tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/paul-mccartney-11568/articles
Paul McCartney – The Conversation
2023-11-19T13:00:19Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/217346
2023-11-19T13:00:19Z
2023-11-19T13:00:19Z
Now and Then: How composition choices made John Lennon’s music memo into a Beatles song
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559968/original/file-20231116-25-g5g3in.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=45%2C2%2C1599%2C769&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Now and Then finds a place alongside Beatles' songs like We Can Work it Out or Girl which move between major-key and minor-key sections. A still from the song's video.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(YouTube)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/now-and-then-how-composition-choices-made-john-lennons-music-memo-into-a-beatles-song" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>The Beatles’ “<a href="https://www.goldradiouk.com/artists/the-beatles/ringo-starr-last-song/">last song ever</a>,” released 61 years after their first single, was bound to be significant. </p>
<p>But how did John Lennon’s lo-fi, 40-something-year-old cassette recording of <em>Now and Then</em> — deemed <a href="https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/why-george-harrison-originally-blocked-the-upcoming-final-beatles-single-fucking-rubbish">“fucking rubbish”</a> by George Harrison during the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/music/the-beatles-now-and-then-documentary-premiering-cbc-1.7014053">failed 1995 attempt</a> to revive the song — become an instant <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-67381253">No. 1 chart hit</a> and worthy addition to the Beatles’ catalogue in 2023? </p>
<p>Beyond the <a href="https://www.nme.com/features/music-features/the-beatles-now-and-then-final-song-ai-documentary-peter-jackson-music-video-inside-story-3527104?fbclid=IwAR2lTygUCfYjjrAoqgJX19Vwtp7ykMHmf_fd5dAMXygunvbac6v8f0_lEPY">AI-assisted</a> salvage of Lennon’s voice from the noisy cassette, it is worth examining Lennon’s raw materials, and the strategies that made the unfinished <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-67285117">late-1970s</a> musical sketch a Beatles’ song.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption"><em>Now and Then</em> official music video.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Personal music memo</h2>
<p>Had Harrison told Lennon himself that the song was rubbish, Lennon might have responded, “Well I’m not finished with it yet, am I mate?” </p>
<p>Lennon’s original <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/nov/02/now-and-then-listen-to-the-final-beatles-song-john-lennon-paul-mccartney-ringo-george-harrison">“demo tape”</a> was not made for formal presentation (to a music publisher, for instance). </p>
<p>It was a personal memorandum to capture basic song ideas — something musicians do all the time. If they stopped there, <em>Yesterday</em> would be <a href="https://www.insider.com/paul-mccartney-yesterday-original-title-scrambled-eggs-the-beatles-2021-10"><em>Scrambled Eggs</em>,</a> and the Rolling Stones’ <em>Satisfaction</em> would be one minute of Keith Richards’s signature riff and <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/satisfaction-comes-to-keith-richards">45 minutes of snoring</a>. </p>
<h2>Unorthodox compositional form</h2>
<p>The surviving two Beatles decided to finish the song in 2023, bringing in producer Giles Martin, son of George, the <a href="https://www.nme.com/news/music/giles-martin-wanted-to-rip-off-his-dad-george-for-the-beatles-now-and-then-3536272?fbclid=IwAR3VATdqJWRWEci4YdzOIcCF7IIfaK-zrPZx8DA9VzvtEnpX_zlnixl6ujQ">celebrated fifth Beatle</a>, and incorporating Harrison’s guitar parts from 1995. The <a href="https://amoralto.tumblr.com/post/164029803633/tape-labels-and-official-lyrics-sheet-w-jeff">lyric sheet</a> from these sessions, marked up by producer Jeff Lynne, suggest Lennon hadn’t titled his song-in-progress.</p>
<p>What likely bothered Harrison most about Lennon’s recording was its unorthodox application of verse-chorus song form. In verse-chorus form, the chorus typically provides the main “hook.” </p>
<p>Verse-chorus songs occassionally feature a “pre-chorus,” which follows the verse to set up the chorus. </p>
<p>Another section common in verse-chorus songs is the bridge, usually a contrasting musical idea introduced only after the verse and chorus. </p>
<h2>Delayed chorus</h2>
<p>On Lennon’s recording (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk88M4ABo_4&ab_channel=DavidBennettPiano">heard in this musician’s video</a>), Lennon introduced a bridge-like section where a pre-chorus would normally go. But rather than propelling the song toward the chorus, it meanders awkwardly, delaying and undermining the arrival of the chorus hook. </p>
<p>John most certainly would have revised this. In his absence, Martin and the remaining Beatles opted for the only solution available: cutting Lennon’s misplaced, unfinished pre-chorus/bridge and composing a new bridge.</p>
<h2>Most Beatles’ songs in major keys</h2>
<p><em>Now and Then</em> plays on the <a href="https://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/the-science-of-music-why-do-songs-in-a-minor-key-sound-sad-760215">contrast between major and minor tonalities</a>. Major keys are commonly described as “bright” or “happy,” while minor keys are often described as “dark” or “sad.” </p>
<p>Major-key songs dominate the Beatles’ catalogue, comprising <a href="https://www.aaronkrerowicz.com/beatles-blog/now-that-youve-found-another-key-beatles-songs-in-minor-keys">roughly 81 per cent</a> of their recordings. Only four per cent remain entirely in minor keys, including <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oolpPmuK2I8&ab_channel=TheBeatles-Topic"><em>Come Together</em></a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAe2Q_LhY8g&ab_channel=TheBeatles-Topic"><em>I Want You</em></a>.</p>
<p><em>Now and Then</em> is among the remaining 15 per cent of Beatles’ songs that move between major-key and minor-key sections, alongside <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCfqsM_XAcc&ab_channel=TheBeatles-Topic"><em>We Can Work It Out</em></a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8l3ntDR_lI"><em>Girl</em></a>.</p>
<p>Lennon’s verse for <em>Now and Then</em> is among the most minor-laden sections of any Beatles song, opening with alternating minor chords. Mired in minor darkness, Lennon engages a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1qvgn0KY1M&ab_channel=StevenBaur">harmonic sleight of hand</a> reminiscent of Beethoven or Schubert, shifting abruptly to a major-chord refuge (on the sixth scale degree). But this ray of brightness is illusory; listeners feel the inevitable pull back to minor-key darkness. </p>
<h2>The sound of nostalgia?</h2>
<p>As musicologist <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520232082/conventional-wisdom">Susan McClary</a> explains,
this particular compositional strategy evokes “Never Never land.”: it “variously radiates hope, escape or nostalgia for a lost arcadia … but it takes only a half-step drop in the bass to return the piece to harsh, unmerciful reality.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSPAbGs6mpA&ab_channel=StevenBaur">Lennon’s melody</a> and his descending opening phrases strongly imply a melodic resolution to the home pitch (A). Following the aforementioned glimmer of major-chord brightness (on “make it through”) and its slide down to the E dominant chord (“it’s all because of …”), Lennon pauses dramatically. </p>
<p>Finally, Lennon intones the last word (“you”) over the inevitable return to A minor. But rather than the expected melodic resolution down to the home pitch, Lennon clings hauntingly to a dissonant note (B) one step above, before ending with “you-ooh-ooh-ooh” — a trademark vocal ornament.</p>
<h2>Seeking relief in the chorus</h2>
<p>Pop convention would grant a major-key payoff at the chorus, but Lennon’s pre-chorus/bridge thwarts any such gratification. So the 2023 Beatles cut it, opting for a conventional move directly to the major-key chorus.</p>
<p>The reward is bittersweet. Rather than moving upward to the stable, conventional major key alternative (the so-called relative major), the chorus falls a whole step to G major. Lennon’s melody seeks to ascend, but the melodic leap (on “I miss you”) is tinged by a passing minor chord (a common strategy to evoke longing, as in the opening melodic leap of the classic <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSZxmZmBfnU&ab_channel=Movieclips"><em>Over the Rainbow</em></a>.)</p>
<p>This is not the magical moment we have so often experienced with the Beatles, Beatle-esque strings notwithsanding. Rather than transcendence, fond remembrance settles into resigned acceptance.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption"><em>Now And Then - The Last Beatles Song</em> (Short Film from The Beatles).</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Admirable guitar tribute, but not Harrison</h2>
<p>The transcendent gesture comes with the newly composed instrumental bridge, which does move up to the satisfying relative major. McCartney’s soaring slide guitar is a beautiful invocation of Harrison’s melodic sense and phrasing. But it is unmistakably not the Beatles’ late, inimitable guitarist. It is hard not to hear this loss in McCartney’s tribute. </p>
<p>Equally painful is the impossibility of Lennon and his bandmates working his pre-chorus/bridge section into the song. It contains some of the most expressive moments on Lennon’s recording. </p>
<p>Their last song offers a real experience of a glorious past, but makes painfully audible what has been lost.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217346/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Baur does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
For their “last single” Now and Then, the remaining 2023 Beatles kept John Lennon’s chorus, but changed where it fell. This necessary “repair” meant losing some of Lennon’s most touching passages.
