"We know the hills are alive with the sound of music, but what other aspect of music could they be alive with?"
--David Mamet, Seattle Arts & Lectures, April 1
It being impossible (for me) to conjure an original intelligent thought about that potent, perdurable, resilient, penetrating, and transcendent article of expression and cultural exchange known casually as "pop music," I will defer you to the "experts," who this weekend plan to storm EMP with all kinds of "big ideas" about jazz fusion, sampling laws, the centrality of Cuban music, gender, alt genealogy, the limits of mass cult modernism, reggae representations, and "the erasure of labor, blackness, and popular culture from independent rock." Among the swarms of speakers are Robert Christgau, who will hold forth on his Dionysian theory of pop music; Andrew Ross, who will explore the dilemma between cash and credibility; and Ashley Kahn, who describes his esteem of Barry Manilow as a "challenge to popular music orthodoxy." On this occasion, with nothing distinguished to say on the subject, and with no foundation in "music orthodoxy" whatsoever, I offer a vaguely literary perspective on the madness of popular music: a scattershot list of fairly big words popularized by some of the most intellectually vacant artists ever.* Can you match the word with the "artist" who sang it?
A. prerogative
B. prototype
C. merengue
D. misconstrued
E. capsizing
F. subsides
G. duplicity
H. respirator
I. bourgeoisie
J. lucidity
1. Barry Manilow
2. Alanis Morissette
3. Michael Bolton
4. Bobby Brown
5. Bon Jovi
6. Paul Simon
7. Madonna
8. Gwen Stefani (No Doubt)
9. Dan Hill
10. Chris DeGarmo (Queensrÿche)
Answers next week! For more info about EMP's "Pop Conference" (April 10-13), visit www.emplive.com.
*Paul Simon is not stupid. But everyone else is.
