MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Media and cultural studies scholars have debated the relative merits of popular art forms at least since Benjamin’s discussion of the “aura” and Horkheimer and Adorno’s lamentation of the “culture industry.” But in popular culture, the debate has long since ceased to be about what traditionally has been called “high art” and has instead turned to the creativity and quality (or lack thereof) of old and new popular media, a discussion that is particularly centered on popular music. The implication of the famous Bob Seger line, “Today’s music ain’t got the same soul,” is that something meaningful is missing in later popular music. In this paper, I argue that the battle of old and new instantiations of popular music, while on the surface a discussion of taste preferences, actually reflects a more serious discourse about who is worthy of contributing to the construction of popular culture and how they are able to do so. New media production technologies and styles such as Auto-Tune, electronic composing, and music sampling along with distribution channels including Spotify and YouTube, in conjunction with the continuing influence of hip-hop and rap in popular music, have provided an opportunity for amateur and minority voices to gain traction in the music industry. This has allowed them to shape the popular culture landscape by redefining popular music in an industry long dominated by white performers and large corporations. It is not, then, that today’s music has no soul, but rather literally “not the same soul” – a different soul. The dismissive notion that today’s popular music is lacking in quality and originality is not merely the rejection of a style, but a rejection of that different soul. This rejection is based on the belief that American culture is and should be composed of primarily one kind of voice.