SOUND OF THE YEAR: 2014 – SWEDISH POP

Swedish Global Pop Star Robyn

First, let's rewind:

In 2013 Swedish songwriters and producers had a hand in 34 US top ten hits  and 32 UK top ten hits.

Then, by the year's end, ABBA’s greatest hits album, 'Gold', released in 1992,  surpassed ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ sales, released in 1967, on The Beatles’ own home turf.

Now, a year later, there is still no sign that global youth culture is growing weary of the Swedish sound.

Of course, the European airwaves have for many years now been saturated with Scandinavian hits, especially in the summer. So, it's not as though this music or the talent behind it just exploded on the scene; more accurately it simply took a few decades to entrench itself into the rhythm of American life.

Indeed, in a recent issue of The New Yorker, Sasha Frere-Jones illuminates that magazine’s readers of the Swedish invasion by asking, “Do you like Swedish pop music? The answer is probably yes, even if you can’t name a single artist born in Sweden.” (The Sound of Sweden)

That’s because evidence of Swedish pop machinations are everywhere, although all of it is easily missed if you don’t know where to look. But dig into the liner notes and you’ll realize that a significant portion of hit songs streaming off that other significant Swedish musical import, SPOTIFY, has as either its origin or primary influence, the aesthetic sensibilities cultivated by a small collection of prolific Stockholm based music producers and songwriters.

 Meanwhile, in other news, and across the world:

• The labor market revealed little improvement;  
• America found itself increasingly strained by racial tensions;
• The European Union became bogged down with immigration issues; 
• Militant forces kidnapped young women by the hundreds in Africa (Boko Haram);
• Religious fanatics carried out public executions and crucifixions in the Mideast (ISIS); 
• Russia rattled its nuclear saber in Eastern Europe.

Clearly, if the year's top stories are any indication, music may no longer be a catalyst for social change, but it still provides respite from the world's woes and the pressure of daily life.

So how did Sweden come to dominate the zeitgeist? 

In a nutshell: The Beatles broke up; Motown lost ground; Kraftwerk released Autobahn; Blondie got signed; hair bands happened; Kurt Cobain died; the Backstreet Boys had a hit, and the rest is history.

Of course, the last half century of widespread public support and encouragement of music education in the Swedish school system has played no small role as well:

“Sweden actively encourages prospective musicians through its education system... By the time they start school at age seven, kids have learned a great deal about singing and rhythm. Furthermore, many Swedes join choir groups in their teens, regardless of gender or religious affiliation. Sweden boasts the highest number of choirs per capita in the world - a startling 15 percent of Swedes sing in choirs.”  (Why Swedish pop is the best in the world)

In other words, what other countries have done by bolstering educational programs associated with science, technology, engineering, programming and mathematics, Sweden has done with piano lessons, choral groups, contagious melodies and danceable loops.

Fast forward to the present and Stockholm’s Max Martin has now produced more number-one songs than anyone besides Beatles' producer and collaborator, George Martin. And it's certainly no secret to pop fans that the Swedish producer's superlative sonic craftsmanship is one reason why Taylor Swift’s '1989' is the much ballyhooed first certified platinum album of the year. In fact, with the No. 1 debut of Taylor Swift's 'Shake It Off', Max Martin earned his 18th number one hit, placing him in third place among writers with the most leaders in the Billboard Hot 100's 56-year history.

Other artists inspired in recent years by Stockholm’s sonic artisans include a Who's Who of MTV stars, among them:

One Direction, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, Nicki Minaj, Mylène Farmer, Usher, The Backstreet Boys, Pitbull, Madonna, Maroon 5, Bon Jovi, Jennifer Lopez,  Enrique Iglesias, Kelly Clarkson,  Gavin De Graw, Pink, Justin Beiber, Ke$ha, Cyndi Lauper, Daughtry, Ariana Grande and Shakira, to name but a few.

One might even suggest that these entertainers are not simply fans of the Swedish Pop Mafia, but dues paying members of it, or that Stockholm's songwriters are so successful because they are not so much intent on writing pop songs as they are implanting ear worms.