Steven Baur, Associate professor of musicology, Dalhousie University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/216920
2023-11-03T15:48:02Z
2023-11-03T15:48:02Z
Now and Then: enabled by AI – created by profound connections between the four Beatles
<blockquote>
<p>In 2023, to still be working on Beatles music … to release a new song the public haven’t heard, I think it’s an exciting thing. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Not surprisingly, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67207699">Paul McCartney was positive</a> about the appearance this week of what has been trailed as the “last” Beatles song, Now and Then.</p>
<p>Much has been made of <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/rock/paul-mccartney-ai-final-beatles-song-1235352398/">AI being part of the production</a>. Machine learning was used to <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/world-cafe/2023/11/02/1208848690/the-beatles-last-song-now-and-then">recognise John Lennon’s voice</a>, and then isolate it from other sounds – a piano, a television in the background, electrical hum – to make it usable in a new recording. It also comes amid a slew of Beatles-related activity recently – a <a href="https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/documentaries/beatles-celebration-night-bbc-newsupdate/">new podcast series</a>, Peter Jackson’s epic 2021 documentary <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/sep/26/beatles-final-days-get-back-let-it-be-john-harris-peter-jackson">Get Back</a>, new versions of the famed <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/beatles-red-and-blue-sheffield-1234706610/">Red and Blue</a> compilation albums, and a Paul McCartney tour, during which he is playing some of the Fab Four’s back catalogue.</p>
<p>The commercial juggernaut seems unstoppable, so it’s perhaps easy to be cynical about a “new” song from a band that broke up in 1970, two of whose members are dead. Certainly, Now and Then does raise questions about how technologically mediated releases relate to collective artistic output, and what it means to be a band.</p>
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<h2>Collective creativity in bands</h2>
<p>In many ways, though, the AI label is a red herring, and this new song – which actually has its roots in a John Lennon demo tape from 1977 – demonstrates a continuing pattern. The Beatles and their narrative provided a seminal example of how bands work, and seemed to be ploughing the furrow for others. </p>
<p>From their original formation as schoolboys (Ringo joined in 1962 when they started recording), to their enormous financial success and cultural impact, the Beatles laid down templates that others have followed. <a href="https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/nostalgia/july-6-1957-day-beatles-9594637">Lennon and McCartney’s first meeting</a> at a church fete in 1957 is now the stuff of legend.</p>
<p>Their <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-beatles-revolutionised-music-by-putting-the-record-centre-stage-56103">innovations in the studio</a>, assisted by producer <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Martin">George Martin</a>, helped to make recordings – especially albums – a central feature of the popular music experience. They emerged into professional practice together, splitting as they formed new relationships and moved onto the next phases of their life while still relatively young men.</p>
<p>Bands are simultaneously social groupings, creative units and economic entities. The economic “brand” can obviously run on for many years after the others have stopped. There is also long history of posthumous releases, including <a href="https://www.loudersound.com/features/jimi-hendrix-6-essential-posthumous-albums">Jimi Hendrix</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/6fmq/">Elliott Smith</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/prince-why-five-years-after-his-death-the-purple-one-still-reigns-159166">Prince</a>, even Otis Redding’s defining hit <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/inside-otis-reddings-final-masterpiece-sittin-on-the-dock-of-the-bay-122170/">(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay</a>. Demo recordings, unheard live performances and radio broadcasts are all established parts of artists’ catalogues.</p>
<p>This becomes complicated, though, when the act in question is a collective with deceased members whose presence on the recording is technologically facilitated. A key example is the Beatles 1995 <a href="https://ultimateclassicrock.com/beatles-free-as-a-bird/">Anthology</a> project, which saw the surviving members revisit John Lennon demos from a cassette given to McCartney by Yoko Ono, and add new parts to finish the songs.</p>
<p>This wasn’t entirely unique. Queen’s <a href="https://www.udiscovermusic.com/behind-the-albums/queen-made-in-heaven/">Made In Heaven</a>, in the same year, saw the band finish songs that Freddie Mercury worked on in the studio before he died. But it did involve resurrecting fragments of home recordings to clean them up for the commercial market.</p>
<p>The technology wasn’t sufficient at the time to properly isolate Lennon’s voice on Now and Then, so it was abandoned until Peter Jackson used machine learning to remove noise from source recordings for Get Back. By this time George Harrison had died, so this technology allowed McCartney and Starr to return to the song, incorporating Harrison’s guitar solo from the aborted 1990s attempt.</p>
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<h2>Come together</h2>
<p>We can, then, consider the process behind this latest song in evolutionary rather than revolutionary terms. The possibilities of multi-track recording since the 1950s mean it’s long been the case that musicians have worked separately on the same song. As <a href="https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/brexit-news-the-beatles-white-album-60s-70s-john-lennon-wider-cultural-35006/">George Harrison said of The White Album</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There was a lot more individual stuff … people were accepting that it was individual. I remember having three studios operating at the same time. Paul was doing some overdubs in one, John was in another and I was recording some horns or something in a third.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Even when the Beatles were together, many canonical songs were the work of only one or two of them. McCartney wrote <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXTJBr9tt8Q">Yesterday</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Man4Xw8Xypo">Blackbird</a> alone, and is the only Beatle who plays on them. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-1OgNqBkVE">The Ballad of John and Yoko</a> didn’t feature Harrison or Starr.</p>
<p>And the former band members played on each other’s “solo” records too. There are more Beatles on Harrison’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNL40ql4CYk">All Those Years Ago</a>, or Lennon’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-SSa-D1i-M">Instant Karma</a> than on some of the band’s tracks. They all played separately on Starr’s 1973 album Ringo.</p>
<p>So Now and Then continues longstanding practices, going back to their heyday. Its status as the final Beatles song, though, reveals technological limitations. AI can create convincing facsimiles, but can’t replicate the facts of who actually played or sang the various parts, which is a central plank of what constitutes a band.</p>
<p>Audiences <a href="https://eprints.ncl.ac.uk/file_store/production/215862/EA14B274-3E9F-47EC-94FF-5B7AF6167671.pdf">ascribe authenticity</a> to music in many ways, and core among these for bands is the line-up – some acts <a href="https://theconversation.com/ac-dcs-back-in-black-at-40-establishing-rock-bands-as-brands-143473">have effectively replaced key members</a> within the brand, others have had <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/7-times-when-replacing-the-lead-singer-of-a-band-did-not-work/">less success</a>. It’s often a source of debate, at least, with “<a href="https://livemusicexchange.org/blog/stoned-again-adam-behr/">classic</a>” line-ups being those that earn the audience stamp of authenticity.</p>
<p>So what of the song itself? It won’t supplant the likes of Hey Jude or Help in The Beatles’ musical pantheon. That bar, though, is high and the plangent piano-led ballad has a familiar yet distinctive arrangement, steeped in nostalagia but affecting on its own terms nevertheless. Lennon’s voice is clearer than on previous reconstructions and the harmonies sound like, well … The Beatles.</p>
<p>In that sense, what’s at the heart of this project is the presence – even spectrally – of the actual four people who made up the creative and social underpinning for the brand. The “last” Beatles song sees them demonstrating the importance, even as a coda to their recording career, of the interpersonal connections that set things in motion in the first place.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Behr has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy.</span></em></p>
This new last Beatles song, enabled in part by AI, demonstrates the importance of the profound and lasting connections between the four musicians.
Adam Behr, Senior Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/216981
2023-11-03T02:44:41Z
2023-11-03T02:44:41Z
Is Now and Then really a Beatles song? The fab four always used technology to create new music
<p>Over the past few weeks, Paul McCartney has been touring Australia to play through three hours of his musical legacy – from Beatles and Wings favourites to solo material, and some unexpected deep cuts. </p>
<p>A particularly moving pair of songs was the bookending of McCartney’s performance of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuuOAA9ekbg">In Spite of All the Danger</a> (the first song the band recorded as The Quarrymen) and the performance of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12R4FzIhdoQ">The End</a> – one of the last songs the Beatles recorded together. </p>
<p>The encore featured <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTZ804WxpGg">I’ve Got a Feeling</a>, in which McCartney and his late bandmate John Lennon “sang” together, performing alongside footage from the rooftop performance from the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-beatles-get-back-review-peter-jacksons-tv-series-is-a-thrilling-funny-and-long-treat-for-fans-172404">Get Back documentary</a>. Hearing McCartney’s current vocals alongside Lennon’s from the 1960s was poignant for both the crowd and McCartney. </p>
<p>These moments of connection over the decades between McCartney and Lennon are made stronger by the release of the new, and last, Beatles single, Now and Then. </p>
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<p>Now and Then is one of four songs from a Lennon demo cassette provided by Yoko Ono and given to Paul McCartney in 1994, with a handwritten title: For Paul. The remaining Beatles finished Lennon’s demos for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODIvONHPqpk">Free as a Bird</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax7krBKzmVI">Real Love</a> for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles_Anthology">Anthology</a> release in 1995. </p>
<p>While these songs may have lacked a little of the original magic, with John’s voice sounding more distant and thin compared with Paul’s, the scarcity of new material allowed fans to embrace the songs, warts and all. At the time, Now and Then was deemed too tricky to complete, as John’s voice was buried in the mono mix of his home-recorded piano. It sat there for 28 years.</p>
<p>Fast forward to 2021 and a new AI tool developed by film-maker Peter Jackson to separate audio sources on Get Back could now be used on Lennon’s old demo. John’s voice is now clear, present, and free to be flown in seamlessly over any new arrangement. </p>
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<p>It has a natural expression, captured in that not-overthought, early-demo moment. </p>
<p>George’s archived acoustic guitar take was added, with Paul providing updated piano, slide guitar and bass. Ringo added his distinctive feel remotely from Los Angeles. </p>
<p>Giles Martin, son of George, and keeper of the production flame, contributes a suitably Beatles-esque string arrangement that taps into many of his father’s well-loved stylistic traits. </p>
<p>There are insistent quarter-note pulsing rises, sitar-esque bends, and a final switch from four in a bar to three, reminiscent of The End from Abbey Road.</p>
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<h2>Is this a Beatles song?</h2>
<p>Due to the use of AI tools to finish Now and Then, and the song having been recorded without the Beatles in a room together, some may ask “is this really a Beatles song?”.</p>
<p>After the release of Get Back, audiences were able to experience what it felt like to be in the room with the band, watching their ideas form, seeing them joke and laugh, and also the tensions that happen with a group of creative people who have experienced a lot together.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-beatles-get-back-review-peter-jacksons-tv-series-is-a-thrilling-funny-and-long-treat-for-fans-172404">The Beatles: Get Back review – Peter Jackson's TV series is a thrilling, funny (and long) treat for fans</a>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557379/original/file-20231103-25-tvzm08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The four Beatles in front of Big Ben" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557379/original/file-20231103-25-tvzm08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557379/original/file-20231103-25-tvzm08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557379/original/file-20231103-25-tvzm08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557379/original/file-20231103-25-tvzm08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557379/original/file-20231103-25-tvzm08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557379/original/file-20231103-25-tvzm08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557379/original/file-20231103-25-tvzm08.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘The fab four in a room, playing together, often seems essential to their sound.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/search/the-beatles">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Get Back is relevant here for many reasons. </p>
<p>The first film version of this footage <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_It_Be_(1970_film)">Let it Be</a> by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg was released briefly in 1970 with the album, and painted the last days of The Beatles as a dark, acrimonious time, and cemented Ono’s role as alleged “villain” in Beatles lore. </p>
<p>Jackson’s new version Get Back reframed fans’ perceptions of The Beatles’ breakup, the relationship of the surviving members, and their ongoing legacy. In the 1990s the Anthology film and albums captured a new generation of Britpop-loving Beatles fans, and the release of Get Back and Now and Then may do the same for another generation.</p>
<p>The fab four in a room, playing together, often seems essential to their sound. However, the Beatles were always fascinated by recording technology – from reversing tape loops in Taxman, to using Lennon’s voice through a Leslie speaker cabinet for Tomorrow Never Knows, to the musique-concrete Revolution 9, where the band cut a variety of tape loops and sounds together.</p>
<p>Using current music technology was always part of the band’s creativity, and with Now and Then, they are still engaging with technology to make new music, albeit in a slightly different way. </p>
<p>Will it be remembered as fondly as their other songs in the canon? </p>
<p>Perhaps – or perhaps not. But that is not the heart of this release. </p>
<p>John and George are gone, however, we still have Ringo and Paul with us to complete this new and final Beatles track. </p>
<p>Despite the time, distance and technology, Now and Then finishes a long and winding conversation that began in the early 1960s, and has now come to a thoughtful and musical end. </p>
<p>With time, it allows fans to reframe John’s love letter to Yoko as a message to Paul, the band, and even the fans. </p>
<p>Perhaps that will be its enduring value: “I know it’s true…And if I make it through, It’s all because of you”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sgt-peppers-at-50-the-greatest-thing-you-ever-heard-or-just-another-album-77458">Sgt Pepper's at 50 – the greatest thing you ever heard or just another album?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216981/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Beatles have released a new track - using new technology to strip Lennon’s vocals out of an old demo casette tape. Will this be part of Beatles canon?
