When I was in college, we used to read scholarly criticism essays talking about how some painting was a response to some other painting or style, attacking its philosophy of artistic expression, or how architecture was a rebellion against previous styles (like Adolph Loos rebelling against decadent ornamentation and the gilded decorative details of previously ornate styles, or Art Historian Michael Fried complaining about art that is “corrupted and perverted by theatricality”). I’ve seen a lot of this type of comparative criticism essay on the visual arts, and in industrial design, but not so much in popular music.
But wouldn’t it be fun to read serious and pretentious essays about songs, talking about how the song “Tomorrow” from Annie was a celebration of the resilience of the human spirit which served as a repudiation and an indictment of the depressingly pessimistic and selfish sentimentality and “woe-is-me” defeatism of The Beatles’ classic song “Yesterday”; or how S.O.A.’s song “Gonna Have to Fight” was a nihilistic but unfortunately realistic counterpoint to the dangerous liberal fantasy preached in the John Lennon song “Give Peace A Chance”, which projects a weakness and naiveté that would be taken advantage of by the belligerence of intolerance and violence inherent in human society; or how the song “Who Let the Dogs Out” is, while minimal in structure, fundamentally a multilayered didactic treatise including a veiled indictment of animal rights groups’ attempts to unthinkingly release dangerous animals into an unwary and defenseless society, juxtaposed with a scathing criticism of society’s inherent if unknowing and passive complicity in such cruel animal experimentation, as well as a humorously disguised attempt to raise awareness regarding the plight of shelter animals, etc.
Now seriously: wouldn’t it be fun to read stuff like that?