America’s own popular power pop producer, Dr. Luke, who has more than than thirty Top Ten credits to his name, culled in the last decade alone, is himself a disciple of the Swedish pop maestro, Martin. 

As a result, it's quite likely that whether the song is sung by Avril Lavigne at the Budokan or Katy Perry on the beaches of Brooklyn, or whether it was recorded and composed in London or Los Angeles, or by a Nord or a New Yorker, no matter, if it's currently at the top of the 2014 pop charts, then its musical DNA can probably be traced back to Stockholm.

Still not convinced in the power of Swedish Pop? Consider this:

• 1 Billion in pop music sales
• Global radio domination
• The reigning music influence on mainstream popular culture
• The first platinum selling album of the year

Love it or hate it, it's hard to argue with a hit, much less hundreds of them.

–And that’s why The 2014 Critical Noise Sound of the Year belongs to the ubiquitous sound of SWEDISH POP.

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HOW THE SOUND OF THE YEAR IS SELECTED:

The Critical Noise Sound of the Year goes to that sound source, event, entity, happening or concept which so effectively produces wide response and reaction, whether intentional or not, such that it stirs collective emotion, inspires discussion, incites action, or otherwise lends itself to cultural analysis and resonates across the globe.

Prior Sound of the Year winners include Pussy Riot (2012), The Cry for Freedom (2011), The Vuvuzela (2010) and Auto-Tune (2009)

Branded @ Birth™

Regardless of one's cultural background, primary language or education, some people believe babies call their mother ‘MA’ (or some version thereof) not because they’re taught do so, but because they’re programmed to do so.

This theory stipulates that just as humans are born with certain physical body parts, we're also born with a bit of a pre-birth cognitive fodder called ‘Archetypes’.

In Jungian psychology an archetype is described as “a collectively inherited unconscious idea, pattern of thought, image, etc., universally present in individual psyches.” (Dictionary.com)

There are many fascinating aspects about this, if it is true, not the least of which is the implication that we are all Branded @ Birth, and then start from the very beginning of our lives branding every single thing around us (as products of our reality, our culture, even our imagination).

If this is indeed the case, then archetypes presuppose culture and are neurobiological in origin. We might then say that archetypes exist within the black box of consciousness as pre-programmed urges to express certain behaviors. These primal urges first take form as intuitive actions that are then instagrammed as  symbols intended to represent the action or capture the meaning of these urges.  That is, rendering symbols is the manner by which one documents an impression, applies a cognitive filter to it, and then shares it with others.

If every urge represents a fundamental need or desire, then every symbol is essentially a command. And these commands once produced and distributed/transmitted/communicated –put into action as it were– exhibit memetic potential.

Perhaps this potential is even the result of archetypal recognition by those receiving the transmission. But the additional result of this eternal loop is a complicated matrix of understandings and conventions we call culture. And one might also say that the reverse engineering of all this resulting symbolic data is what we now call semiotics. This could all be academic, or it could be navel gazing, but I still find it all very fascinating to consider; the mind reels.

What is the zeitgeist anyway?

We might think of zeitgeist as a series of trends, but by my calculus it's semiotics in motion; an archetypal tsunami; symbolic data moving culture the same way a strong current moves a floating object. –But equally influenced by an undercurrent of ideas and prior actions that collectively effect the NOW as they move beneath the visible surface of society, and in this way capably move highly ingrained and even resistant convictions great distances over many years, even decades, centuries and millennia.

Of course, if we define archetypes simply as pre-birth patterning, then animals are also endowed with them, and we can suppose that any instinctual activity has at its source archetypal data. It may not be enough to ask if the dog's bark is worse than his bite, but also inquire what does either bark or bite mean?

In any event, the notion of archetype supposes we arrive into the world if with not a song, then with an elemental sound already formed in our heads (or the urge to produce a sound), and that is the sound of our mother’s name –at least the name by which we will call her. Again we are branded at birth, imprinted by a distinguishing mark that identifies us as no less than a product of our Mother.

