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Can we con music journalists? Yes we can

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So, the Black Eyed Peas have reinvented the album, kickstarting a bold new era in pop music. I know this because I read it in the Guardian.

The END, writes an excitable Angus Batey, ‘is designed to shake up half a century of preconceptions about what an album is, and how it reaches its audience. Everyone else’s LP represents an end point - the full stop after a phase of creativity, the distillation of months or maybe even years of efforts towards making a finished piece of art. But when The END arrives in shops and at online retailers early next month, its release will instead mark the beginning of an onslaught of remixes, fan participation and constant revision and addition from its makers. If the band’s bold move succeeds, The END will herald the end of the album era.’



Encouraging other people to get creative with your music is a refreshing idea. Well, it was when the Shamen did it 20 years ago, releasing a version of their Move Any Mountain single with all the individual tracks separated out, so you could sample them and make your own remixes (or generally do whatever you like with it). In the years since - and, in hip-hop at least, for many years before - people reshaping other people’s recorded output has been commonplace, whether the makers of the original recordings want it to be or not. Bastard pop, bootlegging, mash-up or whatever you want to call it has reinvented DJing, and propelled the movement’s brightest sparks, like Danger Mouse or Richard X, into ‘legitimate’ pop careers.

Given this, it’s slightly ironic that Black Eyed Peas are being presented as revolutionaries, when all they are doing is making a big show out of giving people permission to do something they were probably going to do anyway. The fact that they’re doing it over a whole album is neither here nor there really. If people aren’t listen to albums anymore, as the band make a point of saying in the interview, why are they making one at all? It’s because it’s still inconceivable for a band on a major label not to do it - this isn’t a bold move at all, it’s an old, outmoded business model self-consciously dressed itself up in modern clothing. It’s as if, just as the Bolsheviks were storming the gates of the Czar’s palace, the Russian royal family had loudly declared that this whole revolution thing was fine with them and that, in fact, it was kind of their idea in the first place and was there anything they could do to help? 

It’s a canny PR move, especially when you can convince music journalists like Angus Batey to write your press releases for you. But revolutionary it is not. As with Radiohead’s decision to give away their new album on a ‘pay what you want’ basis a couple of years ago, the Black Eyed Peas are able to experiment with the way they distribute their music because more old-fashioned ways of doing it - huge marketing spend, TV appearances, radioplay, interviews, touring etc - have given them the power and financial security to experiment. Anything they achieve at this point will not be a demonstration of the power of new technology; it will be a demonstration of the power that comes with success already achieved by other means.



For example, Will.I.Am has claimed that his Yes We Can video - the inspirational song based on samples of a Barack Obama speech, which he posted it on the internet last year in an apparently very successful bid to encourage Americans to vote - was proof that a humble, inexpensive YouTube clip can help influence the outcome of a presidential election. Well, yes it can, if 1. it was made by a famous pop star and 2. it is promoted on national television. Would people have cared quite so much about the Yes We Can video if it hadn’t been made by a celebrity? And, more pointedly, a black celebrity who was already in a position to influence a lot of young people to vote for a black politician? The success of the Yes We Can video isn’t a demonstration of people power. It’s a demonstration of the political power a black celebrity can have at a particular moment in history when celebrity and politics are largely inseparable (a bad thing, on the whole) to articulate what large numbers of people were already feeling enough to motivate them to go out and act upon those feelings. But it is hardly a trick that can be repeated by anyone else, in any other circumstances. Neither is the Black Eyed Peas’ new PR strategy a model that the non-famous can follow - as with Radiohead, it’s a story not because of what they’re doing, but because it’s a famous, successful band doing it.

In short, no, The END will not kickstart a bold new era in pop music. That’s a silly idea, and every writer who’s been conned by Will.I.Am into uncritically parroting his own PR line is acting a little foolishly. The ‘bold new era’ in question, if there even is such a thing, was kickstarted many years ago, and no one band is responsible for it - that is entirely the point. Genuine people power is, ultimately, incompatible with celebrity culture - one is about community and collaboration, about breaking down hierarchies, the other is about the great unwashed being in thrall to the activities of a few select people whose lives they perceive to be somehow more interesting than their own. The Black Eyed Peas’ new business model only works, ultimately, if their fans define themselves as fans rather than creative individuals in their own right - ie: if they agree to reshape the Black Eyed Peas’ music on terms dictated by the Black Eyed Peas.

Despite all this, it’s still fascinating to see a globally successful (and therefore influential) band doing this with a whole album. The results could be interesting - and, hopefully, subversive. I like the idea of a version of The END appearing which mercilessly parodies the Black Eyed Peas (and my God, they really do invite parody sometimes), and I hope the band are humble enough to give it their blessing when it does. But - and this is worth repeating - it doesn’t herald the end of the album era any more than Elvis’s first single heralded the beginning of the rock n’ roll era. Eras don’t begin or end like that, unless you’re a journalist seeking a headline, or a celebrity seeking an ego massage.

No, eras begin and end much more slowly and quietly. Here’s a different glimpse of the future. A while ago, we played some shows with a London band called Luxembourg. We’ve kept in touch, although Luxembourg have now splintered into several different projects - these being Jonny Cola and the A Grades, the New Royal Family and - the best of the bunch in my opinion - The Melting Ice Caps, a solo project by David, Luxembourg’s lead singer.

It’s all very low key, and probably destined to be no more successful than his old band. But it’s from the heart, the songs are lovely, and you can download everything he’s made under his new alter-ego free from his website, where you can also read David’s eloquent, poignant, poetic lyrics.

This is a vision of the future I can happily buy into - personal projects, made with no particular audience in mind, but which find kindred spirits across the world, simply by sending quiet little signals out into hyperspace. Signals which, in this case, I am very happy to bounce forward a little, in the hope that people who like our music might seek out David’s. Which you should.

Andrew

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