Jadey O'Regan, Lecturer in Contemporary Music, Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Co-author of "Hooks in Popular Music" (2022), University of Sydney
Paul (Mac) McDermott, Lecturer in Contemporary Music, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/210598
2023-08-14T12:25:46Z
2023-08-14T12:25:46Z
3 ways AI is transforming music
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542381/original/file-20230811-32504-6469wf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C42%2C9428%2C5250&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Musicians and producers can already utilize AI to realistically reproduce the sound of any instrument or voice imaginable.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/blue-musical-instrument-wall-royalty-free-image/1283143454?phrase=digital+musical+instruments&adppopup=true">Paul Campbell/iStock via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Each fall, I begin my course <a href="https://et.iupui.edu/departments/mat/research/machine-musician-lab1/">on the intersection of music and artificial intelligence</a> by asking my students if they’re concerned about AI’s role in composing or producing music.</p>
<p>So far, the question has always elicited a resounding “yes.” </p>
<p>Their fears can be summed up in a sentence: AI will create a world where music is plentiful, but musicians get cast aside.</p>
<p>In the upcoming semester, I’m anticipating a discussion about Paul McCartney, who in June 2023 announced that he and a team of audio engineers had used machine learning to uncover a “lost” vocal track of John Lennon <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/13/paul-mccartney-says-ai-got-john-lennons-voice-on-last-beatles-record.html">by separating the instruments from a demo recording</a>. </p>
<p>But resurrecting the voices of <a href="https://www.wired.com/2011/12/ueki-loid-speech-synthesizer/">long-dead artists</a> is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what’s possible – and what’s already being done.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/jun/23/paul-mccartney-says-theres-nothing-artificial-in-new-beatles-song-made-using-ai">In an interview</a>, McCartney admitted that AI represents a “scary” but “exciting” future for music. To me, his mix of consternation and exhilaration is spot on. </p>
<p>Here are three ways AI is changing the way music gets made – each of which could threaten human musicians in various ways:</p>
<h2>1. Song composition</h2>
<p>Many programs can already generate music with a simple prompt from the user, such as “Electronic Dance with a Warehouse Groove.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frobt.2021.680586/full">Fully generative apps</a> train AI models on extensive databases of existing music. This enables them to learn musical structures, harmonies, melodies, rhythms, dynamics, timbres and form, and generate new content that stylistically matches the material in the database.</p>
<p>There are many examples of these kinds of apps. But the most successful ones, like <a href="https://boomy.com">Boomy</a>, allow nonmusicians to generate music and then post the AI-generated results on Spotify to earn money. <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/spotify-removes-ai-generated-songs-platform">Spotify recently removed many of these Boomy-generated tracks</a>, claiming that this would protect human artists’ rights and royalties.</p>
<p>The two companies quickly came to an agreement that allowed Boomy to re-upload the tracks. But the algorithms powering these apps still have a <a href="https://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1108&context=jlt">troubling ability to infringe upon existing copyright</a>, which might go unnoticed to most users. After all, basing new music on a data set of existing music is bound to cause noticeable similarities between the music in the data set and the generated content. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Yellow and pink poster attached to a lamp post that reads 'artificial intelligence plus human stupidity equals bangers.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542358/original/file-20230811-17-o479w3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542358/original/file-20230811-17-o479w3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542358/original/file-20230811-17-o479w3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542358/original/file-20230811-17-o479w3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542358/original/file-20230811-17-o479w3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542358/original/file-20230811-17-o479w3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542358/original/file-20230811-17-o479w3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A poster for the AI music service Boomy in Austin, Texas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/poster-for-the-ai-music-creation-service-boomy-austin-texas-news-photo/1475137303?adppopup=true">Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Furthermore, streaming services like Spotify and <a href="https://music.amazon.com/">Amazon Music</a> are naturally incentivized to develop their own <a href="https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/amazon-music-strikes-playlist-partnership-with-generative-ai-music-company-endel12/">AI music-generation technology</a>. Spotify, for instance, <a href="https://dittomusic.com/en/blog/how-much-does-spotify-pay-per-stream/#:%7E:text=Spotify%20pays%20artists%20between%20%240.003,holders%20and%2030%25%20to%20Spotify.">pays 70% of the revenue of each stream</a> to the artist who created it. If the company could generate that music with its own algorithms, it could cut human artists out of the equation altogether.</p>
<p>Over time, this could mean more money for giant streaming services, less money for musicians – and a less human approach to making music.</p>
<h2>2. Mixing and mastering</h2>
<p>Machine-learning-enabled apps that help musicians balance all of the instruments and clean up the audio in a song – what’s known as mixing and mastering – are valuable tools for those who lack the experience, skill or resources to pull off professional-sounding tracks. </p>
<p>Over the past decade, AI’s integration into music production has revolutionized how music is mixed and mastered. AI-driven apps like <a href="https://www.landr.com">Landr</a>, <a href="https://cryo-mix.com">Cryo Mix</a> and <a href="https://www.izotope.com">iZotope’s Neutron</a> can automatically analyze tracks, balance audio levels and remove noise. </p>
<p>These technologies streamline the production process, allowing musicians and producers to focus on the creative aspects of their work and leave some of the technical drudgery to AI. </p>
<p>While these apps undoubtedly take some work away from professional mixers and producers, they also allow professionals to quickly complete less lucrative jobs, <a href="https://mackie.com/en/blog/all/8_Ways_Earn_Money_Music_Production.html">such as mixing or mastering for a local band</a>, and focus on high-paying commissions that require more finesse. These apps also allow musicians to produce more professional-sounding work without involving an audio engineer they can’t afford. </p>
<h2>3. Instrumental and vocal reproduction</h2>
<p>Using “tone transfer” algorithms <a href="https://mawf.io">via apps like Mawf</a>, musicians can transform the sound of one instrument into another. </p>
<p>Thai musician and engineer <a href="https://yaboihanoi.com">Yaboi Hanoi’s</a> song “<a href="https://youtu.be/n2bj5R5o9mE">Enter Demons & Gods</a>,” which won the third international <a href="https://youtu.be/1VH-0EAXutU">AI Song Contest</a> in 2022, was unique in that it was influenced not only by Thai mythology, but also by the sounds of native Thai musical instruments, which have a non-Western system of intonation. One of the most technically exciting aspects of Yaboi Hanoi’s entry was the reproduction of a traditional Thai woodwind instrument – <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/501870">the pi nai</a> – <a href="https://youtu.be/PbrRoR3nEVw">which was resynthesized</a> to perform the track.</p>
<p>A variant of this technology lies at the core of the <a href="https://www.vocaloid.com">Vocaloid voice synthesis software</a>, which allows users to produce convincingly human vocal tracks with swappable voices. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/03/05/ai-voice-scam/">Unsavory applications of this technique</a> are popping up outside of the musical realm. For example, AI voice swapping has been used to scam people out of money. </p>
<p>But musicians and producers can already use it to realistically reproduce the sound of any instrument or voice imaginable. The downside, of course, is that this technology can rob instrumentalists of the opportunity to perform on a recorded track.</p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="14" data-image="" data-title="Using tone transfer, a singer's voice is turned into the sound of a trumpet." data-size="296160" data-source="Jason Palamara" data-source-url="" data-license="CC BY" data-license-url="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/2861/tone-transfer-vocal-to-trumpet.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
<div class="audio-player-caption">
Using tone transfer, a singer’s voice is turned into the sound of a trumpet.
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jason Palamara</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a><span class="download"><span>289 KB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/2861/tone-transfer-vocal-to-trumpet.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
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<h2>AI’s Wild West moment</h2>
<p>While I applaud Yaboi Hanoi’s victory, I have to wonder if it will encourage musicians to use AI to fake a cultural connection where none exists.</p>
<p>In 2021, Capitol Music Group made headlines by signing an “AI rapper” that had been given the avatar of a Black male cyborg, but which was really the work of Factory New non-Black software engineers. The backlash was swift, with the record label roundly excoriated <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-62659741">for blatant cultural appropriation</a>. </p>
<p>But AI musical cultural appropriation is easier to stumble into than you might think. With the extraordinary size of songs and samples that comprise the data sets used by apps like Boomy – see the open source “Million Song Dataset” <a href="http://millionsongdataset.com">for a sense of the scale</a> – there’s a good chance that a user may unwittingly upload a newly generated track that pulls from a culture that isn’t their own, or cribs from an artist in a way that too closely mimics the original. Worse still, it won’t always be clear who is to blame for the offense, and current U.S. copyright laws are contradictory and woefully inadequate to the task of regulating these issues.</p>
<p>These are all topics that have come up in my own class, which has allowed me to at least inform my students of the dangers of unchecked AI and how to best avoid these pitfalls. </p>
<p>At the same time, at the end of each fall semester, I’ll again ask my students if they’re concerned about an AI takeover of music. At that point, and with a whole semester’s experience investigating these technologies, most of them say they’re excited to see how the technology will evolve and where the field will go. </p>
<p>Some dark possibilities do lie ahead for humanity and AI. Still, at least in the realm of musical AI, there is cause for some optimism – assuming the pitfalls are avoided.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210598/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jason Palamara does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
AI can streamline the painstaking work of mixing and editing tracks. But it’s also easy to see how AI-generated music will make more money for giant streaming services at the expense of artists.