By the way, some people also believe we do actually arrive into the world with a song in our heads. It's called 'The Ur-song' and you can hear what it sounds like by playing the following video (the melody here is played straight; it is also often heard with a swing):



Incidentally, because the vocalized ‘ma’ signification precedes graphic representation, I like to think of it less as an archetype than as an ‘Archetone’.

I also think it might be true that ‘ma’ doesn't bear any archetypal or pre-natal psychological origin, but that it ehibits universal usage simply because nursing mothers interpret ‘SMA’ –the sound of lips un-puckering from a kiss or breast– as an attempt to communicate. (And by extension, ‘DA’, the sound of one opening one’s mouth when one’s tongue has been stuck to the roof of it).

Once believing their baby has begun speaking, parents might then reward a child with further affection. And by this action they thereby reinforce a lip-smack as as an appropriate designation for a god like being by an utterly helpless moppet.

It’s not quite as romantic an etymology as being in possession of an ancient archetype, but who’s to say it’s wrong?

Whatever the mechanics, 'ma’ becomes a meme, and eventually ma becomes mama becomes mom becomes mother, and this is how mommy goes viral.

If you have any interest in memetics (the study of cultural transmission), one can’t help but ask if ‘Ma’ is the smallest unit of cultural transmission exhibited in early childhood development?

–Or is there something smaller than 'ma' to be found; something that lies between archetypal urge and symbolic utterance? I believe that there is, and that thing is the actual sound of the baby’s natural and not-quite-yet semantic cry.

Although, I’m not really sure that such a cry can't be designated as non memetic because I've heard one baby set off a dozen other babies, as if they were all part of a single coddled swarm.

The fact is, any human behavior can trigger an action which once repeated becomes a pattern, and then, at that point –at the point of Pattern Manifestation– it finally assumes the potential to be transmitted along a memetic distribution system.

Or rather, it exhibits the power to trigger replication from one host to another: you, me and mommy, too.

It’s as if the archetype once given voice as an archetone, the entire process resembles nothing so much as a musical Ouroboros –the mythical image of a serpent eating its own tale, and thus forming an eternal circle.

Music Memetics

'MEME' is a trendy word these days, so popular in fact, that it is also now itself a meme. The word is often used to describe viral video, but what does 'meme' mean, actually? As it happens, the definition of ‘meme’ is in a bit of a state of flux –still evolving, it may be said– as specialists attempt to apply the concept to their own specific field of study.

First coined by evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, the meme was conceived as “a unit of cultural transmission.” And like genes, memes propagate themselves following the rules of evolutionary biology. Others have since modified this definition by declaring the meme not just ‘a’ unit, but ‘the smallest possible unit’ of cultural transmission. However, this modification is by no means universally accepted. Not to mention that two other necessary questions remain unanswered, being: What is a ‘unit’? And: what is ‘culture’?

Susan J. Blackmore, in ‘The Meme Machine’ (2000), points out, Dawkins himself expresses contrary definitions about memes, and why shouldn’t he? It’s clear from the tone of his writing that he thinks the concept is new to him, too, and yet because he realizes that it is so exciting and so potentially revolutionary, that he has to share it with us before it's fully formed

First, Dawkins says, “A meme should be regarded as a unit of information residing in a brain.” But then he also says that a meme “can propagate from brain to book”, and presumably from book to brain.

Arguably, these are not really contradictory statements, since books, media, computers and really, any man made device or object, for that matter –whether capable of storing retrievable recorded information or not– are all but kinds of external hard drives for our brains, i.e. places to stockpile the ideas of a man or an age for another day or another century. If this were not so, how could an archaeologist retrieve information from a clay pot? And yet, in point of fact, he or she does, with considerable regularity. One might even be forgiven for thinking that all relics come standard with a USB or Firewire port.

It is not exactly accurate to say this, but it is fun to consider that a shared misunderstanding of the word meme has also become a meme.

Ultimately, Blackmore decides to define meme as simply: “whatever it is that is passed on by imitation".

She also writes “We do not know the mechanism for copying and storing memes.” Maybe this was true in 2000, but it is not completely true today. At the very least, new research indicates that when we learn something, there is an actual change in the physiology of the brain. One reason why it maybe so hard to break old habits, is because it is not simply a matter of changing one's behavior, but doing so long enough to form new brain physiology.

