Social Inequality In Popular Music

Popular musical meaning relates to ‘the social’ in many ways and can be seen in music through things like politics, how mass production changes meaning, and class/inequality. When it comes to politics and music an example can be seen with YG’s recent song that he made “F**ck Donald Trump”, which has made a big impact with the youth like the song “Fuck the Police” that came out in the early 90’s and one can see that there is a correlation between the two. Then there was the Grunge era where many stylists started mass producing the look after the music became so popular with the youth. Then finally there is the class and inequality that can be seen throughout the years in music, an example with that can be seen with Bring Cosby and Billie Holiday.

These topics can relate to the different readings when repetition, soundscape, and experiences are brought up.
In the last couple of months’ politics has been a big deal in the United States has been a big deal because this year a new president is going to be elected. A man who is building a lot of controversy in the race is Donald Trump. He has been making a lot of negative headlines in the news because of his negative comments, he has been saying that the United States needs to build a bigger border between Mexico also a lot of negative comments towards Muslims and many other races. What that did was it sparked rapper Yg and Nipsey Hu$$le to make the song “F**ck Donald Trump”. This can be tied in to what is said in chapter one “…boredom and excitement, tension and relaxation — in short, the dialectics of musical pleasure. Almost all popular songs, to a greater or lesser extent, fall under the power of repetition” (Middleton, pg15) and there is a lot of repetition with Yg and Nipsey yelling “Fuck Donald Trump” throughout the whole song, there is also a great beat in the song which can get one excited and have them sing along. Many can say that this song breaks many soundscapes, “Now, the social construct of the city soundscape can, of course, be interpreted in many different ways, depending on the hearer’s relationship to the various activities giving rise to the soundscape’s constituent elements” (Tagg, pg46) there was a Donald Trump rally a few weeks ago and a group of people drove by playing the song “F**ck Donald Trump” and you can say that they broke the soundscape of the rally. This song is above and pierces the soundscape because it is louder than the ambient noise and higher in fundamental pitch, it is being played at a rally full of Trump supporters. This song can also be related to the song “Fuck The Police” by N.W.A which came out in the 90’s because of all the violence that was happening with the police. This song seemed to inspire Yg and Nipsey to make “F**ck Donald Trump”.
When the Grunge scene was popular many designers began to duplicate the look and started selling it everywhere. What started happening is in places like Miami many people began to where layers of flannel, had heir ripped jeans, and converse which many saw as the grunge look. Grunge originated from Seattle and became very popular, this type of music was very different it did break many soundscapes in a sense because it was like a type of metal, however it is its own genre. The music was what made the look popular. For example, the band Nirvana, many people saw Kurt Cobain and imitated his look. There are many designers that looked at these big bands in Seattle and did the same and started reselling the clothes for a ridiculous amount of money. What that ended up doing to what we can call ‘the social’ is it began to change its meaning, grunge wasn’t really something so special in Seattle anymore because it was being seen throughout the United States. The music was not that much of a big deal to the people it was more of the look that began to affect the people more. The people wanted the grunge look and they could care less about the music even though the music is what created the look.
During the era of Jazz Bing Crosby and Billie Holiday were big names at the time.

There was a time in 1944 where these two artists recorded renditions of the song ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’, Bing’s song was on the top sellers list for a total of twenty-four weeks while Billie’s song did not appear on the top charts despite her producer saying that it was a ‘pretty big hit’. The difference between the two was there skin color and class “Bing Crosby, the white male, became supremely important through the efforts of publicity agents and his own efforts to provide the public with what they wanted — in other words, he was a commercially co-opted ‘sell-out. ’ On the other hand, Billie Holiday, the African-American female, triumphed over racism and personal adversity to reach the few listeners who were prepared to receive the unvarnished presentation of her soul”(Brackett, pg37). A reason for Bing appearing in the top charts is that he has a NBC radio show where he debuted the song. This show gave him exposure to millions of people and helped his music tremendously. The song was played for seven months on the radio show which is a big reason why he was on the best seller charts for so many weeks. Then there is Billie Holiday, her producer said that her rendition of the song was going to be a big hit however that was not the case and a reason for that could be that she doesn’t have a radio show and as much exposure like Bing had. This can be related to class and inequality, Bing is a white wealthy white male who did not struggle much in his life that also has his own radio show while Billie a African American woman struggled growing up and went through tough times to get where she is at. They both had success however Bing had a lot more help because he can be seen as someone of a higher

class.
There are many ways one can see how popular musical meaning relates to “the social”. These things can be seen in politics with Yg, he uses repetition in his music and it also breaks the soundscape. Then there is the Grunge era, the music was popular to the point where stylists started mass producing the look and reselling it for a ridiculous price. Then finally there is class and inequality that was seen back in the day during the Jazz era with Bing Crosby and Billie Holiday. All these topics can be said to have been affected by popular musical meaning because they are “the social”.