Ms. Keys is incredibly talented and is a huge star for good reason, but I can’t say I was moved by the songs and couldn’t even remember parts of them the next day. On the other hand, my cousin who went to the show with me is a theater professional with a knowledge of music and she loved the show.
Her reaction helped me understand my own. “You just aren’t hearing it right,” I told her. I was trying to hear the artifice of melodies and harmonies that changed and took eccentric routes every two seconds, which on “Hell’s Kitchen” was like screaming for ketchup in a Japanese restaurant. I was missing the substance and value of the music, the spark and joy of the beats, the texture and brilliance of the vocal fireworks, including the roof-raising melisma of Shoshana Bean’s “Pawn It All.”
Art is always evolving. Artists usually don’t want to do the same thing for generations, and it’s natural for them to try to break old rules in search of new heights. In ancient Greece, popular music was initially solemn, performed by pious ensembles rather than individual performers. From the 5th century BC onwards, however, Greek public music became more sensational, more about solo stars, and lyrics concerned with profanity, love, sex, and fame. It begins with a constrained form, such as figurative painting or the orderly rhythms of early classical music, and changes to a more subjective and even confrontational framework (e.g., the poet Paul Éluard’s “The Earth is Blue as an Orange”). ). In American pop, all of this ranges from the easily interpretable melodies and beautiful harmonies of “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” and “Just the Way You Are” to the grittier sounds of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Rehab.” It leads us to a harsh and rough reality.
Research shows that pop music has experienced a significant decline in melodic and harmonic complexity over the decades. On the other hand, I don’t think there is a need for research that teaches that modern pop music is overall rhythmically rich. Styles change. The taste is similar. But not everyone’s preferences change at the same pace. This is one reason why he is often confused about what other people want to listen to.
It’s fun to get inside someone else’s head and listen to music just like that person. Some opera fans see music as a kind of long dream or psychedelic journey. Some may recall the scene in Philadelphia in which Tom Hanks’ character falls in love with Andrea Chenier. I can kind of understand it if I try it too. Or “Teen Spirit.” It took me a while to understand why everyone liked it so much, but when I squinted and thought about it, I realized that the lyrics (“mulatto, albino, mosquito, my lust, yeah”) were inspired by Paul Verlaine, who was close to Paul Verlaine. I finally understood that it was a type of poem that probably made me feel emotional. And I started to like music more and more. The hypnotic power of the guitar growl after “yeah” and the song’s monotonous repetition.
