For those of you who expect this blog to deliver on topics of pop music, today’s post marks a short diversion into Broadway show tunes, without which the popular music industry would not exist.*

I love live music.  I love live theater.  I even love live musical theater.  Within that genre, I especially love Sondheim; among performers, I love Patti LuPone.   That’s why, when I heard that Gypsy was closing–in less than a week!–I had to get tickets.  I called up Agent Taco, asked if we had plans for Saturday, and then bought the cheapest available tickets (I *don’t* love Broadway pricing.)

Patti LuPone is a diva, in every sense of the word, and she was my real motivation for attending the show.  As I explain to my students in my music history class, the term “diva” was not new when VH1 applied it to “Divas LIVE” in the mid-1990s. Before we get to the divine Patti, a little background on the diva.

Surprisingly, the word’s implications have remained somewhat consistent throughout its history.  Starting in the early 1800s, with the rise of bel canto opera in Italy, women singers received a new emphasis: most often, a soprano would perform the lead role, sometimes inserting her signature songs from other operas into each performance, and always, always demonstrating a virtuosity that would overwhelm and enchant the audience.

On the flip side, the diva often makes more demands than your average female performer.  She is not known for quietly settling into a role, or for taking affronts from the audience or other performers in stride and unruffled.  No, a diva makes demands.  And she can make demands because she is just that good.

Of course, we have added a lot of gendered aspects to the diva (no one really talks about “il divo” anymore, though he did exist in bel canto), but the two important sides remain: she has a lot of talent, and, because of that talent, she can be demanding.

Patti Lupone’s show-stopping performance on Saturday night brought that out.  As Mama Rose, her brassy, wide-ranging, full-chested voice finds a perfect characterization.  And I could definitely call her a diva for that alone, since the character herself is also somewhat of a diva, a pushy stage mother who desperately wants her children to succeed in vaudeville.

But LuPone’s performance was more than this.  It was, in fact, show stopping.  As in, the show stopped.  In the second to last scene, a tense scene between Gypsy (Laure Benanti)  and Mama Rose, a cell phone rang. Both performers visibly cringed, and a piece of the drama of the moment disappeared.

This tense scene leads directly into “Rose’s Turn,” Mama Rose’s “I-coulda-been-great” moment.  The performer, whether LuPone or anyone else, has to put everything into this moment.  In the New York Times review of the show in March 2008, Ben Brantley wrote of this scene: “In “Rose’s Turn,” in particular, Ms. LuPone takes you on a guided tour of all Rose’s inner demons, from sexual succubus to shivering infant. (Be warned: they will live in your head for a while.)”

Nothing, however, prepared me or anyone else for what did happen.  LuPone entered the stage, began the song, took off the grubby smock, revealing her more form-fitting red dress, and then…

“STOP!  Stop the music!”  The orchestra stopped.  “WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?”  A pause, confusion.  “I saw you take a photo THREE TIMES!  You heard the announcement before the show and at intermission.  Who do you think you are?”  LuPone stood stubbornly on the stage, refusing to continue until the offending party had been removed.

By now, most of the audience was in LuPone’s court.  I certainly was–who did that person think he/she was?

Finally, after a tense minute or so, a voice came over the loudspeaker, saying that the offending party was no longer in the theater; cheers erupted throughout the theater.  LuPone addressed the audience, stating that there had been an erosion of manners in the country, but that she would do the song from the top.

… And it was amazing, filled with the swirl of emotions that someone truly angry (as Mama Rose is with Gypsy/Louise at that point in the show) and disappointed and egotistical and regretful would bring to it.  I’m sure it would have been wonderful to see uninterrupted, but, you know, I wouldn’t trade what I saw for a run-of-the-mill, paint-by-numbers Broadway show. Instead of being perfection, it was an unforgettable experience.

Cheers to you, Patti LuPone, for demanding what you do deserve.

*One could argue that the constituent elements of rock n roll were more “of the people,”  i.e. hillbilly and race records.  However, the music industry prior to the advent of rock n roll largely depended upon the popularization of Tin Pan Alley novelty songs and show tunes.  The structure that this industry created later allowed for the genre of rock n roll to flourish.