Jason Palamara, Assistant Professor of Music Technology, Indiana University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/182380
2022-07-07T15:18:33Z
2022-07-07T15:18:33Z
Beatles ‘Get Back’ documentary reveals how creativity doesn’t happen on its own
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472168/original/file-20220703-24-ksha7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C91%2C3045%2C2323&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Beatles appear backstage at EMI studios in London in June 1967. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/beatles--get-back--documentary-reveals-how-creativity-doesn-t-happen-on-its-own" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Is music legend and ex-Beatle <a href="https://www.paulmccartney.com/">Sir Paul McCartney</a> a creative genius?</p>
<p>Not according to Edward P. Clapp, a principal investigator at the <a href="http://www.pz.harvard.edu/who-we-are/people/edward-clapp">Harvard Graduate School of Education</a>’s Project Zero. The project aims to understand and nurture “<a href="http://www.pz.harvard.edu/who-we-are">learning, thinking, ethics, intelligence and creativity</a>.” </p>
<p>In a recent video interview with me, Clapp said he instead sees McCartney, or any other artistic figure who could be seen as a creative genius, as playing the role of a creative producer — one who synthesizes influences and information.</p>
<p>“I dispute the idea of genius, wholeheartedly … I don’t believe in it,” he said. “I think people, all people, have the capacity to participate in creativity.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.routledge.com/Participatory-Creativity-Introducing-Access-and-Equity-to-the-Creative/Clapp/p/book/9781138945265">Clapp’s theory of “participatory creativity”</a> replaces the notion that creative output emerges solely because of a creative individual working alone in a studio or high up in a candle-lit garret. </p>
<p>While the individual participates in their own unique and important way, what also matters is the matrix of people, objects and events within which ideas develop. </p>
<h2>Creative process in action</h2>
<p>I called Clapp after teaching his book <em>Participatory Creativity: Introducing Access and Equity to the Creative Classroom</em>. I wanted his take on <em>Get Back</em>, director Peter Jackson’s three-part, eight-hour Beatles documentary based on 56 hours of meticulously restored film and 150 hours of audio from the making of the 1970 album <em>Let It Be</em>. </p>
<p>In particular, I wanted to talk about a scene in which McCartney creates the song “Get Back,” one of the Beatles’ most enduring hits, in around two minutes flat, as if from thin air. It’s a remarkable, fly-on-the-wall view of the creative process in action.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Auta2lagtw4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Official trailer for the documentary ‘Get Back.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I’d shared this scene with a cohort of students in the <a href="https://education.uottawa.ca/sites/education.uottawa.ca/files/description_of_cohort_options_2015-2017.pdf">Imagination, Creativity and Innovation</a> program at the <a href="https://www2.uottawa.ca/faculty-education/">Faculty of Education at University of Ottawa</a>. The program supports <a href="https://education.uottawa.ca/sites/education.uottawa.ca/files/description_of_cohort_options_2015-2017.pdf">teaching and learning as creative and esthetic experiences</a>.</p>
<p>The notion of participatory creativity has major implications for any person or organization concerned with the creation of innovative ideas or artistic expression. It means recognizing and putting in place the means to foster creativity as a collaborative process. </p>
<p>Participatory creativity also fosters equity by turning away from the more traditional ideal of the individual “genius” celebrated in western culture — figures like Picasso or Steve Jobs — who are most often male and white. </p>
<h2>Breaking down the ‘Get Back’ scene</h2>
<p>In the scene showing McCartney working out “Get Back,” one moment McCartney is strumming and humming wordlessly. The next, the sound, rhythm and even the lyrics are largely set. </p>
<p>How does this jibe with participatory creativity?, I asked Clapp. Doesn’t it prove <a href="https://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/paul-mccartney-how-the-cute-beatle-spread-his-wings/">“the cute Beatle”</a> was a creative genius?</p>
<p>Clapp said no, and proposed some elements that combined in that moment like alchemy. </p>
<p><strong>Pressures and timing:</strong> “Band having a hard time, kind of calling it quits, entered the studio without any material, came out of the studio some time later with some of their best hits,” said Clapp. </p>
<p><strong>The other Beatles, vibe in the room:</strong> “Paul’s there. George and Ringo are there. John’s late again. And they’re like, ‘Oh, John’s late again.’ They’re kind of dismissive of that. So there’s attitude, there’s tone, there’s mood. That’s present in the room,” he noted. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Detail of part of the cover of the Beatles album 'Let it Be' showing John Lennon." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472393/original/file-20220704-20-72tsd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472393/original/file-20220704-20-72tsd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472393/original/file-20220704-20-72tsd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472393/original/file-20220704-20-72tsd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472393/original/file-20220704-20-72tsd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472393/original/file-20220704-20-72tsd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472393/original/file-20220704-20-72tsd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Let it Be’ was the last album the Beatles released.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
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<p><strong>Acting forces in creativity:</strong> It’s not just people who influence outcomes, Clapp explained. “Sometimes actors are non-sentient beings,” he said. “They are forces, objects and things. All of that stuff, that non-human stuff [is] playing a role.” That includes instruments: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“There’s a guitar that’s playing a role … Paul brings some emotive aspect to it — he doesn’t have a plan. He’s working something out.… So, [we see] he and the guitar, and the emotion in the room that’s kind of pessimistic and cynical and dismissive, maybe even hostile. In that little triad — Paul, guitar, mood and tone — we’ve got three different actors.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>My own analysis revealed additional ways the song’s creation was collaborative:</p>
<p><strong>Societal tensions:</strong> The film points out that there were tensions in England in 1969 around immigration, with racist politicians like <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/04/enoch-powell-rivers-of-blood/558344/">Enoch Powell</a> arguing that Black immigrants from England’s former colonies should be sent “home” — back, so to speak, to where they once belonged. Clapp agreed that this was another factor in the song’s creation. </p>
<p><strong>The class system:</strong> McCartney mimics the upper-class accent of <a href="https://variety.com/2021/music/news/michael-lindsay-hogg-director-let-it-be-get-back-1235130999/">Michael Lindsay-Hogg</a>, director of the 1970 documentary <em>Let It Be</em> during the <em>Get Back</em> clip. Along with his band-mates, Liverpudlian McCartney was an interloper in the London arts scene. “Get Back” reflects the ongoing dilemma of the outsider and whether and to where they should return. </p>
<p><strong>Additional people:</strong> <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/flooding-and-pipelines-woody-the-talking-christmas-tree-indigenous-land-title-the-fifth-beatle-and-more-1.6263170/how-american-keyboardist-billy-preston-became-known-as-the-fifth-beatle-1.6263180">Billy Preston</a>, who plays keyboard on the song, is a friend from the band’s days playing in Hamburg, Germany. His upbeat presence affects the atmosphere. </p>
<p><strong>Fans glimpsed out the windows of the recording studio:</strong> During the final rooftop concert in the London streets beyond, crowds gather in the streets. McCartney’s desire to “get back” to playing live is often discussed in the film.</p>
<p><strong>Music knowledge and skill:</strong> During the film, the band plays or ad-libs <a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/features/get-back-let-it-be-sessions-complete-song-list/">more than 400 songs</a>, their own compositions plus rock ‘n’ roll standards, contemporary hits, jazz standards from their parents’ era and ad-libbed ditties. “Get Back” emerges from and in dialogue with this remarkably diverse repertoire. </p>
<p>“Paul just kind of comes at it with the most obvious two words you can think of, which are just ‘get back,’” said Clapp. </p>
<p>But then there’s the ambiguity of the phrase “to where you once belonged” — as though the return is impossible, leaving the song in a bittersweet position between desire and regret.</p>
<h2>Ignoring the individual?</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472169/original/file-20220703-13-mr8idu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in a white shirt unbuttoned at the top collar smiling." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472169/original/file-20220703-13-mr8idu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472169/original/file-20220703-13-mr8idu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472169/original/file-20220703-13-mr8idu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472169/original/file-20220703-13-mr8idu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472169/original/file-20220703-13-mr8idu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472169/original/file-20220703-13-mr8idu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472169/original/file-20220703-13-mr8idu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paul McCartney seen in 1969.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I asked Clapp if participatory creativity ignores the agency of the individual. After all, it’s McCartney who comes up with the music and lyrics. </p>
<p>“That’s a huge misconception,” he said. “A participatory approach to creativity highlights the contribution of the individual because the individual uniquely participates in the development of creative ideas in their own individual way.”</p>
<p>In Clapp’s scholarly writing, he notes that “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99163-4_3">many purported creative individuals may spend much of their lives alone</a>” with their work. </p>
<p>But he also emphasizes principles highlighted by researchers who have examined the phenomena of creativity: in this solitary time, <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/keith-sawyer/group-genius/9780465093588">they draw on past collaborations</a>. They also engage with the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2017.11.006">technologies or tools of predecessors</a> and they “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99163-4_3">work in relation to an often complex polyphony of current and historical audiences</a>.”</p>
<p>The world requires creative responses to a myriad of issues; the message of participatory creativity has never been more urgent.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182380/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John M. Richardson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Paul McCartney appears to compose the smash hit ‘Get Back’ from thin air in a clip from the Beatles documentary of the same name — but experts propose at least eight other factors behind it.
John M. Richardson, Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Education, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/177454
2022-04-22T01:35:23Z
2022-04-22T01:35:23Z
What is toe jam? From harmless gunk to a feast for bugs
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456809/original/file-20220407-14-flir0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1000%2C664&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-girls-toes-healthy-beautiful-wellgroomed-1371423317">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/all-about-toe-jam">Toe jam</a> can be a source of fascination, disgust or barely noticed. It can be a sign you need to wash your feet or rethink your choice of footwear. It can also lead to major health issues.</p>
<p>Toe jam, the gunk and debris between your toes, has even made it to a Beatles song.</p>
<p>But it was unlikely John Lennon was thinking about foot hygiene when he wrote the lyrics to the second verse of <a href="https://genius.com/The-beatles-come-together-lyrics">Come Together</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>He wear no shoeshine, he got toe-jam football</p>
<p>He got monkey finger, he shoot Coca-Cola</p>
<p>He say, ‘I know you, you know me’</p>
<p>One thing I can tell you is you got to be free.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uSM5MpKSnqE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Yes, The Beatles really mentioned toe jam in Come Together (YouTube).</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What is toe jam, actually?</h2>
<p>Toe jam isn’t a medical term. There is no formal medical term to describe the dead skin cells, sweat, sock lint and dirt that combine in the small and often cramped spaces between our toes.</p>
<p>Toe jam can have the consistency of soft cheese or cake crumbs. It can smell or be odourless. And its colour can range from white to grey-brown.</p>
<p>You’re more likely to create toe jam if you wear closed-in shoes when it’s hot, or gumboots that don’t allow sweat to evaporate.</p>
<p>Poor foot hygiene will certainly make it more likely you’ll develop toe jam. That’s because sweaty debris accumulates in between the toes if you don’t pay attention to cleaning these areas in the shower or bath.</p>
<p>Toe jam may also be more likely if your feet sweat a lot for other reasons. For instance, we know <a href="https://www.racgp.org.au/afp/2009/september/sweaty-smelly-hands-and-feet">sweaty feet</a> can be a problem for children and adolescents, who have more active sweat glands. And some people have a serious medical condition called <a href="https://www.sweathelp.org/index.php">hyperhidrosis</a>, where they sweat excessively.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/anhidrosis-why-some-people-apparently-like-prince-andrew-just-cant-sweat-127280">Anhidrosis: why some people – apparently like Prince Andrew – just can't sweat</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Is toe jam like athlete’s foot?</h2>
<p>The collection of sweat and dead skin between toes provides bacteria living naturally on our skin the chance to thrive. </p>
<p>These bacteria, which include ones in the genus <em>Brevibacterium</em>, feed on sweat, releasing molecules that give the characteristic “cheesy” <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-feet-stink-by-the-end-of-the-day-125037">smell of sweaty feet</a>. Brevibacterium is also used to ripen some cheeses.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457034/original/file-20220408-19484-ox4ymj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Soft cheese, cut in slices" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457034/original/file-20220408-19484-ox4ymj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457034/original/file-20220408-19484-ox4ymj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457034/original/file-20220408-19484-ox4ymj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457034/original/file-20220408-19484-ox4ymj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457034/original/file-20220408-19484-ox4ymj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457034/original/file-20220408-19484-ox4ymj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457034/original/file-20220408-19484-ox4ymj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">No wonder your feet smell cheesy if you don’t wash them properly.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/cheeseboard-sliced-yellow-limburger-cheese-top-1343151806">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This warm and damp environment is also a perfect site for <a href="https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/tinea">tinea pedis</a>, a fungal skin infection you might know as athlete’s foot. </p>