Sort of makes it scary to think that the ear worm in your head isn't simply repeating all by itself, but that you are quite literally and actively engraving it into the white matter of your brain to enjoy for the rest of your life.

APPLYING MEMETIC THEORY TO MUSIC

As a result of this interest in memes, a fascinating topic of study regarding the application of meme theory to music has begun to sprout (one might even say replicate).

What is a musical meme? Well, one can think of a memorable tune as a meme, but only so long as we preclude the notion that a meme must also represent 'the smallest unit' of communicable information. Beyond that, definitions abound.

In 'The Memetics of Music: A Neo-Darwinian View of Musical Structure and Culture' (2007), Steven B. Jan tackles the task of applying Dawkin’s concept to music. I do not always agree with his conclusions, if only because the concept is still too elastic, and can therefore be made to fit almost any precept. How then to reduce the concept to one specific set of rules? It can be a clunky exercise; even Dawkins had difficulty with his own creation:

“So far I have talked of memes as though it was obvious what a single unit-meme consisted of. But of course, it is far from obvious. I have said a tune is one meme, but what about a symphony: how many memes is that? Is each movement one meme, each recognizable phrase of melody, each bar, each chord, or what?” [The Selfish Gene, p. 195]

It sometimes appears, we can regard anything reproducible, and therefore, anything man made, as a meme –and one day, that may in fact be the consensus. But for the purposes of this present discussion, I agree with Jan when he states:

“The biological analogy, indeed replicator theory itself, suggests that memes tend towards the latter end of the continuum Dawkins outlines –towards existence as short and clearly demarcated rather than long and diffuse units.”

Naturally, I'm unconvinced with examples that strike me not so much as transmissions of cultural information as they do the essential building blocks of western music theory, as when Jan suggests a common chord progression is a meme. But why shouldn't it be?

It strikes me harmony plays a supporting role to the actual meme. For instance, IV–I, commonly referred to as 'the Amen Cadence' supports a melodic line composed of a subdominant tone moving to the tonic. Are we to accept the chords sounding in tandem with the actual meme a meme itself?

We can also accept that the ii-V7-I cadence can also be said to transmit some kind of cultural idea –western civilization in its totality, perhaps(?)– if our definition is limited to the notion that a meme is a 'short and clearly demarcated' 'cultural transmission', and leave it at that. But by Jan's own standard, a (musical) meme is expressed only when it is sounded by a combined given arrangement and tonality.

Ergo, the following must be true:

The ii-V7-I cadence –or any other cadence– transmits different messages whether relayed by Stradivarius or Stratocaster.

Personally, I believe the mathematical foundations underpinning music theory have archetypal rather than memetic origins, even if certain expressions only replicate in one culture and not another, in the same way we accept signs are born of archetypes but may be expressed differently depending where, when and how they become manifest.

Also, I subscribe to the notion that a meme presents itself as a complete and independent statement.

All of this begs the question: What came first? The Meme or the Archetype?

If we accept the theory of Jungian archetypes, the meme strikes me an expression of the archetype:

The archetype is elastic. The meme is not. The archetype is universal, the meme culturally specific. The Archetype is primordial and therefore original. The meme, on the other hand represents a copy, however popular, born not of the Source but out of the Zeitgeist. And while we are, for the most part, unconscious of the Archetype. the meme reminds us of its presence every chance it gets.

If archetypes grow up to be memes, then the process bears a striking resemblance to the evolution of Brands. Graphic designers and brand managers do everything they can to define a mark before launching it into the world, but logos only actually become Brands when enough consumers endow and reflect consensual meaning/s onto or into a merchant or marketer's symbology.

Dawkins makes no such distinctions however. In practice, any viral idea is referred to as a meme.

I’m not sure what to think when Jan writes:

“…memes which appeared initially in symphonies composed by Haydn in the isolation of Eszterhaza in the 1770s continue to copy themselves into the brains of concert goers on the West Coast of America in the twenty first century.” –and later he declares “For the longevity of musical memes, the greatest advance was the development of notation.”