Following on yesterday’s post on disco, I’m entering the world of R&B-disco-pop, in the form of Solange Knowles.  In typical pop fashion, Solange’s new album blends a number of styles, but most notable about it is that she is taking the retro-soul-female-singer niche to the mainstream black audience.

Earlier this year, I attended the Experience Music Project’s annual Pop Conference.  At the panels on race, one topic seemed to reign supreme: the retro-soul revival.  Most of the panelists–heavy-hitting rock journalists, critics, and academics–debated this revival in terms of race, noting that it has been both produced and consumed by white people.  Mark Ronson, fancy-pants rich kid producer, Svengali to Amy Winehouse, curator of albums that sound just like those back in the day, bore the particular brunt of much of the criticism.  And I can see that–there’s always something irritating about some rich, white kid ripping off someone else’s culture, whether that’s Billburg hipsters appropriating the trucker hats and full beards of the redneck or Ronson’s faithful, yet fixed-in-time, recreations of soul music.

Nonetheless, one significant thing that was brought out in those panels was the question of audience.  The people who have bought Amy Winehouse’s music (and especially those who dig further into the retro-soul category) are generally white, middle-class kids, judging by the audiences at her shows (back before her visa was revoked).*

All of which brings me to Solange Knowles, and how she is a very different representation of the retro-soul world than either Ronson (who did work on her album) or notorious trainwreck Winehouse.  As we all know, the Knowles parents have firmly represented their clan as responsible, hard-working, Christian, and united together.  This is also an iteration of blackness that has resonated with mainstream pop audiences–black and white–since Motown, whose owner Berry Gordy, Jr. forced his young singers to take dance, manners, and elocution classes.  The Knowles family may have controlled Destiny’s Child with an iron fist in a velvet glove, but they ensured that the group was popular with a wide audience.

In the case of older sister Beyonce, the connection with that history of black pop was implicit, at least until Beyonce starred in Dream Girls.  Now, on Solange’s new album, Solangel and the Hadley Street Dreams (2008) it’s much more fully on display.  In promo photos for the album, Solange looks like a young, more exotic Diana Ross:

Solange Knowles

And the press surrounding it often notes this relationship to classic black pop, such as a review in the Boston Globe:

This is such a smartly executed, classy set of songs that’s miles away from the hoochie pop being turned out by young female R&B vocalists these days.

(Of course, that above review is equally problematic, in that it once again irritatingly associates black women with “hoochies.”)

Or this one, noting that Solange is using the album to recover a negative public image:

Steeping an album in classic Motown and other R&B sounds of the late ’60s and early ’70s may not be the wildest maneuver in 2008, but throughout Sol-Angel, there is a kind of frolicsome adventurousness that is singular and undeniable, even when Solange lets loose with the sourness and addresses her false public image.

Her video for “Sandcastle Disco” especially draws on the Motown connection, but also on the current soul revival.  It presents her in front of a white band of dudes (who look a lot like The Jam, especially the blond guy with the Weller haircut; come to think of it, this video looks a lot like several of The Jam’s videos), with two black, female backup singers.  Despite the fact that most soul groups were integrated–both Motown and F.A.M.E. studios in Muscle Shoals had black and white players–the current revival features mostly white, male instrumentalists.

While I do think that it’s a little weird that her backing band in the video is all white and Justin Timberlake’s touring band is all black, I think that Solange has something different going on than a Svengali such as Mark Ronson pulling the strings. She already did that with her schizophrenic first album.

Instead, she seems to be capitalizing on and blending the history of black pop music, from Motown to disco to latter-day R&B in ways that smartly reposition it for a bigger audience–one that includes not just hip, white college kids playing the obscurity game but also audiences who listen only to the Top 40 and who listen primarily to “urban” stations.  It may not be as faithful a recreation of soul as the Dap Kings, but it instead fuses past (Lamont Dozier!) and present (Boards of Canada! Cee-Lo Green!) forms of pop music into something sparkly, fun, and of the moment.