<p>Signs of tinea might be soggy white skin between your toes, which can be itchy, and red areas, a sign of skin damage. <a href="https://dermnetnz.org/topics/athletes-foot">Damaged skin</a> between toes might develop small fluid-filled blisters and may also bleed if the weak skin is torn.</p>
<p>So while toe jam isn’t the same as tinea, it might provide the perfect conditions for the fungus to grow.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-feet-stink-by-the-end-of-the-day-125037">Why do feet stink by the end of the day?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>How serious is toe jam?</h2>
<p>Generally, toe jam is a minor health problem. You can <a href="https://www.racgp.org.au/getattachment/233c1fdf-8802-471e-9828-f792110c30d1/Sweaty-smelly-hands-and-feet.aspx">manage it</a> with good foot hygiene. And if you develop tinea, you can use a short course of an anti-fungal treatment you can buy from a pharmacy (see below).</p>
<p>It is quite a different prospect, however, for a person living with a chronic disease such as diabetes, someone who has poor vision (so can’t see toe jam or its complications developing), or who may be unable to reach their feet due to limited mobility.</p>
<p>Diabetes not well controlled with diet and exercise, or drugs, increases the <a href="https://www.diabetesfeetaustralia.org/">risk</a> of a person having reduced blood flow (peripheral arterial disease) and reduced feeling in their feet (sensory neuropathy). </p>
<p>Broken skin between the toes caused by tinea can become infected rapidly, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3248359/">increasing the risk</a> of:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>infection spreading to the foot and leg (cellulitis)</p></li>
<li><p>infection of the bone (osteomyelitis)</p></li>
<li><p>gangrene (dead tissue caused by lack of blood flow)</p></li>
<li><p>amputation of a toe, part of the foot or leg. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>So early identification of tinea in a vulnerable person is especially important to prevent complications.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/life-on-us-a-close-up-look-at-the-bugs-that-call-us-home-25754">Life on Us: a close-up look at the bugs that call us home</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>4 ways to avoid problems</h2>
<p>Here are our four tips to avoid problems with toe jam, including developing tinea and its complications:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>wash the spaces between your toes and dry them carefully after a shower or bath, and after swimming. Gyms and swimming pools are a common place to pick up a fungal infection on your feet so it’s a good idea to wear thongs to reduce the risk of tinea</p></li>
<li><p>if possible, avoid wearing footwear that doesn’t allow sweat to evaporate (such as closed-in shoes made of synthetic material and gumboots). Going barefoot, when there is no risk of injury, will also allow sweat to evaporate</p></li>
<li><p>treat sweaty feet by using an <a href="https://www.racgp.org.au/afp/2009/september/sweaty-smelly-hands-and-feet">anti-perspirant</a> containing aluminium chloride. More severe cases of hyperhidrosis may be managed using drugs, such as <a href="https://www.dermcoll.edu.au/atoz/plantar-hyperhidrosis/">Botox</a> injections to the feet. Fungal infections (<a href="https://dermnetnz.org/topics/tinea-pedis">tinea</a>) should be treated using over-the-counter antifungal creams such a terbinafine or clotrimazole. Resistant infections might require a course of prescribed antifungal medicines</p></li>
<li><p>pay attention to <a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/all-about-toe-jam#when-to-see-a-doctor">signs</a> indicating an infection is spreading from the foot. These could be pain and swelling in the toes, or red streaks along the foot and up the leg. This requires an urgent visit to a podiatrist or doctor.</p></li>
</ol>
<h2>Footnote</h2>
<p>Lennon mentions a “walrus gumboot” in verse three of Come Together. The final line of verse two says “you got to be free”. The cover of The Beatles album Abbey Road shows Paul McCartney walking barefoot (second from the left).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457039/original/file-20220408-18-vvxes4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Beatles album Abbey Road propped up behind turntable playing a record" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457039/original/file-20220408-18-vvxes4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457039/original/file-20220408-18-vvxes4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457039/original/file-20220408-18-vvxes4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457039/original/file-20220408-18-vvxes4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457039/original/file-20220408-18-vvxes4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457039/original/file-20220408-18-vvxes4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457039/original/file-20220408-18-vvxes4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Maybe The Beatles were onto something.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/naples-italy-10032019-fabulous-beatles-depicted-1334880947">Imma Gambardella/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Maybe the Beatles did know a thing or two about toe jam and foot health.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/beatles-abbey-road-at-50-is-a-marker-of-how-pop-music-grew-up-in-the-1960s-124433">Beatles: Abbey Road at 50 is a marker of how pop music grew up in the 1960s</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177454/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caroline Robinson is affiliated with the Australasian Council of Podiatry Deans and the Australian Podiatry Association.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luke Donnan is affiliated with the Australasian Council of Podiatry Deans and the Australian Podiatry Association.</span></em></p>
Toe jam was mentioned in a song by The Beatles. Maybe they knew a thing or two about foot hygiene.
Caroline Robinson, Associate Professor Podiatry, Charles Sturt University
Luke Donnan, Lecturer in Podiatry, Charles Sturt University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/169914
2021-12-03T13:43:17Z
2021-12-03T13:43:17Z
‘The Beatles: Get Back’ glosses over the band’s acrimonious end
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435425/original/file-20211202-15-1ov4pyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C8%2C2986%2C1922&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Did Paul McCartney, right, and Ringo Starr hire Peter Jackson for a rescue operation?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/ringo-starr-and-sir-paul-mccartney-introduce-the-new-video-news-photo/88098772?adppopup=true"> Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the new film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9735318/">The Beatles: Get Back</a>,” “Lord of the Rings” director <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001392/">Peter Jackson</a> tries to dispel the myth of the the Beatles’ breakup. </p>
<p>In 1970, Michael Lindsay-Hogg released “<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/original-let-it-be-movie-michael-lindsay-hogg-peter-jackson-get-back-1250561/">Let It Be</a>,” a film documenting the band’s recording sessions for their eponymous album. The movie depicted George Harrison arguing with Paul McCartney – and it hit theaters shortly after news of the band’s breakup emerged. Many filmgoers at the time assumed this depicted the days and weeks during which everything fell apart. </p>
<p>By the time it hit theaters, nearly 16 months after filming, this rehearsal footage got mistaken for a completely different time frame.</p>
<p>In 2016, Jackson gained access to Lindsay-Hogg’s original footage. Over the course of four years, he edited it into an eight-hour, three-part series, thanks to a streaming deal with Disney+. </p>
<p>In their press rounds, both Jackson and McCartney have been eager to recast the legacy of this period. </p>
<p>“I kept waiting for all the nasty stuff to start happening, waiting for the arguments and the rows and the fights, but I never saw that,” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/nov/20/i-just-cant-believe-it-exists-peter-jackson-takes-us-into-the-beatles-vault-locked-up-for-52-years">Jackson told The Guardian</a> and others. “It was the opposite. It was really funny.”</p>
<p>“I’ll tell you what is really fabulous about it, it shows the four of us having a ball,” <a href="https://www.nme.com/news/music/paul-mccartney-says-the-beatles-get-back-documentary-changed-his-perception-of-their-split-3095528">McCartney told The Sunday Times</a> after seeing the film. “It was so reaffirming for me.” </p>
<p>It seems to be working: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/11/arts/music/beatles-get-back-peter-jackson.html">A recent New York Times headline proclaimed</a>, “Know How the Beatles Ended? Peter Jackson May Change Your Mind.” </p>
<p>A lot of these sessions contain the irrepressible gags that made the Beatles famous. (Lennon and McCartney singing “Two of Us” in grandiose Scottish brogue almost steals Part Three.) But in their interviews, Jackson and McCartney accentuate the positive as if to paper over the acrimonious <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/paul-mccartney-says-he-sued-beatles-save-band-s-music-n1235898">history of lawsuits</a>, <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/rock/beatles-catalog-paul-mccartney-brief-history-ownership-7662519/">the loss of the Lennon-McCartney publishing catalog</a> and the lurching solo careers that followed.</p>
<h2>A muddled chronology</h2>
<p>The timing of the theater release of the “Let It Be” sessions seeded confusion over how the group unraveled. </p>
<p>“Let it Be” was shot in January 1969, just weeks after the “<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/review-the-beatles-white-album-186863/">White Album</a>” hit stores.</p>
<p>The band then put these tapes aside to work on the larger project they intuited from this material, “<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-beatles-revolutionary-use-of-recording-technology-in-abbey-road-124070">Abbey Road</a>,” which they completed seven months later. </p>
<p>The split actually came at a September 1969 meeting, when <a href="https://theconversation.com/inside-the-beatles-messy-breakup-50-years-ago-130980">Lennon told the others</a> he wanted a “divorce.” They persuaded him to keep his departure quiet until the band completed some contract negotiations. Then, in March 1970, <a href="https://theconversation.com/inside-the-beatles-messy-breakup-50-years-ago-130980">McCartney publicly proclaimed</a> he was “leaving the Beatles” to release his first solo album. </p>
<p>An epic descent into suits, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-courtroom-hit-parade-the-beatles-top-ten-lawsuits-414216.html">countersuits</a> and press squabbles ensued. Harrison even wrote a song called “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzdw2WcSmb0">Sue Me Sue You Blues</a>.” </p>
<p>Only in May 1970 did the “Let It Be” album and film come out, with the band’s messy divorce as the backdrop. </p>
<p>After the initial theater run, “Let it Be” fell from view. For decades, the only way you could get a glance of it was through a black market copy. The Andy Warhol-esque, <a href="https://www.artforum.com/print/196704/the-value-of-didactic-art-36733">so-real-it’s-boring verité style</a> – the non-narrative approach then in vogue – flummoxed even 1970 audiences.</p>
<p>But because the “Let It Be” album and film came out after “Abbey Road” – which was released in September 1969 – it quickly got mistaken for telegraphing their breakup, <a href="https://www.nme.com/news/music/paul-mccartney-says-the-beatles-get-back-documentary-changed-his-perception-of-their-split-3095528">a belief that the Beatles themselves seemed to internalize</a>.</p>
<p>The Beatles’ own traumatic memories of this period kept the raw footage from this project in the vaults for over 50 years. In the meantime, bootleggers published nearly all of its audio.</p>
<h2>Conflict brewing</h2>
<p>Now at significant remove, the remaining Beatles – McCartney and Ringo Starr – <a href="https://variety.com/video/peter-jackson-get-back-beatles-secrets/">seem to have hired Jackson</a> for a rescue operation, disingenuously dubbing the film a “documentary” when they, in fact, served as executive producers alongside their Apple Records directors, Jeff Jones and Ken Kamins.</p>
<p>In response to Jackson’s three-part series, which coincided with the release of <a href="https://variety.com/2021/music/reviews/get-back-book-review-beatles-let-it-be-transcripts-1235087090/">a book of transcripts from the “Let it Be” sessions</a> and McCartney’s songwriting memoir, “<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-paul-mccartneys-the-lyrics-can-teach-us-about-harnessing-our-creativity-170987">Lyrics</a>,” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/11/arts/music/beatles-get-back-peter-jackson.html">media outlets</a> <a href="https://www.onlymelbourne.com.au/the-beatles-get-back">around the world</a> appear to have embraced this new version of history: that these sessions actually scanned as lighthearted, that – poof! – the scars had vanished.</p>
<p>But the strange and beguiling thing about Jackson’s edit rises from how it displays an unstable mixture of groove and conflict.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Auta2lagtw4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for ‘The Beatles: Get Back.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite the walkout from Harrison and continuous disagreements about what the project was – first a TV show, then a feature film and album, which needed a rooftop concert for a “payoff” – the band ultimately rallied to write the now-classic tracks “Something,” “Oh! Darling,” “Octopus’s Garden,” “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window,” and “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” along with Lennon’s “Polythene Pam” and “I Want You.” </p>
<p>So Jackson’s “Get Back” clarifies the Beatles’ resolve to resume work and put their extra-musical squabbles aside. The music pulls them inexorably forward, and they trust these early song fragments enough to carry them. They have had bust-ups and walkouts and uncertainties and failures, and always found their way through. For Lindsay-Hogg and 1970 audiences, this all seemed bewildering and tense – the band kept a tight lid on internal rows. To the Beatles themselves, and to anyone who’s ever worked to keep a band together, it felt about par.</p>
<p>Telling the average person to watch eight hours of freighted doubt and raw, undeveloped material is a big ask. <a href="https://www.theonion.com/new-beatles-doc-gives-man-greater-appreciation-for-how-1848132216">As The Onion joked</a>, “New Beatles Doc Gives Man Greater Appreciation For How Long 8 Hours Feels.”</p>
<p>But there is a moment in Part Two of Jackson’s series – the first day on the set when Harrison doesn’t show up – when the rest of the band sits around talking about the situation. McCartney suddenly goes quiet. The camera lingers on him, and you can see him drift into a thousand-yard stare as he contemplates the looming uncertainties. He doesn’t quite tear up, but he does look as unguarded as he ever does, and markedly tentative. </p>
<p>The moment catches hold because it’s so out of character – McCartney rarely displays himself unveiled, without pretense. The shot lingers and takes the measure of the man and the project, how much they have to overcome and how precarious everything suddenly feels. </p>
<p>[<em>Over 140,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-140ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>In retrospect, the miracle is not that they finished “Let It Be,” but how these sessions served as the warmup for their final lap, “Abbey Road.” After upending expectations with the contrasting breakthroughs of “Sgt. Pepper” and the “White Album,” figuring out what to do next would have confounded lesser souls. </p>
<p>That five-decade gap where fans waited for a refurbished “Let It Be” tells you a lot about how fraught January 1969 seemed to its four principals – and how deep those scars went.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169914/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Riley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In their press rounds, director Peter Jackson and Paul McCartney have been eager to recast the legacy of the band’s final years.
