Understanding contemporary music one genre at a time

Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres

By Kelefa Sanneh

(Penguin Press, 2021)

Musical taste is contextual before it is individual. As academic as it might sound, the era we were born into, our identities (e.g., socioeconomic class, race, geography), and the technologies available to us shape what and how we consume well before we’re very conscious about curating our personal “taste.” For example, growing up in a middle-class suburban family with cable television in the early 1980s made music videos a gateway to the music of Michael Jackson, Madonna, Thomas Dolby, Culture Club, and Human League, for me. A person with less regular access to MTV, or BET’s Video Soul, probably had a different level of exposure to videos.

Our relationships to context are not always linear or determinant of course. What we embrace and what we reject is also contextual. We commonly associate country music with white, Southern culture, for example. It’s quite possible that a white, working class young person who has grown up in a rural community inundated by country music stations might reject country music. Especially once they begin developing their taste precisely because they have outgrown it and/or no longer want to be perceived as the kind of person associated with the genre.

Author Kelefa Sanneh aims to understand music of the last 50 years by focusing on genre communities.

As Kelefa Sanneh notes in his new book Major Labels musical genres always operate in the context of their perceived audience or community. Our cultural affiliations inform where we locate ourselves musically, and where we do not. The amorphous genre of “soft rock” (e.g., The Captain & Tennille, Celine Dion) has rarely garnered critical respect from rock critics because they see it as an extension of the melodic love songs that preceded rock ‘n’ roll and thus view is as “pop.” For them it has no discernible politics or community so it exists purely as a commercial entity.

Comparatively, when rock ‘n’ roll began making its commercial mark in the mid-1950s it was understood as rebellious music for teenagers whose social habits were increasingly distinct from their parents.  Postwar affluence, the rise of the 45 single, the pervasiveness of jukeboxes, and the racial divides of the era shaped the genre’s reception. Many white teenagers were partially drawn to rock ‘n ‘roll for the novel way it showcased Black musical styles typically absent from pop radio stations. However, White citizens councils, comprised of white racist segregationists, resented the burgeoning civil rights movement and targeted rock ‘n’ roll in their public campaigns because of its Black roots.   

Sanneh gained visibility as a music critic writing for the New York Times in the 2000s most notably for his 2004 article “The Rap Against Rockism” on the discursive shift away from “rockism.”  The term describes a bias rooted in rock criticism that dismisses pop as “inauthentic” and less valuable because it is not centered on authorship or virtuosity. He has since moved on to profiling cultural figures in The New Yorker and on CBS Sunday Morning.  

Sanneh’s book aims to tell a story about popular music of the last 50 years as “a story of genres” (xiii) through a mix of history, commentary, and memoir. While highly readable, the book struggles to find its voice in the critical landscape which seems to reflect the author’s diffidence about overwhelming the text with typical music critic biases. Scholarly studies about rock era popular music usually function as cultural criticism, such as Greil Marcus’s Mystery Train (1975) and Nelson George’s The Death of Rhythm and Blues (1989).  Or as textbooks, such as Rebee Garofalo’s Rockin in the U.S.A., David Szatmary’s Rockin In Time: A Social History of Rock and Roll, and John Covach and Andrew Flory’s What’s That Sound? An Introduction to Rock and Its History. The former eschew hagiography to make pointed aesthetic and social observations whereas the latter are intentionally written and organized for students seeking information about origins, developments, and patterns.

Major Labels wants to dwell in between these approaches but struggles to find its voice which makes me wonder about its intended audience. A reader seeking an incisive critical perspective on contemporary music will be left cold by Sanneh’s reluctance to assert a strong point of view where it matters. Those seeking a digestible history might find its tone and structure too wispy and episodic to feel coherent. 

Sanneh organizes chapters around a specific genre and divides content into segments that place readers in specific scenes ranging from raves in London to trap music houses in Atlanta. Sanneh is not interested in chronicling artists seeking to transcend genre. As he states, “The idea of transcending genre suggests an inverse correlation between excellence and belonging, as if the greatest musicians were somehow less important to their musical communities, rather than more” (xi). Rather, he’s interested in the rules, however unspoken and contradictory, of genres and genre communities and the complex relationship of adhering to and challenging expectations.