Of course, there are bigger questions here about class, race, and musical audience.  But for right now, I’m just going to take off the academic hat and listen to a good pop song.  Which “Sandcastle Disco” is.

*Strangely absent from these discussions:  Gnarls Barkley.

Disco deserves a second chance.

The music is much maligned, for reasons that have as much to do with its audiences–gay men, folks of color, women, working class, John Travolta–as much as it has to do with the music itself.   Yes, some of it reeks like a camembert on a hot summer’s day.  “A Fifth of Beethoven,” which I always play in my music history classes as an example of a fascination with high culture gone horrifyingly awry (What did you just do to the Fate motive????), comes to mind in that category.

But, despite the misgivings that I have about disco, the genre offers some pretty compelling reasons musically, culturally, and historically for its inclusion in my class.  In a reverse of what I usually do with this column–since I know someone will read it and say, “Of course you don’t teach disco!  It sucks!” I’m going to go with those first, and then address why I don’t teach it.

Disco undoubtedly descends from the rock & roll tree, just as surely as punk or heavy metal, each of which I do teach (and more of the former of those in just a second).  One could easily plot out one line from soul to funk to disco.  And, hell, just listening to the growing prominence and function of the bass line–first based on an R&B bass line, then doing a repetitive thing, then adding syncopation to the repetitive thing, then doing a repetitive thing with octave ornamentation and syncopation–should be convincing enough to say that dismissing disco as simple or bad or soulless is at the very least a little off.

Most of the musical criticism of disco revolves around the production: it is not “real” music; it is manufactured.  But if you look at and actually listen to a band such as Chic, you can hear that the band is a real band in every sense of the word.  Nile Rodgers incorporates a distinct, easily identified rhythmic pattern into his guitar part; Bernard Edwards plays a melodic, syncopated, completely inspired bass line.

After listening to Chic’s “Good Times,” you probably recognize it from several contexts, up to and including samples in Grandmaster Flash’s “Grandmaster Flash and the Wheels of Steel”; Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight;” imitation in Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” and Blondie’s “Rapture”; and distillations of Edwards’ bass line in most early Duran Duran songs (of course, they were produced by Nile Rodgers).

And then there are the drums of disco, all high-hatty and crunchy, that are oh-so-tasty.  Here’s Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”:

And, finally, there are some FANTASTIC vocal performances in disco.  Donna Summer?  What would the world be without “Love to Love You?” or “I Feel Love”?   A whole lot darker and less sensual, that’s what.  And what about Labelle?  Here’s some “Lady Marmalade” for you (also–listen to that hi-hat!  And check out those costumes!):

But these are not the things that most people talk about when they complain that disco sucks.  No, people think of the really awful disco songs, such as the ouvre of the falsetto-favoring Bee Gees, or the highly produced Village People.  So my question is, why is disco remembered for its shittiest, and not for its best?

Back in the heyday of disco, aka the late 1970s, the music was favored by certain audiences mentioned above, who do not and did not fit the mold of “what rock critics like.”  Reebee Garofalo, a pop music scholar, has argued that disco’s audiences brought out the worst in some people.  Homophobia, for example, almost certainly played a part in the dismissal of disco as “real music;” racism played another; and then there’s sexism, since almost all the vocal performers of disco were black women.

When I think about the big “disco sucks rally” in Chicago, I think of Nazi book burnings.  So does Nile Rodgers. At that rally, on July 12, 1979, people destroyed more than 10,000 disco records.  There’s something completely disturbing about hating something so much that you can’t just turn off the radio, but have to actively, literally blow it up in center field.  It’s not just about the music at that point.

I have no shortage of what I could say about disco, particularly as a gender and sexualities scholar.  And I think that disco influenced hip-hop, new wave, and even the recent resurgence of post-post-punk/dance-punk bands that flourished in the early 2000s.  So why do I leave it out?