Tim Riley, Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director for Journalism, Emerson College
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/171603
2021-11-15T19:04:33Z
2021-11-15T19:04:33Z
Paul McCartney’s The Lyrics: an extraordinary life in song
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431866/original/file-20211115-19-yzteh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C0%2C5291%2C5235&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Paul McCartney photographed backstage at the television show 'Thank Your Lucky Stars', Birmingham, England, 1963</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© MPL Communications Ltd</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Paul McCartney, The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, ed. Paul Muldoon, Allen Lane, 2021.</em></p>
<p>The Lyrics recounts Paul McCartney’s life and art through the “prism of his songs”. Despite its apparently unambiguous title, The Lyrics is not an exhaustive collection of the words to songs written or co-written by McCartney over his 60-year career. Rather, it brings together, across two volumes, 154 songs, some of which are universally known, and some of which are minor and/or off the beaten track of McCartney’s discography. </p>
<p>As well as reproducing the texts of these songs, The Lyrics includes commentaries by their author. These commentaries are based on 50 hours of recorded conversations, undertaken between 2015 and 2020, with the poet Paul Muldoon.</p>
<p>Muldoon, as editor, shaped these conversations into coherent mini essays, deleting his own voice in the process. The resulting product, richly decorated with over 600 photos and reproductions of memorabilia, is a kind of “self-portrait in song”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431868/original/file-20211115-19-1ngec75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431868/original/file-20211115-19-1ngec75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431868/original/file-20211115-19-1ngec75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=876&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431868/original/file-20211115-19-1ngec75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=876&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431868/original/file-20211115-19-1ngec75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=876&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431868/original/file-20211115-19-1ngec75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1101&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431868/original/file-20211115-19-1ngec75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1101&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431868/original/file-20211115-19-1ngec75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1101&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paul during a Beatles recording session at Apple Studios, London, 1969.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Paul McCartney / Photographer: Linda McCartney</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many songs are covered no doubt for their musical and/or literary importance. But many others, if not most, are included because they allow an entry into certain themes or periods of McCartney’s life. The commentary on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDcDCZGcZj8">Rocky Raccoon</a>, for instance, leads into an anecdote about McCartney requiring stitches to his lip from a drunk doctor (an experience that indirectly led to all four Beatles sporting moustaches in <a href="https://www.thebeatles.com/sites/default/files/styles/max_1300x1300/public/2021-05/beatles%20finished.jpg?itok=s693uTVh">1967</a>). </p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mc4KqEFkzTI">On My Way to Work</a> (from the 2013 album NEW) allows McCartney to talk about his first job as a delivery man, which leads into the oft-repeated Beatles’ ur-narrative of when McCartney met John Lennon at a church fete in 1957. </p>
<h2>Writing the unexpected</h2>
<p>McCartney’s primary strength (sometimes considered a fault by detractors) is melody, rather than words. And while it’s the case some of his lyrics can be facile even in their musical contexts, McCartney can be a fine lyricist. His lyrics, as he points out in his commentaries, often traffic in the unexpected (in the sense of the surreal and/or the nonsensical) and the comedic.</p>
<p>These characteristics are also observable in McCartney’s commentaries. The account of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVv7IzEVf3M">She Came in Through the Bathroom Window</a> begins with the deadpan observation that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>My mum was a nurse and my dad loved words, so I was the only one in my class who could spell ‘phlegm’. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>McCartney – who long stood in Lennon’s shadow as a lyricist – most clearly came into his own as a lyricist with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuS5NuXRb5Y">Eleanor Rigby</a>, which was the first of McCartney’s songs to receive wide praise for its lyrical content.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/two-of-us-inside-john-lennons-incredible-songwriting-partnership-with-paul-mccartney-147857">Two of Us: inside John Lennon's incredible songwriting partnership with Paul McCartney</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>McCartney’s lyrics often revel in word play, and his wit, often seen by critics as a sign of facileness, is surely one of his great strengths. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJag19WoAe0">Maxwell’s Silver Hammer</a>, from the Beatles’ Abbey Road (1969), was publicly dissed by Lennon and George Harrison at the time of its release, and it has often stood as an example of “bad McCartney”. </p>
<p>But the song is blackly comic, and it shows McCartney’s understanding of the comic potential of multisyllabic rhyme: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>PC Thirty-One said, we’ve caught a dirty one <br>
Maxwell stands alone. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>(It’s not surprising that, as well as the obvious rock'n'roll antecedents, McCartney refers to the influence of the earlier Tin Pan Alley songwriters, such as Cole Porter and the Gershwins.) </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431869/original/file-20211115-23-7hlehp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431869/original/file-20211115-23-7hlehp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431869/original/file-20211115-23-7hlehp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431869/original/file-20211115-23-7hlehp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431869/original/file-20211115-23-7hlehp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431869/original/file-20211115-23-7hlehp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1120&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431869/original/file-20211115-23-7hlehp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1120&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431869/original/file-20211115-23-7hlehp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1120&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paul during the recording of London Town, Virgin Islands, 1977.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© MPL Communications Ltd</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As well as showing McCartney’s attraction to wit, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer highlights a feature noticed by both him and Muldoon: the use of the vignette. As Muldoon notes in his introduction, McCartney </p>
<blockquote>
<p>has the capacity to render a fully rounded character from what might otherwise be merely a thumbnail sketch. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In songs such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuS5NuXRb5Y">Eleanor Rigby</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYvkICbTZIQ">Paperback Writer</a> and<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI6C7L66zq8"> Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey</a>, McCartney presents self-contained sketches of characters and situations, often bringing together the mysterious and the mundane. </p>
<p>This latter characteristic is most obviously found in the Beatles’ <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usNsCeOV4GM">A Day in the Life</a>, where McCartney’s section (“Woke up, fell out of bed …”) is placed within the psychedelic splendour of the greater body of the song by Lennon.</p>
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<p>The mix of the extraordinary and the ordinary is a leitmotif that runs throughout The Lyrics. With his customary emphasis on parents, family, education and work, McCartney is also open to the unexpected and anarchic.</p>
<h2>Ghosts behind the music</h2>
<p>But there is also an elegiac feeling to this collection, with numerous references to McCartney’s late parents, and his late wife, Linda. The death of his mother, Mary, when McCartney was 14, is repeatedly evoked. In his commentary on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDYfEBY9NM4">Let it Be </a>(famously inspired by a dream about “mother Mary”), McCartney cites two lines from Hamlet, a play he learnt at school.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/on-the-intimate-and-character-revealing-photographs-of-linda-mccartney-pauls-wife-and-a-stunning-artist-170957">On the intimate and character-revealing photographs of Linda McCartney – Paul's wife, and a stunning artist</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Hamlet is a play about ghosts and hauntings and there are plenty of ghosts – in the form of lost friends and colleagues, most obviously Lennon – in The Lyrics.</p>
<p>But there is a more literary and musical sense of hauntedness in McCartney’s songs, something apparent in this book, with its emphasis on precedents, mimicry, and revisionism. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nS5_EQgbuLc">Back in the USSR</a>, for instance, is a parody of Chuck Berry via the Beach Boys.</p>
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</figure>
<p>The Lyrics reminds us McCartney’s greatness is his ability to inhabit styles and genres and make them his own.</p>
<p>What is extraordinary about this ability is not just McCartney’s facility, but also his range; from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVfaf43W9cM">Rupert Bear (We All Stand Together)</a> to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLWSQRNnGY8">Helter Skelter</a>, from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdcSFVXd3MU">Here, There and Everywhere</a> to his classical work (represented here by an aria from the Liverpool Oratorio), there seems to be almost no style that McCartney can’t turn his hand to.</p>
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</figure>
<p>In his foreword, McCartney compares The Lyrics to an “old snapshot album”, that vernacular storehouse of haunting presences, memory and loss. Like a photo album, The Lyrics can be dipped into anywhere, and one can find the serious and frivolous, the straightforward and the enigmatic, side by side. What is amazing is that these “snapshots” are, for the most part, the work of one person.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171603/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David McCooey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Through 154 songs, Paul McCartney gives us an insight into his life. There is an elegaic feel to this book, which showcases the many sides to McCartney’s songwriting.
