Why are people shocked that producers have signature sounds?

andrewtsks:

maura:

So, to sum up: People who worked together have aesthetics that have rubbed off on one another. I mean, ugh, I know it’s the Internet, and OMG CONTROVERSY is the name of the pageview-goosing game. And it’s not like there are Dr. Luke fangirls clogging up ONTD and big-upping their hero and his protégés and collaborators 24/7. But Jesus, people. If you want to bitch about songs on the radio sounding the same, maybe scratch the surface as far as Wikipedia and figure out why?

If anything, it might be an argument for crediting the producer rather than the singer as the artist. Kinda like the way Lee “Scratch” Perry has come to be viewed in modern discussions of reggae music. Those records were never credited to Perry himself, and were often credited to whatever singer he was recording. But these days we don’t look at them as works of the singer, but of the producer. Same could be said of Phil Spector. It’s a shame that it always takes 20 years or so for anyone to start looking at a particular producer this way, because it probably takes the emphasis away from the people who are doing the actual work.

Of course, a focus on the producers like this easily plays into certain rockist (and not incidentally sexist) paradigms where the (Male) Mad Genius is the one who does the “actual work” while the Sexy (Female) Assistants are only there to provide eye candy and trick people into listening. It’s a way of robbing women like Susan Cadogan and Veronica Bennett of agency, to suggest that their talent for deploying their limited but hugely evocative voices was entirely due to the creative efforts of Lee Perry and Phil Spector.

And that’s not even getting into the problematic morality of the Producer Regnant/Dependent Talent paradigm; the stories of Phil Spector and Ike Turner should be well-known enough to make anyone cautious about drawing parallels. The problem Maura identifies above — that not enough people are interested in the music enough to figure out why it sounds similar — needs to be solved not by framing the players in an old narrative (and the Svengali narrative is very old at this point) but by understanding exactly what is going on so that we can draw up a new one.

Source: bwall05

59 Notes/ Hide

  1. corny-bradley reblogged this from cureforbedbugs
  2. jonathanbogart reblogged this from screwrocknroll and added:
    an explicit point...reference when they talk...conversation...
  3. andyhutchins reblogged this from screwrocknroll and added:
    only this: Interpret art however you wish—apply...backstory, appreciate
  4. screwrocknroll reblogged this from cureforbedbugs and added:
    we really don’t need...pop, and that, if it...question, it’s...
  5. andrewtsks reblogged this from jonathanbogart and added:
    I totally see your point, and the whole rockist slant hadn’t occurred to me, especially its sexist implications. I don’t...
  6. agrammar said: I was just writing something about Perry and defaulted to that superhero metaphor — the pop star as a narrative/character the singer’s responsible for acting out. (It’s just as true for folks in rock bands who aren’t driving the band’s ideas/style!)
  7. cureforbedbugs reblogged this from tomewing and added:
    Also important to realize that co-writing became a pretty complicated issue in pop and teenpop in the 00’s. Katy Perry...
  8. tomewing reblogged this from jonathanbogart and added:
    Yeah. This -the question of agency in pop - is always a thorny one (partly because there’s so much we just don’t know...
  9. dayan reblogged this from maura and added:
    Apropos of, uh, something or other: Amanda Latona is now an “International Federation of BodyBuilders Bikini Pro”?!...
  10. thisisareallybadidea reblogged this from maura and added:
    I’d add “Dynamite” (Dr. Luke’s crowning achievement)...songs that sound
  11. brandon4serious reblogged this from maura and added:
    As always, Maura...totally on-point....point out how late...
  12. richaod reblogged this from maura and added:
    In my experience, no non-music nerd/critic has EVER looked up...pop songwriting credit....
  13. trenuttinnickle reblogged this from maura
  14. musedamused reblogged this from maura and added:
    last paragraph: WHICH GUY FROM THE POSIES? I feel...my once-favorite band got
  15. daveholmes said: I got “Hey Now Now” stuck in my head a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t know why, but now I do: I am tumblrpsychic.
  16. maura reblogged this from bwall05 and added:
    that sets out to “prove” that Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok” and Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” and Miley Cyrus’ “Permanent...
  17. bwall05 posted this

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