I mostly leave disco out because I have other battles to fight, and I try to include a balance of “things the kids will like” with “things the kids really ought to know before leaving this class.”  In the beginning, it’s all about getting them to understand things like the Great Migration’s effects on everything from Chicago blues to Motown.  At the point in the semester where disco arrives, I usually have a big wave of resistance from the majority when I expose them to punk.  While you’d think that they would be open to it, I’ve yet to have a class that embraced punk rock.  Or even shook hands with it, on the whole.  So, putting disco into the mix at that time would be a fine dance indeed.  Perhaps even the “Last Dance.”  And I’m pretty sure I would not feel love.

Alanis Morissette actually makes it into the syllabus every semester, but somehow she’s the first cut when I get behind, after showing too much of Gimme Shelter or Woodstock.  I then have to figure out what to cut, and Alanis inevitably is the first to go.

I have often wondered why I do so, since I think that she’s incredibly important in the revival of the female singer-songwriter in the mid 1990s.  Sure, you might argue that Tori Amos is a more interesting choice musically, or that she’d been doing it a lot longer than Morissette.  Or maybe you could say that Sarah McLachlan is more representative of a “singer-songwriter” sound.  Or maybe you want to see an  “indie” artist, such as Ani DiFranco, included in the syllabus, for her spirit and her contributions to a certain kind of punk-folk guitar playing.  Or maybe you’re into Liz Phair.  Or maybe you don’t like female singer-songwriters at all, in which case you’re like most of the boys in my rock & roll class.

But Alanis Morissette’s position is a little different than all of these, since she seemingly appeared out of nowhere (OK, Canada), and had the biggest selling debut album of any woman, ever, internationally.  And for that, I think she wins out, but she’s also worth talking about for other reasons.

For example, “You Oughta Know,” Morissette’s first single from Jagged Little Pill (1995), is blazingly autobiographical in its lyrics (or at least it’s meant for us to think so).  The lyrics are explicit in both meanings of the word–sexual and clear.  From the notoriously skanky line about going down on the dude in the theater, to the fact that the woman replacing her was “an older version of me” (rather than something more predictable, but still works, like “another version of me”), they set forth a portrait of an extremely bitter breakup.

But the lyrics, female subjectivity and all, are not what made Morissette’s debut song on her first international album the ginormous hit that it was.  No, it was Morissette’s voice, which was not at all what one would have expected from a former Nickolodeon star and Canadian teen pop princess: yelpy, growly, howly, at times filled with air, at times strategically double tracked for extra power and wickedness, it was a complex and confusing instrument of anger, the voice of a woman scorned.  Just as important and not to be lost in this discussion of lyrical content, it was the musical setting: like many rock songs of the time, it begins with relatively sparse instrumentation and a quiet dynamic and builds gradually with an extended crescendo to the chorus.  Nirvana (or the Pixies), anyone?

I would love to teach a class just on that idea alone: that, for all the hype about the “angry young women” in rock music, it was about damned time that they were there, not forced into the girly confines of acoustic guitar-playing or piano banging.  That, more than just equating the female singer-songwriter with feelings and emotion associated with cliches of womanhood, women like Morissette were taking on anger, that last bastion of maleness that always already characterized masculinity in rock music.

But then, the rest of the album–also megahits–moved away from that picture.  “Ironic” and “Hand in My Pocket” and “Head Over Feet” and “You Learn” gave an entirely different view of Alanis Morissette’s music.  It was darned optimistic, and at times charming, but at others seemed to be an apology for the brute force of “You Oughta Know.”  As in, you oughta know that I’m not really like that, see, I’m nice, and winning and a good girl.  And, while I don’t want to imply that one cannot both be angry and a good girl, or have many facets to one’s identity, I also don’t feel comfortable with teaching the wacky-free-spirit vibe, either.

In the end, I just don’t know how to reconcile Alanis Morissette’s whimsical side with her angry one in a way that can be encapsulated in an hour and a half class.  In fact, I think that I would find that to be the same problem with all of the women I mentioned above from the 1990s.  It’s a lot easier, for example, to talk about Green Day as the template for suburban punk and teen anomie in the mid-1990s than it is to talk about women singer-songwriters, whose lyrics, recording styles, instrument choices, etc., force a listener to consider autobiography and subjectivity a little too much.