Among the genres he covers, including rock, hip-hop, punk, dance, and pop, the most interesting one addresses the complicated relationship of country music to pop music. He notes its everchanging sense of itself. For example, regarding instrumentation, “traditional instruments like the banjo and the pedal steel guitar tend to fall in and out of favor, as country singers try to figure out precisely how ‘country’ they really want to be” (157). He also presents three different concepts of country as traditional in instrumentation and style, as a cultural identity, and as a body of trends shaped by radio and fans. He understands the genre craves recognition and visibility but also cherishes the moving target of country “authenticity” and grows resentful if artists grow too pop-oriented.

An important part of the author’s transition away from full-time music criticism was a desire to be less judgmental about the relationship of art and popularity, based on his personal taste, and to try to understand why someone might appreciate the music being evaluated. In “The End of Taste” section of the “Pop” chapter he notes, “Instead, I tried to figure out what other people liked, and what I liked, and why. The pop charts were especially instructive: again and again, songs and albums I would never have selected rose to the top; not infrequently, I found that after repeated listens I could hear what all those other listeners were hearing too” (443).

This kind of bland populism belies my sensibility about what constitutes great critical writing. Criticism is a judgmental profession by nature. A critic devoid of biases, predispositions, and preferences, or willing to forego these may not be suited to a job rooted in passion and connoisseurship. Music criticism addresses what is worthy of our passion and why. Consensus and affability are not the goal; for many critics the conversation itself is important. By adapting a largely descriptive tone, informed by his youthful interest in music personally, which is quite interesting, and his professional journeys reviewing albums and concerts, and interviewing musicians Sanneh slyly bows out of long held trenchant critical conversations about what makes music important and adapts a more observational but bloodless approach.

Sanneh’s emphasis on the importance of genre in contemporary music aspires toward a less linear and clinical approach to pop music history than many studies but it remains an unsettled work. His deftness at description is undone by his equivocations about issues of aesthetic quality. By conceding that if music is popular it must be worthwhile to someone he never has to weigh in on issues of significance and endurance. Perhaps these terms seem too anachronistic and overly linked to rock critic orthodoxy. Problem is Major Labels offers us no alternative understanding even when it acknowledges that distinctions in quality do matter to listeners no matter how cool or relativist they might seem. Jim Miller’s superb Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947–1977 links the rise of promotional hype in rock, the decline and death of Elvis, and the antisocial ethos of punk in the 1970s as signs that a vital form was growing “narrow and coarse” (352). Whether you agreed with him or not he left you with something to sink your teeth into critically and ponder. Major Labels, comparatively, wants to be understood as history and commentary yet never arrives successfully.

It wants readers to understand contemporary musical production and reception as interwoven with genre but is indifferent toward taking on stance on how this fidelity limits and/or emboldens musical progress. Sanneh ends the “Country” chapter by concluding “that despite all the decades and all the change, it still functions as a genre, a community with its own tastes and tolerances, for better and for worse” (214). “For better and for worse” is a strange form of critical surrender. Sanneh discusses his affection for contemporary country (“I think that contemporary country radio, with all its strict rules and silly fads, is a delightful institution,” 183) yet never identifies as part of the country music community, or asserts his aesthetic preferences. He embraces it just on the edge of being a full participant.

This might have something to do with his racial positioning. While he acknowledges that country music concerts seem no more “white” than heavy metal or indie-rock concerts the statement “Country music, though, has remained unusually apologetic about its white identity” (205-06) is pretty loaded but he refuses to go deeper other than framing it as “ethnic music: the sound of white American, or at any rate a sound of white America” (206).  In a chapter where he acknowledges country music’s unfair dismissal of Lil Nas X’s 2019 hit “Old Town Road” (despite playing hip-hop inflected songs by white artists) and Morgan Wallen’s infamous 2020 racist video rant his point of view is oddly benign. He writes as if having a point of view is too distracting from the history he’s trying to tell but this is odd since he never pretends he’s trying to tell a traditionally linear “objective” story.

Similarly, he ends the hip-hop chapter noting “The genre’s tendency to evolve in unpredictable ways explains why it has continued to draw both crowds and critics, and why people who love it tend to eventually be heartbroken by it” (361), followed by “I have no reason to be sure that I, too, won’t have my heart broken by hip-hop one day. But it hasn’t happened yet” (361). This is also an odd conclusion because it refuses to tell us that something is at stake aesthetically and socially in hip-hop. In this chapter he reiterates an important point raised by a member of the rap duo Black Sheep that hip-hop should not be more obligated to “teach” its audience something than any other genre. In doing so, Sanneh challenges the trope that “socially conscious” rap is inherently superior to rap that is purely hedonistic.