David McCooey, Professor of Writing and Literature, Deakin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/170987
2021-11-08T13:43:11Z
2021-11-08T13:43:11Z
What Paul McCartney’s ‘The Lyrics’ can teach us about harnessing our creativity
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430512/original/file-20211105-10121-1g0tdfp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=23%2C4%2C3076%2C2091&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">For Paul McCartney, songwriting involved a convergence of memory, experience and happenstance.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/paul-mccartney-singer-songwriter-with-wings-and-former-news-photo/2630533?adppopup=true">Evening Standard/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In his new book “<a href="https://variety.com/shop/paul-mccartney-memoir-1235103060/">The Lyrics</a>,” Paul McCartney divulges the origins of 154 of his most significant and enduring songs. </p>
<p>Although each song’s provenance is unique, the compendium is an unprecedented resource for those hoping to better understand both McCartney’s own creative process, and, more broadly, the human creative process.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=SIl5WVYAAAAJ&hl=en">As a behavioral scientist</a>, I’ve tried to do just that in my own research into creativity. That work has led me to conclude that the insightful or “<a href="https://hbr.org/2014/03/how-to-have-a-eureka-moment">Eureka!</a>” moment is largely a myth – an altogether naïve and fanciful account of innovation. </p>
<p>Ingenuity actually arises from a far less mysterious combination of historical, circumstantial and accidental influences.</p>
<h2>A long and winding road to ‘Eleanor Rigby’</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/10/25/paul-mccartney-writing-eleanor-rigby-beatles">In a book excerpt</a> published in the Oct. 18, 2021, issue of The New Yorker, McCartney recounts, in rich and scrupulous detail, the fascinating origins of “Eleanor Rigby” – <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/100-greatest-beatles-songs-154008/a-day-in-the-life-182132/">a track that some critics view as one of the Beatles’ greatest songs</a>. </p>
<p>McCartney puts the lie to the stale canard that this 1966 song was the result of some sort of fully formed vision that came to him out of the blue. Instead, he underscores the unscripted and haphazard nature of his songwriting process. You might even say that “a long and winding road” – to use the name of another Beatles track – led to “Eleanor Rigby.” </p>
<p>There’s the way snippets of memory inspired him – his mother’s bedside jar of Nivea cold cream and his doing a hodgepodge of odd jobs for an elderly woman; the role of sheer coincidence, such as his happening to spot the name “Rigby” on a tombstone or on a shop sign in Bristol; and the practical consequence of certain choices, like replacing “Hawkins” with “Rigby” and “McCartney” with “McKenzie” because of the confusing associations to possible surnames. </p>
<p>These various strands converged to catalyze a melancholy song that’s perhaps the Beatles’ most marked departure from the rhythmic pop sound found on upbeat tracks like “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pGOFX1D_jg">Love Me Do</a>.”</p>
<h2>An intricate web of cause and effect</h2>
<p>Without knowing the full story, people often believe that the creative things we make and do arise by premeditation – by design.</p>
<p>I propose a dramatically different account in my new book, “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/As_If_By_Design.html?id=wQg3EAAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description">As If By Design: How Creative Behaviors Really Evolve</a>.” </p>
<p>In the book, I point to the origin and evolution of a wide variety of innovations, such as the butterfly stroke, the high-five, the Heimlich maneuver, the moonwalk and the Iowa caucuses.</p>
<p>Because of their striking suitability to the situation, all of them seem to have been ingeniously designed in advance. But, more often than not, these creative acts have actually arisen thanks to an intricate web of cause, effect and happenstance.</p>
<p>Consider the butterfly stroke. The technique wasn’t instantly invented by a swimmer who one day decided to create an altogether new and faster stroke.</p>
<p>Instead, <a href="https://dailyiowan.com/2018/10/11/the-university-of-iowa-birthplace-of-the-butterfly-stroke/">three key factors helped give birth to the butterfly stroke</a>.</p>
<p>First, the context: In the 1930s, University of Iowa swim coach David Armbruster was working tirelessly with his swimmers to improve their breaststroke speed.</p>
<p>Then, there was serendipity: Armbruster happened to notice one of his swimmers, Jack Sieg, playfully using a sideways dolphin kick underwater to produce great speed.</p>
<p>As a result, Armbruster and Sieg experimented with the combined windmill arm stroke and belly-down dolphin kick to achieve unmatched speed.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Man coming up for air while swimming." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430513/original/file-20211105-10429-nv4d5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430513/original/file-20211105-10429-nv4d5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430513/original/file-20211105-10429-nv4d5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430513/original/file-20211105-10429-nv4d5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430513/original/file-20211105-10429-nv4d5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430513/original/file-20211105-10429-nv4d5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430513/original/file-20211105-10429-nv4d5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">U.S. Olympic swimmer Mark Spitz performs the butterfly stroke.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/portrait-between-1968-and-1972-of-the-american-swimmer-mark-news-photo/104404157?adppopup=true">Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Creating a new swimming stroke was never on the agenda. Indeed, these changes made to the breaststroke were never sanctioned. Only decades later did the so-called “butterfly stroke” receive sanctioning as a separate Olympic event.</p>
<h2>Perspiration leads to inspiration</h2>
<p>When it comes to the creative process, there is no one correct way or approach, and what works for Paul McCartney might not work for another talented songwriter.</p>
<p>Consider Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RM_MWAX5TQ">Simple Song #3</a>,” which he wrote for Paolo Sorrentino’s first English-language feature film, “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3312830/">Youth</a>.”</p>
<p>Because of the movie’s intimacy and emotionality, Lang wanted to write lyrics that might be whispered to a lover. So he deployed a highly unusual method: typing “when you whisper my name I …” into Google search to see what came up. </p>
<p>“I got thousands of pornographic things and terrible things and things that were so specific I couldn’t really use them,” <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/how-to-write-a-song-with-google/423396/">he told The Atlantic in 2016</a>. “But I got a general catalog of what people say to their loved ones that they don’t want anyone else to hear.” </p>
<p>From this list, Lang chose a few that aligned best with his melody and produced a desirable result. </p>
<p>Lang had no inkling of what the final lyrics would before he began. His process could be thought of as the behavioral analog of biology’s evolutionary law of natural selection.</p>
<p>Then there’s Academy Award-, Tony Award- and Grammy Award-winning composer Stephen Sondheim, who actually wrote an ode to the songwriting process in his 1992 song “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ7Di5XLUq0">Putting It Together</a>.” </p>
<p>The patter-paced lyrics are a tribute not to inspiration, but to perspiration. </p>
<p>Sondheim writes of how composing a song is no easy matter; it demands considerable time, hard work and persistence. You must start with a firm foundation. Then, step by step, piece by piece, you must build upon it, honing the piece along the way, so that each brick signifies a real improvement.</p>
<p>Sweating all of the numerous details in the process of “putting it together” doesn’t guarantee a payoff – the hit you seek may turn out to be a miss. But to Sondheim, any successful song requires this sort of painstaking effort.</p>
<p>Of course, the creative process plays a role not only in the arts, but also in sports, politics, science and medicine. Regrettably, most people blithely believe that genius, inspiration, insight and foresight are the dominant forces that foster game-changing innovations. </p>
<p>That’s why authoritative accounts like those of Paul McCartney, David Lang and Stephen Sondheim are so valuable. They’re objective explanations that better measure up to scientific scrutiny and avoid the knee-jerk impulse to evoke musty tropes like insight and genius, which really explain nothing at all.</p>
<p>[<em>Over 115,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-newsletter-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170987/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edward Wasserman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The ‘Eureka!’ moment is a myth – an altogether naïve and fanciful account of innovation.
Edward Wasserman, Professor of Experimental Psychology, University of Iowa
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/170957
2021-11-07T19:10:25Z
2021-11-07T19:10:25Z
On the intimate and character-revealing photographs of Linda McCartney – Paul’s wife, and a stunning artist
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430147/original/file-20211104-13-2hcksy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C5%2C3950%2C2649&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Linda McCartney, Brian Jones and Mick Jagger, Hudson River, New York, 1966.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BIFB </span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: The Linda McCartney Retrospective, Ballarat International Foto Biennale</em></p>
<p>The Linda McCartney Retrospective has toured the world, taking on a new life in each location, morphing and connecting to the local milieu. It morphs again here for Ballarat’s International Foto Biennale. The 200 works included are curated from the artist’s vast archive of half a million photographs by her famous husband Sir Paul McCartney and their daughters, photographer Mary and fashion designer Stella. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430144/original/file-20211104-25-1gppv2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430144/original/file-20211104-25-1gppv2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=892&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430144/original/file-20211104-25-1gppv2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=892&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430144/original/file-20211104-25-1gppv2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=892&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430144/original/file-20211104-25-1gppv2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1121&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430144/original/file-20211104-25-1gppv2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1121&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430144/original/file-20211104-25-1gppv2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1121&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Linda by Paul Sussex.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BIFB</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The show contains work across 30 years, from her earliest images of rock stars such as the Beatles and Janis Joplin in the 1960s, through to images of the everyday, self-portraits, experiments with form and commentary on causes dear to her heart, especially animal liberation.</p>
<p>Before meeting Paul McCartney in 1967, Linda Eastman (no relation to the Kodak-Eastman family) aleady <a href="https://www.lindamccartney.com/chronology/">enjoyed a successful career</a>. She was named US Female Photographer of the Year in 1967. In 1968, she became the first female photographer to shoot the cover of Rolling Stone with an acclaimed portrait of Eric Clapton. </p>
<p>Despite her credentials, she was best known as Paul’s wife rather than an artist in her own right. It is <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/art-and-design/a-massive-coup-rare-linda-mccartney-retrospective-to-show-at-the-ballarat-international-foto-biennale-20201210-p56mel.html">widely reported</a> he often joked that he ruined his wife’s career, but since her death in 1998, Paul has ensured her legacy with books and international retrospectives.</p>
<p>This retrospective includes never before exhibited material, including photographs captured during the McCartney family’s Australian visits for the 1975 Wings and 1993 New World tours.</p>
<p>For local audiences, this provides a connection with images of down-time, press scrums and press conferences (including one with Norman Gunston), landmarks, crew, fans, sunsets and Greenpeace activists. Whether it is the quality of the light or the openness of the faces, these images stand out as quintessentially Australian.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430145/original/file-20211104-21-m9m68j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430145/original/file-20211104-21-m9m68j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430145/original/file-20211104-21-m9m68j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430145/original/file-20211104-21-m9m68j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430145/original/file-20211104-21-m9m68j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430145/original/file-20211104-21-m9m68j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1114&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430145/original/file-20211104-21-m9m68j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1114&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430145/original/file-20211104-21-m9m68j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1114&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Photo by Linda McCartney, Self Portrait with Paul and Mary, London, 1969.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BIFB</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>From the shadows</h2>
<p>McCartney achieves a direct sense of connection and intimacy with her subjects. The images speak of the moment shared, often unposed and character-revealing. </p>
<p>This idea also occurs in her self-portraits – often mirror reflections – reminding the viewer this is her life and her experience. Direct quotes are framing banners: “Looking out from deep below my eyes, I capture moments of my life … .” </p>
<p>In a video she says: “you’ve got to click on the moment, not before and not after”. This sense gives her work a spontaneity and lightness. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430148/original/file-20211104-17-1kixeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430148/original/file-20211104-17-1kixeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430148/original/file-20211104-17-1kixeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430148/original/file-20211104-17-1kixeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430148/original/file-20211104-17-1kixeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430148/original/file-20211104-17-1kixeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430148/original/file-20211104-17-1kixeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430148/original/file-20211104-17-1kixeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Photo by Linda McCartney, Stella and James with horse, Scotland, 1982.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BIFB</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Other images enable fleeting glimpses, such as Mick Jagger 1966. Looking back, framed by a curtain as he moves through a doorway, he just registers her. I wondered if there is something female about this approach, that women might be able to just “be there” so quietly.</p>
<p>Perhaps this could be related to gender relations, where women are imperceivable, non-threatening, only just there in a man’s world. Alternatively, it could show her ability to step into the shadows, to better observe. </p>
<p>There are also portraits of McCartney taken by others. Two taken by Jim Morrison stand out, particularly one very sensual one on a bed taken in 1967. Both photographs reflect a sense that the tables are turned, and it is she who is being looked at.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430150/original/file-20211104-24-1m7mor0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430150/original/file-20211104-24-1m7mor0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430150/original/file-20211104-24-1m7mor0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430150/original/file-20211104-24-1m7mor0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430150/original/file-20211104-24-1m7mor0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430150/original/file-20211104-24-1m7mor0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1115&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430150/original/file-20211104-24-1m7mor0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1115&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430150/original/file-20211104-24-1m7mor0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1115&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Linda McCartney, Jimi Hendrix, London, 1967.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BIFB</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many of McCartney’s family images depict Paul at play with their children. In the photograph Paul and James Los Angles 1983, father and son are in a bubble bath and Paul hams up the scene of being sucked under the water with an open-mouthed scream, evocative of Edvard Munch. </p>
<p>In another, Paul and Children East Hampton New York 1975, he is depicted with them all trailing behind him like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. In Self Portrait with Paul London 1970, Paul and Linda face the mirror in a bathroom. She holds a camera, slightly angled to him, and he holds an imaginary one. </p>
<p>In all this, you get the sense of his collaboration with her theatrical agenda.</p>
<h2>Artistic conversations</h2>
<p>Photographs by the Australian artist Rhonda Senbergs line the laneway to the McCartney show, highlighting the synergy between the women. Senbergs photographed the Australian artworld, her family, Prime Ministers and ordinary people with a similar approach and style to McCarthy. They were both self-taught, and, tragically, they both died of breast cancer in 1998 at 57 years old.</p>
<p>Both photographers share an approach characterised by humour and playfulness bordering on theatricality. This is an example of the important work of a curator, how one show illuminates another, and vice versa.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-rhonda-senbergs-friend-art-world-insider-unsung-star-83426">Remembering Rhonda Senbergs: friend, art-world insider, unsung star</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The Art Gallery of Ballarat is supported by an army of volunteers. This is also the case for the entire Biennale, operating seven days a week over four months. The core program has 12 indoor and 16 outdoor exhibits and there are 120 shows in all with the Open Program straddling the city’s cafes, streetscapes and buildings. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430152/original/file-20211104-19-1sznp9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430152/original/file-20211104-19-1sznp9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430152/original/file-20211104-19-1sznp9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430152/original/file-20211104-19-1sznp9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430152/original/file-20211104-19-1sznp9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430152/original/file-20211104-19-1sznp9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430152/original/file-20211104-19-1sznp9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430152/original/file-20211104-19-1sznp9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Ballarat International Foto Biennale helps to sustain the cultural heart of this city.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lisa French</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One volunteer, Sarah Masters, tells me she volunteers because of “reciprocity – if you want a vibrant art culture, it is about supporting that where you live”. </p>
<p>I find the volunteers offer interesting snippets of information about the show, or the building, or can identify an obscure object that catches your eye. They are the heroes of this regional arts scene and a key to nurturing and sustaining the cultural heart of this city.</p>
<p><em>The Linda McCartney Retrospective and The Ballarat International Foto Biennale run until 9 January 2022. Bookings are advised.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170957/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa French does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The retrospective of McCartney’s work at the Ballarat International Foto Biennale shows an artist interested in connection and intimacy.
