Pop Music Culture: Pop Music Potential
Emily Maxwell
Music is everywhere… we choose to turn on the radio or play our iPods;
we hear it in stores and businesses; TV shows and movies highlight old
songs, new songs, and artists. Music touches our emotions and our
sensibilities in a deep, intuitive way. The music we choose, as
well as the music we hear by proxy, defines our identities. Music
is the most effective universal connection that helps us form
relationships with others. While individual tastes vary, pop
music, by definition, is the most popular music at a given current
time. It reflects who we are as a society right now. The
question is: What does this year’s pop music say about us?
The changes in pop music over the decades show how popular tastes as
well as personal identities have changed. Clement-Cortes quotes
Dan Fisher’s dissertation in her article, claiming that we used to
consume products, like music, based on our identity and tastes, but
that now what we consume actually defines us (2010, p. 17). This
can offer valuable insights into our students’ thoughts and
self-concept. According to Monica Herrara, we are experiencing a
pop music “boom” where pop is defined by what it is not (2010).
In other words, pop music does not fall into the genres of country or
rap or other genres defined by sound. However, the changing face of pop
to include duets with artists from other genres means that we have to
pay attention not just to who is being played on the radio, but also to
who is being awarded (Herrara, 2010). We also have to talk to our
students to get their opinions as to who the influential artists of the
day are (Moore, 2011).
When I questioned my students as to whom they viewed as the most
popular and influential artists the day, most of their answers were
what I would have guessed—various rap artists, such as Lil’ Wayne and
Nelly, and the more conventional female “pop” artists, such as Lady
Gaga, and Katy Perry, but I was shocked to find that Michael Jackson
was also one of the first names given. This small, unscientific
example shows the current trend of mixing between genres and how
currently pop music is about sound, not categories. It
highlighted to me how important it is to pay attention and talk to a
particular group of students about their tastes and opinions. The
topics of songs and what is said about those topics are important to
our students. The better we understand their psyche, the better
we can meet their needs and help them grow.
The relevance of this information to teachers is strong. David
Cooper Moore cites experiences in his program where using music allowed
students to break into higher level abstract thinking even before they
were cognitively ready for lower level comprehension discussion
(2011). The sort of innate understanding and analysis that comes
with music media provides a unique and engaging tool language arts
teachers can use to help students develop critical reading and thinking
skills. Moore also states that the students they worked with in
his program were engaged and wanted to immediately abstract about what
they heard and thought (2011). Pop music has the potential to
help increase student motivation and interest in learning.
In the past, I’ve used music as a lead in to a poetry unit, but it
seems that I could also use it with any unit if I asked students for
songs that might apply to a particular theme in a novel. If I was
really up on current pop music, I could play a song at the beginning of
each chapter in a novel that highlighted an important aspect of each
chapter. Or I could pick out a particular artist, like Lady Gaga,
to introduce how to write character sketches or a biography.
There are lots of options for including pop music to help students
relate to a topic, their peers, and to their instructor.
When I started looking for young adult literature that directly dealt
with pop music, I thought nonfiction could be quite interesting to
students interested in artists, genres, or time periods. Bob
Brunning wrote three books highlighting pop music during three
different decades: the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. There is a series
of biographies with the subtitle “Modern Role Models.” The series
highlight many pop culture stars from different categories like sports,
movies, and music. Given the responses of my students when I
questioned them about pop music, I was interested to find a book titled
Michael Jackson (from the Black Americans of Achievement series) by Lois Nicholson (1993).
Neil Strauss offers the idea that teenagers look to pop music as an
“authority figure who understands them better than their parents”
(1996). The potential power of pop music and how adolescents use
it to form identity should not be underestimated. Schools and
teachers have to pay attention to the messages sent implicitly and
explicitly through this medium and may have to work to counteract the
unhealthy stereotypes perpetrated. Meredith Levande points out
that pop music is distributed through more media that any other form of
pop culture (2008, p.300). It would hold that it is one of the most
influential forms of pop culture and has a dangerous potential as well,
particularly for young girls. Levande shows through multiple
examples of artists, music videos, and commercials how twisted the
picture of women in music has become since the 1990s.