The problem with the chapter’s conclusion is two-fold, however. First, the “heartbreak” issue reflects how overt commercialism and pandering formulas blunted hip-hop’s initial diversity and symbolic rebelliousness. The proliferation of casual sexism and homophobia in hip-hop lyrics and imagery also speaks to a sense that genre was exclusionary and mean-spirited. Granted the larger U.S. society is misogynistic and homophobic so it’s not surprising that hip hop or any other musical genre mirrored these tendencies but its audience hoped for more. Sanneh seems strangely indifferent to these concerns.

Second, hip-hop artists struggled to be seen as “legitimate” music by critics, musicians, and consumers. This limited its visibility and access. Whether the Grammys, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, or the Pulitzers should be the final indicator of validity is debatable given their biases but artists within the community itself have embraced these forms of recognition. The rise of “progressive” hip-hop was part of that process so discounting it seems disingenuous. If hip-hop had remained just hedonistic dance music it would have a different status. 

Despite Major Label’s tonal and structural challenges Sanneh’s prose is very readable, and the choice to weave in personal experience adds a spark of personality. Sanneh was born to a Gambian father and white South African mother both of whom are academics. Born in England, and raised in Ghana and Scotland before moving to New England, he has a worldly sensibility. For example, Sanneh is more conversant with musical developments outside of the U.S. than many U.S. born critics. As a man of African descent, he also challenges a lot of stereotypes about the audiences comprising punk and country music communities. This quality makes him less inclined to the reactionary politics of an earlier generation of critics such as George who could be very rigid in their notions of blackness. Similarly, Sanneh writes queerness and female experience into the story of contemporary music.   

Structurally, however, Sanneh’s choice to build chapters around select scenes does not always pay off. In aiming for a conversational, narrative style the book often sacrifices coherence for the sake of tone and momentum. I frequently found myself at the end of the often-sprawling chapters unable to recall their overarching critical focus.  For example, the opening chapter on “Rock” is 85 pages long, “Hip-Hop” is 84, and the chapters devoted to R&B, Country, and Punk are in the 60-65-page range. The idea of organizing chapter around a central theme or sub-themes, and stating them upfront might seem as anachronistic but this approach made Jim Miller’s Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947–1977 (1999) a great rock history precisely because he balances the conversational aspect of journalistic writing with the tight structural integrity of academic writing. I’ve taught Miller’s book on multiple occasions in rock seminars. Comparatively, I’m not sure how teachable Major Labels would be. The lengthy chapters and lack of a clear through-line might put off college students. Similarly, the absence of citations and data differentiates it’s from traditional academic books.

Just as questions about the stability of the audience for music remains an increasingly vexed question I’m not sure about Major Label’s audience beyond other music critics or academics. It has a hip style and seemingly light structure but are young listeners who stream their music exclusively and have no use for music critics a likely audience for a 45-year old (former) critic’s view of pop music history? As the author notes in the “Pop” chapter “In an increasingly fan-centric culture, a new idea about criticism, quietly took hold. The idea was that consumers were experts, and that they were correct by definition; critics were not expected to be too judgmental” (417).

Sanneh himself questions the enterprise of evaluating music through a critical lens. Reflecting on his harsh review of a concert by British singer-songwriter James Blunt (singer of 2004’s ubiquitous “You’re Beautiful”) notes “it seemed perverse to spend a few paragraphs telling times readers that some semipopular musician they’d probably never heard of was not worth hearing, after all. What was the point? Why criticize anything?” (446). He relates this to the gap between music critics and the audiences for the music they write about citing age and generational gaps as especially germane. Given his ambivalence it’s not clear how writing or reading about history differs from critical engagement.

The idea that music matters plays out every day even if the terms of “mattering” have changed and the culture has rejected the dominance of musical gatekeepers like rock critics. Even in a culture where radio station playlists seem increasingly homogeneous and algorithms restrict what listeners are exposed to perceptions of quality and relevance steer our musical choices. The familiar comfort of genres certainly informs this process, which Major Labels recognizes astutely, but the way we use genre to separate and distinguish ourselves is not necessarily positive or benign and this remains underexplored in the study. As such Major Labels is probably best appreciated the way consumers approach albums in the era of downloading. Rather than expecting a coherent statement from start to finish it might be more satisfying to download the genres that interest you. Even if the bigger picture is unsatisfying the temporary satisfaction of the familiar might be sufficient.  

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