like most pop culture deviants, I hope that my words will provoke a range of emotions, but mostly I hope that they make you think about what you like, why you like it, and why other people do or do not like it. Oh and I hope that you appreciate more music as a result.
References:
Middleton, R. (1990). Studying popular music. Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press.
Morley, P. (2003). Words and music: A history of pop in the shape of a city. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
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