Moby Calls Britney, Ke$ha Not Music

last.fm

In a new interview for Spinner, Moby calls pop music made by artists like Britney Spears and Ke$sha, "...fun, but I don't think of it as music."

"It's manufactured. I appreciate it as pop culture phenomenon and some of the songs I like if I hear them in a shopping mall or something, but it doesn't function as music for me.

Music is something that communicates emotion and integrity in a really interesting, direct way, [...] And when I listen to the pop music you're describing, it's hyper-produced corporate product. That isn't really even a criticism, but I just think calling it music is a misnomer."

He also called it "adverstising for ringtones."

The interview made the rounds of the blogophere, not surprisingly depicting Moby as a bitter almost-been, but you know what? I actually kind of agree with him. Or rather my younger, music-snob self would have agreed with him before I opened my eyes to whose music is considered art, and whose is commerce. And Moby himself is hardly averse to capitalizing on his "product:"

Setting aside his blatant hypocrisy – licensing your entire album to commercials, as Moby did with Play, makes you guilty of producing "advertising for Vauxhall Corsas", if not ringtones – it's an argument that seems to follow most pop music around these days. At the heart of it is the theory that all music needs to have been wrenched from the emotional core of a tortured soul, ideally recorded in a basement toilet and augmented only by the scratching of fingers on guitar strings and tears, ACTUAL TEARS. It forgets that music can be fun and instantaneous, or that great pop stars are often used as a front for great pop songs, often written by great songwriters (Max Martin, Cathy Dennis, Stargate). It also hints at another old adage: that pop is for children who lap it up without giving it a second thought. (source)

I think the obvious needs to be said that whenever another musician -- nay, an artist -- decides to criticize pop stars as non-musicians or non-artists, the object of that criticism is usually women. Pop music, the kind that dominates the charts and can actually be heard on MTV or VH1 during normal waking hours is largely made by women. In contrast, look at any critic's best-of list, and men usually dominate. When women do make those lists (like the current Rolling Stone 500), it's often as performers, and not songwriters or producers. According to Marissa Meltzer, who wrote a meaty chapter on pop music in her book, Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution in Music , "Our culture seems to have a particularly hard time with the suggestion that female pop stars have agency [...] despite (Spears) very public transgressions, she does seem to be far more self-aware than most critics are willing to give her credit for."