Was there something similar in recorded music? There must have been. Pop culture had a real homespun quality to it in the '80s. Consumers were more willing to take a chance on unknowns, and the producers were more willing to give rookies the benefit of the doubt. There was no "brand loyalty" like you see to Apple these days, or IBM in the mid-century. Folks just weren't hung up on silly status contests like signaling which corporation you got your stuff from. As long as it was enjoyable, who cares where it came from or how much it cost to make, right?
It turns out that judging whether a record label is major or not is a lot harder than for the movies. I'm going by this history of record labels, and what it considers the big ones around the time that the songs were released. I chose the year 1986 because that was the single most fortunate year for independent film. Here is a list of the Billboard top 100 singles for the year, of which I'll study the top 20 to save time and space.
Sure enough, songs produced by independent labels were chart-toppers back then. Arista, Island, and Virgin seem to have been the record label counterparts of Orion, Carolco, and Touchstone in the movie industry. Nobody cared if there wasn't immediate "brand recognition" -- not only for the label, but for the artist either. For example, Mr. Mister were more or less unknowns when their album Welcome to the Real World came out, yet that didn't stop them from enjoying two spots in the year-end top 20.
That album was produced by RCA Records well after their hey-day as a major, and before they were eventually folded into the mega-label that would become BMG. Plus they chose a pretty dopey name for a band, though again listeners were too carefree to worry much about weird band names back in the '80s (like Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark).
Below are lists of songs by major labels (7) and independent labels (12). The one uncertain case is Prince's song "Kiss," recorded for his vanity label Paisley Park, which was partly funded by Warner Bros. -- I'm not sure how heavily funded it was by them, how much say they had, etc., so who knows exactly where it goes.
Majors
"That's What Friends Are For" (Warner Bros.)
"I Miss You" (MCA)
"On My Own" (MCA)
"Party All the Time" (Columbia)
"Glory of Love" (Warner Bros.)
"West End Girls" (EMI Music / Parlophone)
"Never" (Capitol)
Independents
"Say You, Say Me" (Motown)
"Broken Wings" (RCA Records)
"How Will I Know" (Arista)
"Burning Heart" (Scotti Bros)
"Kyrie" (RCA Records)
"Addicted to Love" (Island)
"Greatest Love of All" (Arista)
"Secret Lovers" (A&M)
"Friends and Lovers" (USA Carrere)
"There'll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Cry)" (Jive)
"Alive & Kicking" (Virgin)
"Higher Love" (Island)
Uncertain
"Kiss" (Paisley Park)
I suspected that the indies would have done well, but not having nearly twice as many top 20 hits for the year. If you look at the major label songs, on the whole they're definitely not as cool and fresh-sounding as the indie ones either -- Dionne Warwick and Eddie Murphy vs. Whitney Houston and Steve Winwood. Get real.
As with independent movie studios, the independent record labels bit the dust as the '90s began. They're almost all now subsidiaries of the Big Three -- Universal, Sony, and Warner. Indeed, turning to the year-end singles for 2012, we find only two from indie labels: "Somebody That I Used To Know" (Eleven) and "Set Fire to the Rain" (XL). All the others are controlled in one way or another by the Big Three.
The brief history of record labels linked to earlier says that indie labels began gobbling up market share when rock 'n' roll first blew up in the late '50s. My take on that is that the mid-century was generally a period of domination by the majors, closer to today's climate than to the free-wheeling Eighties. The rock music explosion was one of the first pivotal shifts away from that whole zeitgeist of hive behavior and mass society.
When people come out of their cocoons, they don't demand the security of mega-corporations regulating society's affairs. They can accomplish a lot of that on a more local level, and in a more face-to-face fashion. Big business is still there, but the enthusiasm for it has deflated and it's kept on a shorter leash than in cocooning times, when people outsource social regulation to corporate efficiency experts rather than have to interact with others themselves.
Critics often use the term "indie" to refer to a style rather than an economic organizational stance. It's the style of music or movies that defiant or independent-minded artists are supposed to make, in the critic's view. But in real life, it turns out the opposite -- truly free-spirited folks like Whitney Houston, Steve Winwood, and the makers of Platoon and RoboCop would rather engage the audience and give them something catchy, enjoyable, or memorable to hold onto. Not emotionally muted, whispery-mumbly songs that have no musical motifs or instrumental solos. Borrring...
Folks just weren't hung up on silly status contests like signaling which corporation you got your stuff from. As long as it was enjoyable, who cares where it came from or how much it cost to make, right?
ReplyDeleteI don't see a lot of awareness of label provenance from the general public, either for cinema or music. They don't care about the label in this dimension (you can hear people talking about D&G clothes, but never "Wow! A Sony pictures film!?").
So perhaps this is more of a supply side thing (artists signing, radio playing) where label consciousness would exist?