I'm confused because he seems to asks us to accept that any 'convention' is a meme, as when he writes:

“…one such example is the 'motto' opening of classical-period symphonies and sonatas where, irrespective of the nature of the pitch and rhythmic material, a piano-forte dynamic antithesis is stereotypical.”

If we accept that a meme is anything, then best the description of meme is the one posited by some anonymous editor or copywriter who writes in promotional copy printed on the inside jacket of Blackmore's book: “…a meme is any idea, behavior, or skill that can be transferred from one person to another by imitation: stories, fashions, inventions, recipes, songs, ways of plowing a field or throwing a baseball or making a sculpture.”

But if that is the case, and we are still intent on defining some precise and practical definition of 'meme', that we may justly apply the concept to our music endeavors, then we will have to shoot the word through a conceptual super collider, so that we may identify and examine even smaller particles of cultural transmission.

I'll save for another day further discussion on this topic specifically, and later examine the notion of nano memetic structures I call 'Quantum Audio', being fundamental audio units which once identified can be extremely useful in the construction and transmission of music design.

Do Jingles Work?

Do Jingles Work?

In July's Business-Standard, Seema Sindhu asked Indian advertisers if Jingles work (Do signature tunes for brands work?)

The power of the jingle is not just immediate aural stimulation –ear candy– but it's ability to continue stimulating the inner workings of our minds long after the commercial has ended and even after we've turned the television or radio off. In this respect, a good jingle can be measured by it's potential to work as Ear Worm, i.e. little tunes that get stuck in your mind.

The Wikipedia definition of Ear Worm provides us with this amusing example:

A Calvin And Hobbes strip had Calvin's dad getting up from an armchair and pausing vacantly, before asking his wife, "Why is it that I can recall a cigarette ad jingle from 25 years ago, but I can't remember what I just got up to do?"

Good jingles have such infectious melodies that they bounce around our brain and even drive us a bit mad. Even when we think we've finally purged them from memory, they emerge as we stroll down the supermarket aisle or whenever we consider a purchase.

I for one can't buy a 7-Up without thinking that "It's an Up thing".

Kudos to Mary Wood of Frisbie Music and Clifford Lane for managing to make the same indelible impression on my brain (with that 1996 jingle) as Bach and the Beatles.

Sindhu writes that jingles are making a comeback with South Asian companies like Bajaj, Titan, Kingfisher, Nirma and Airtel –all of whom he notes are using their old jingles in new campaigns.

The difference between today, and say, the mid twentieth century –arguably the golden age for jingles (and pop music in general)– is as Prasoon Joshi, executive chairman (India) and regional executive creative director (Asia Pacific), McCann-Erickson, says:

"Today, the entertainment quotient in life has gone up. TV, films, online, ringtones, the options are endless. The shelf life of a campaign or an ad has gone down. The ‘melodious' tune, be it in films or ads, which takes its time to gently make way to your heart is a rarity for these reasons."
When jingles do make an impression though, it's not simply because their melodies are memorable, but because they serve to deliver products and services which we actually find useful in our lives.

Bobby Pawar, chief creative officer, Mudra group, says:

"Audio signatures, such as Titan's Mozart score or Airtel's tune composed by AR Rahman..." don't just sing the virtues of their respective products, but are "...also driven by a strong idea..."

Whatever you think of jingles –and some people write them off as cheesy artifacts that have no place in contemporary advertising– jingles continue to have enormous potential as tools to cultivate relationships between brands and consumers.

–Not to mention between Bands and Fans: What's a ringtone anyway, but a jingle for a recording artist's hit single, or even their entire catalog?

It may seem we hear little of jingles these days, but the truth is they never went away. More often than not, advertisers get them ready made from pop stars, in the way of licensed tracks, instead of commissioning wholly new tunes from composers.

A lot of creative people on both sides of the arrangement think this trend is mutually beneficial, and it can be. There's nothing wrong with providing new revenue streams for bands –or brands.

The downside is strictly for those who compartmentalize the arts as either Fine or Commercial. Any marriage of media diminishes the power of its component parts, often transforming any isolated visual into a 'frame' and any song into, quite simply, well, a jingle.