Don’t get me wrong, female subjectivity is important–not to mention rare–in rock music.  It is frequently brought up as the salient characteristic of the female singer-songwriter, a gender-based genre that often straddles the line between rock music and pop, both stylistically and in terms of radio play (often losing out on both ends for that one).  But why does the question of subjectivity really only come up with women?   Is it because a male subjectivity is just assumed most of the time?  (Silly question.)

So, since I don’t like to make it seem like the only value for these women is a female subjectivity–a very specific white, middle-class, youthful subjectivity, at that–I continue to search for another paradigm under which to describe their contributions to pop music.  While I do think they are important, I’m not sure it’s an hour-and-a-half, easily encapsulated kind of important.  It might just be one of those Rock 202 discussions, rather than Rock 101.

Tune in next week, for the next installment of “Rock History, What I Leave Out”: Queen!

Katy Perry.  What is there to say?  That she’s the culmination of trends going on in the past 15 years of women in rock music?  That she’s a dreadful representation of what happens when the mainstream co-opts powerful women singers?  That she’s a symbol of “do-me” feminism/postfeminism/Girlie Feminism gone wrong (even if she doesn’t quite identify with those groups)?  That she rips off other women artists?  That she ends up being kinda homophobic and kinda pruriently bicurious–but for a male audience–at the same time?  That she titled her album One of the Boys, which is just irksome and implies a calculated bid for a male audience? That she seems to justify critics such as Ariel Levy, who say that Third Wave feminism has led to women being completely superficial about their sexuality?

How about all of the above?

For those of you who may not be familiar with the off-key singer, here’s a little background.  She grew up the daughter of two preachers, released a Christian rock album, and then decided to switch to the pop realm with big producers.  So far, no problems: Aretha Franklin, after all, moved from gospel to soul by first making a seven-year detour into pop music.

But Aretha’s path to success wasn’t, in fact, in that carefully crafted genre, but instead in soul, where she could use her immense vocal talents.  Perry, on the other hand, has used pop connections to place herself in the same category as women with a lot more talent.  She also used pop connections that worked well for other women who had significant success:  Like Avril Lavigne, Liz Phair, and Britney Spears, Perry worked with record production team The Matrix; she also worked with Glen Ballard (producer for Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill) on her debut album.  Less related to production, but just as calculated, she recently appeared to make a bid for some semblance of subcultural authenticity by appearing on the Van’s Warped Tour, hardly a girlie-pop venue.

Her major success came this summer, when the song “I Kissed a Girl” reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and her album One of the Boys was released in late June (so far, only reaching number 9 in the charts). “I Kissed a Girl” is everywhere, and so is Perry, gleefully talking up her tomboy-but-girlie personality, dressing like a cleaner, more stable Amy Winehouse, and promoting, promoting, promoting her songs as not at all political but just so fun, tee hee.

Perry’s sudden success seems cooly calculated and calibrated, reliant upon several trends in the representation of women in pop music that walk the line between sensationalistic and supposedly “owning” your own sexuality.  While I could write an essay on how much “I Kissed a Girl” is a vain attempt at drawing male attention in a Girls Gone Wild world, the blog Feministe has already done a nice job of that.  Instead, I parse below some of the influences that Katy Perry so freely pulls from in a grab-bag fashion.

1. Jill Sobule: Does no one remember that singer-songwriter Sobule had a hit with her song “I Kissed a Girl” in 1995?  Critically acclaimed Sobule, whose brief fame was encapsulated within the moment of the resurgence of the female singer-songwriter in the mid-1990s, wrote a song with exactly the same title, only for an opposite effect.  Whereas Perry’s song features a girl telling a guy about her exploits with girls, Sobule’s tale has the protagonist bonding with her friend about their mutually lame boyfriends, and then making out.  Instead of being for the dudes, it’s kept secret from them; instead of being an end to attract a man, it’s perhaps a beginning of something new.  We don’t know, because the songwriter is smart enough to leave that out.  Also ripped off beyond the idea, lyrics such as “her lips were sweet”–yeah, a cliche, I know–also appear in Katy Perry’s song.