The brief history of record labels linked to earlier says that indie labels began gobbling up market share when rock 'n' roll first blew up in the late '50s.
Wealth and power was generally less concentrated in the 50s. There might be some interaction of desire to make creative works with low concentration of wealth, where the mid century didn't have much division of labels because there wasn't as much grassroots creativity, but when that explosion of creativity begun, the abundant wealth and lack of entrenched wealth made it more practical to start a label.
"(you can hear people talking about D&G clothes, but never "Wow! A Sony pictures film!?")."
ReplyDeleteNot the specific movie studio or record label, but more like their consciousness of "brand name" vs. "generic" food. Or "designer" vs. "below-designer" clothing. They might not know whether their cereal is from Post or General Mills, or have subliminal loyalty to it. But they know from the packaging, advertising, etc., that it's brand-name.
People these days would never make Platoon the #3 movie at the box office for the year (sticking with 1986). It was made on a shoestring budget of $6 million by an independent (Orion) -- even adjusting for inflation, nowhere near the $100-300 million budgets of the blockbusters these days.
Yet it made nearly $140 million -- over 20 times the budget. Another thing you don't see anymore is astronomical ROI because nobody wants to see a "cheaply made" movie with no gauntlet of crappy-but-pricey special effects and other bombast.
(Similar to mid-century bombast needed to "draw audiences away" from their TV sets.)
I'm not sure what audiences are picking up on when they choose only major-label music, but there's something there like in the case of movies and cereal. How fancy does the production sound? How straightforward vs. overwrought does it sound? I don't know. Something like that.
Funny, a radio station I listen to is having "an 80s one-hit wonder" weekend. I'm surprised by the number of songs from the 80s that are one-hit wonders.
ReplyDelete-Curtis
Conversely, it seems there were way less one-hit wonders in the 90s and 2000s. Artists of the era didn't get greenlighted unless they were already prepackaged and premarketed (with some exceptions, of course).
ReplyDeleteHere's a litmus test: how many times do you hear a good song from the 80s(or 60s and 70s), and have to ask yourself who made it? quite often, it seems.
Much less so than for the current Turn of the Century slogfest...
That's right. I should put together a post on one-hit wonders vs. hegemonic bores. I just tried to write a "short version," but it got too long for a comment. Plus I should throw together a basic quantitative picture for the rise and fall of one-hit wonders.
ReplyDeleteAnother place (among many domains) where you see the one-hit wonder vs. hegemony cycle is in architecture. There were no "starchitects" during the reign of Art Deco. Pop quiz: who designed the Chrysler Building or the Empire State Building? (Crickets...)
Even going back to the turn-of-the-century, you get Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, but that's it for the 1900-early '30s period.
Then it goes all authoritarian during the mid-century, with one hegemon after another. But supported by the audiences. An elected dictatorship. Everything had to have instant brand recognition, and be familiar already. Kind of like voting FDR into a life-term presidency.
Then the starchitects disappear during the New Wave age, only to come back in the Millennial era.
I'm not sure what audiences are picking up on when they choose only major-label music, but there's something there like in the case of movies and cereal. How fancy does the production sound? How straightforward vs. overwrought does it sound? I don't know. Something like that.
ReplyDeleteMost of what you've written about the outgoing eras tends to make me think that they'd like higher production, casts of thousands and exciting stimulating (overwrought and feverish?) special effects as well, or even more, but perhaps that would be relatively less important to them than rawness, spontaneity and newness, which would come from an outsider and wouldn't favor the big boys.
I still feel like a more risk taking attitude might be more important both in investors / producers and the actual crew, as well as the audience, in making independent companies more frequent. More people wanting to work outside the system and take a chance for a big payoff, either in making a profit or having a cool experience. Less risk taking on production, distribution and consumption sides results in less creativity and the wealth and "machine-like" advantages to scale for large organisations dominating production and distribution, in all walks of life. (Even though this does not not necessarily result in high inequality at the level of individuals people because the organisations can be coerced and controlled to share their wealth among their members.)
Actual brand consciousness and signalling on the other hand, just seems like it would more related to inequality, like status competition is generally (like you described in your beards post, with low beardiness in the mid century and at least the later jazz age, and as shown generally by better than average type effects).
Brand consciousness for status preening and low risk taking leading to large organisation dominance could both lead to big brands and labels, but the big brands would differ; the brand conscious high inequality situation would have people chasing the high status, luxury and tres sophistique (but not necessarily particularly exciting or stimulating) brands and labels, while the low risk taking situation would see more of the dominance of proletarian, traditional and everyman brands and labels.
Come on, 'Broken Wings' by Mr Mister was one hell of a great song! And what happened to The Cars?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what audiences are picking up on when they choose only major-label music
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