Essentially, she equates female pop stars to being a socially accepted
pornographic norm. Media companies who own a public media outlet,
she claims, are in fact dictating culture, not reflecting it (Levande,
2008, p299). Every message, she says, points to the idea that if
women want power, they must put their body on display (2008,
p302). In my opinion, women are making a come-back, so to speak,
similar to the single singer phenomena in the 1990s. However, if
the underlying message from female singers like Lady Gaga and Katy
Perry is not the empowerment message like Alanis Morissette and Melissa
Etheridge provided, we have to make that message explicit. The
ramifications of how female pop music stars are portrayed are profound
if we remember that teenagers look to pop music to help them form their
identity.
As English teachers, we often teach the themes of identity,
stereotypes, and prejudice in novels. Perhaps we should also look
to pop music to help emphasize those themes and teach about gender
roles and help our students form healthy identities within our
society. Pop music could be a powerful tool to help us engage
students in their learning. As our schools advance and we work to
form truly effective learning environments, music can aid our
instruction if we accept and are aware of the current trends and tastes
of our students.
References
Clements-Cortes, Amy. (2010). The Role of Pop Music and Pop Singers in the Construction of a Singer's Identity in Three Early Adolescent Females. Canadian Music Educator / Musicien Educateur au Canada, 51(4), 17-23. Retrieved from EBSCOhost Academic Search Complete.
Herrera, Monica. (2010). The great pop boom. Billboard, 122(50), 8-16. Retrieved from Ebscohost MasterFILE Premier.
Levande, Meredith. (2008). Women, Pop Music, and Pornography. Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, 8(1), 293-321. Retrieved from EBSCOhost Academic Search Complete.
Moore, David Cooper. (2011). Learning Tunes: Pop Music in the Classroom. Library Media Connection, 29(4), 13-14. Retrieved from EBSCOhost ERIC.
Strauss, Neil. (1996, April 18). POP REVIEW; Knowing Just How Hard It Is to Be a Teen-Ager. New York Times. p. 16. Retrieved from EBSCOhost Masterfile Premier.
Young Adult Books Annotated Bibliography
Brunning, Bob. (1999). 1980s Pop. Barrington, IL: Heinemann Library.
This would be appropriate for grades 5-8.
Brunning, Bob. (2001). 1960s Pop. New York, NY: Peter Bedrick Books.
This would be appropriate for grades 5-9.
Brunning, Bob. (2001). 1970s Pop. Citrus Heights, CA: Brighter Child.
This would be appropriate for grades 5-9. All three of Bob
Brunning’s books could be used to learn about music in a particular
decade, compare music in different decades, or to try to understand how
pop music grew from one decade to another.
Muharrar, Aisha. (2002). More than a label: Why what you wear or who you're with doesn't define who you are. Minneapolis, MN: Free Spirit Publishing.
This is appropriate for grades 9 and over. This is written by a
high-school graduate who surveyed teens across America and wrote about
self-imposed labels and being labeled. This could be a valuable
book for many teens trying to figure out where they fit in to
society. This fits in to the overall topic of pop music when we
start trying to understand the stereotypes that might be perpetrated
within pop music and how teens respond to those labels.
Nicholson, Lois. (1993). Michael Jackson (Black americans of acheivement). New York, NY: Chelsea House Publications.
This would be appropriate for grades 6 and over. Given my
students’ proclamation that MJ is still popular and important, this
book could be of interest to different students.
Shweitzer, Karen. (2007). Soulja Boy tell ‘em (Modern role models). Broomall, PA: Mason Crest Publishers.
This is an example of possible book from Modern Role Model book
set. There are lots of different pop artists highlighted in these
books.