2. Alanis Morissette:  Morissette walked the line between being one of the angry girls of “alternative” rock and recalling a peace-loving singer-songwriter of the 1970s.  Undeniably, however, she was able to tap into the zeitgeist of 1990s pop music, and Jagged Little Pill sold a proverbial shitton of copies.  This may have been strategic; it may have just been who Morissette was as an artist at the time. But without a doubt, Morissette forged a difficult link between alternative and girl-pop worlds.  Perry, by working with Glen Ballard, and by presenting her undeniably produced pop on the Warped tour, is trying to find that same level of success.  And one more thing: Morissette’s first single was as directly sexual as Perry’s.

3. Liz Phair:  Another woman who places a focus on the critique of male behavior in her songs (e.g. 6′1″) as well as explicit sexuality (e.g. “Flower”, with the lyric, “I wanna be your blow job queen”), Phair was, for many women, a rare voice of female desire in a rock realm.  However, Phair’s public image soon shifted from being a female subject with her own wants and desires to that of a pure object.  Her appearance on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1993, for example, flipped the strong-but-sexy image into its negative: the doe-eyed, vulnerable nymphet.  (For a great discussion of Phair’s impact on music, sexuality, and Third Wave feminism, click this link.)  Perry seems to be drawing on Phair’s ability to attract female audiences, through lyrics about douchy guys, and to attract the male gaze, through her big-eyed sexpot look and lyrics about kissing a girl but returning home to her man, a suggestion of a future threesome if I ever heard one.

4. Avril Lavigne:  Ah, the similarities with this one!  Levigne pioneered the punk-lite teen scene, toting a guitar with her and acting like “one of the boys,” even when you can’t hear her guitar playing in the mix and she’s tarted up in a skirt and heels.  Lavigne’s songs, like “Sk8er Boi,” acknowledges skater subculture in the same way that Perry’s “Ur So Gay” places an “H&M scarf” as a resonant indie-rock image.  But the greatest similarity lies in both women tapping the songwriting efforts of The Matrix: while Lavigne made the trio somewhat famous (at least as far as songwriters go), they were the first people that Perry turned to in her quest for fame.  Perry recorded an album with The Matrix in 2004, but it was shelved weeks before its release.  Still, their influence lingers on in Perry’s coy posing and cutesy musical styling.

5. South Park: This one may more of a stretch than the others, but it’s definitely there.  South Park was one of the first venues to regularly have its characters say, “Dude, that’s so gay!” as an insult.  But while having cartoon eight-year-olds insult each other with the term “gay” in a show that often layers satire upon satire undoubtedly causes some cognitive dissonance in those of us who think it’s funny but aren’t into homophobia, Perry’s song “Ur so gay!” is about on that eight-year-old level and somehow more disturbingly homophobic.  On the one hand, it’s smart in the verses, describing a vain, self-involved, indie rock boy, one whom her female listeners probably identify as that guy who they wasted too much time on once upon a time.  But it’s not really that logical, lyrically, to move from the fairly descriptive verse to saying “Ur so gay/and you don’t even like boys.”  In fact, any critique of the self-involved dude then becomes lost in the juvenile chorus.  Ohhhkay, we’re supposed to think that being gay is the ultimate insult for douchebaggy behavior?  That’s a little bit Cartman of Perry, don’t you think?

In uniting all these elements, Perry seems to proclaim that she is a unique and substantial individual: not just a “female-singer-songwriter,” because she is “one of the boys;” not just bubblegum teen radio fare, because she’s “edgy” in her lyrics; not just pop, because she’s on tour with a bunch of bands with street cred.  But the real fact is, there’s nothing original about Perry, just a lot of heavily vetted pop tactics on parade.