Lisa French, Professor & Dean, School of Media and Communication, RMIT University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/147857
2020-10-09T15:40:05Z
2020-10-09T15:40:05Z
Two of Us: inside John Lennon’s incredible songwriting partnership with Paul McCartney
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362629/original/file-20201009-23-1t18rew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C208%2C1524%2C1018&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Greatest pop songwriting team ever?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">United States Library of Congress</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>John Lennon was acutely aware of his place in the musical lineage, and the strengths and weaknesses of his own songwriting. His tendency to speak in bold strokes – “Before Elvis there was nothing!” – belied at times both the variety in his work, and its complicated legacy.</p>
<p>Lennon would have been 80 years old on October 9, and his son Sean’s recent <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p08t4mx9">interview with Paul McCartney</a> highlights a few aspects of how their partnership shaped popular musical practice. McCartney recalls seeing Lennon around locally – on the bus, in the queue for fish and chips – before their famous first meeting at the <a href="https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/nostalgia/july-6-1957-day-beatles-9594637">Woolton Fête</a>, noting with approval at the time Lennon’s nascent identification with the Teddy Boy sub-culture.</p>
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<p>Importantly, their shared social milieu was an important foundation for the musical partnership. Sean Lennon also wonders about his father’s insecurities as a musician and a feeling that: “Somehow he wasn’t officially a true musician, and everyone else was.”</p>
<p>McCartney’s response is telling: “I don’t think any of us were, tell you the truth. And I think that was a very good, strong thing about us, actually.”</p>
<p>Part of the significance of The Beatles as a phenomenon, and the Lennon-McCartney partnership within that, was that its overwhelming industrial and creative success helped to ingrain the “band” as a modus operandi for making popular music into common cultural currency. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1314494539567108096"}"></div></p>
<p>The self-taught, peer-driven mode of music making that emerged from early rock and roll and skiffle was solidified as the next generation of its exponents – including Lennon and McCartney – took advantage of the relaxing social conditions as the 50s gave way to the 60s, and closed the gap between amateur and commercial activity. </p>
<h2>Joint ventures</h2>
<p>Mick Jagger once referred to the Beatles as a “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rolz1VasS4&feature=youtu.be&t=1m45s">four-headed monster</a>”. Indeed, The Rolling Stones’ own creation myth – a youthful Jagger and Keith Richards re-kindling a childhood friendship at <a href="https://www.kentonline.co.uk/dartford/news/blue-plaque-honours-birthplace-of-31457/">Dartford train station</a> over a chance encounter and a package of blues records – occupies a similar place in the historical narrative to Lennon and McCartney’s first encounter.</p>
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<p>An important underlying aspect of how such partnerships worked, however, is that as well as springing from self-taught musicianship, and the rough-and-tumble of social lives away from the formal demands of school and adult society, they combined what had hitherto often been separate functions – that of songwriter and performer. This wasn’t exclusively the case in rock. </p>
<p>The role of the songwriter as a marker of authenticity in rock music – singing one’s own compositions – drew from a Romantic wellspring, harking back to the 18th century, of artists as a source of inspiration and value beyond being mere entertainers. It also drew from folk traditions, as singer-songwriters asserted their individuality – Bob Dylan is a case in point here. </p>
<p>But there was a <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/327341082.pdf">growing sense of authenticity in bands</a>, residing in the membership as well as the music. It mattered, for instance, when Ringo Starr contracted tonsillitis and was replaced for part of a tour of Australia by replacement drummer Jimmy Nicol. And songwriting partnerships such as Lennon-McCartney, and Jagger, Richards (as they appeared in the credits) were at the heart of this.</p>
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<p>They were also central to the power dynamic within bands. There was – and is – a financial advantage to being credited as a songwriter on top of being a performer in terms of the rights and royalties that accrue. A band is a partnership on several levels: social, creative and financial. Indeed, some acts have deliberately reoriented their arrangements to account for this. </p>
<p>R.E.M., the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ruthblatt/2014/02/03/six-surprising-things-that-u2-and-the-red-hot-chili-peppers-have-in-common-other-than-a-spotlight-at-the-super-bowl/#473929a7fc23">Red Hot Chilli Peppers and U2</a>, for instance, made a point of co-crediting all band members regardless of who wrote a particular song or passage. And Queen shifted to such an arrangement and away from individual composers’ credits, partly as a way of reducing intra-band disputes about which songs to choose as singles.</p>
<h2>Moving apart</h2>
<p>In the case of the Beatles, Lennon and McCartney had ceased to co-write the songs several years before the band actually split, although as performers and bandmates they continued to help shape them in the production process. Tensions across one of these axes might be sustainable. The Beatles took divergent paths as the 60s wore on, as is natural enough for school-friends as they move through adulthood and start families. </p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/262481000" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>But by the end of the decade, simultaneous divergence in the creative, social and financial pathways made the partnership unmanageable. “Musical differences” is often jokingly referred to as a proxy for personal enmity. But in truth, the various threads are often hard to fully disentangle.</p>
<p>Ultimately, Lennon and McCartney complemented one another as personalities and as musicians. McCartney’s melodic facility smoothed over some of Lennon’s rougher edges. Lennon’s grit added texture and leavened some of McCartney’s more saccharine tendencies. </p>
<p>Their legacy, though, was more than just musical. Their success coincided with, and helped to shape, an explosion of youth culture as both creative and commercial enterprise. </p>
<p>We can’t know, of course, what would have happened had Lennon lived to 80, especially given that – their business problems receding into the past - his personal relationship with McCartney had become warmer again by the onset of the 1980s. With the hurly-burly of the Beatles behind them, they found common ground over the more prosaic matters of middle age. </p>
<p>As McCartney <a href="https://www.nme.com/news/music/paul-mccartney-299-1297236">put it</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We’d chat about how to make bread. Just ordinary stuff, you know. He’d had a baby by then – he’d had Sean – so we could talk babies and family and bread and stuff. So that made it a little bit easier, the fact that we were buddies.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But the fact that their evolution as songwriters and as friends took place in tandem is still felt in the emergence of popular musical enterprises from schoolyards and youthful peer groups in rock and beyond.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147857/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Behr has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council </span></em></p>
For a decade after they met as teenagers, Lennon-McCartney was the most potent songwriting partnership in pop music.
Adam Behr, Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/130980
2020-04-10T12:12:04Z
2020-04-10T12:12:04Z
Inside the Beatles’ messy breakup, 50 years ago
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326989/original/file-20200409-165427-i79n2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=100%2C8%2C1658%2C1069&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Who broke up with whom?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-beatles-celebrate-the-completion-of-their-new-album-sgt-news-photo/3297187?adppopup=true">Anurag Papolu/The Conversation via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fifty years ago, when Paul McCartney announced he had left the Beatles, the news dashed the hopes of millions of fans, while fueling false reunion rumors that persisted well into the new decade. </p>
<p>In a press release on April 10, 1970 for his first solo album, “<a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/people/paul-mccartney/albums/mccartney/">McCartney</a>,” he leaked his intention to leave. In doing so, he shocked his three bandmates.</p>
<p>The Beatles had symbolized the great communal spirit of the era. How could they possibly come apart? </p>
<p>Few at the time were aware of the underlying fissures. The power struggles in the group had been mounting at least since their manager, Brian Epstein, died in August of 1967. </p>
<h2>‘Paul Quits the Beatles’</h2>
<p>Was McCartney’s “announcement” official? His album appeared on April 17, and its press packet included a mock interview. In it, McCartney <a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/1970/04/10/paul-mccartney-announces-the-beatles-split/">is asked</a>, “Are you planning a new album or single with the Beatles?”</p>
<p>His response? “No.” </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325794/original/file-20200406-104477-gkg4w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325794/original/file-20200406-104477-gkg4w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325794/original/file-20200406-104477-gkg4w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325794/original/file-20200406-104477-gkg4w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325794/original/file-20200406-104477-gkg4w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325794/original/file-20200406-104477-gkg4w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325794/original/file-20200406-104477-gkg4w8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Daily Mirror took McCartney at his word.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Daily Mirror</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But he didn’t say whether the separation might prove permanent. The Daily Mirror nonetheless framed its headline conclusively: “Paul Quits the Beatles.” </p>
<p>The others worried this could hurt sales and sent Ringo as a peacemaker to McCartney’s London home to talk him down from releasing his solo album ahead of the band’s “Let It Be” album and film, which were slated to come out in May. Without any press present, McCartney <a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/1970/03/31/paul-mccartney-ringo-starr-letter-john-lennon-george-harrison-let-it-be/">shouted Ringo off his front stoop</a>.</p>
<h2>Lennon had kept quiet</h2>
<p>Lennon, who had been active outside the band for months, felt particularly betrayed.</p>
<p>The previous September, soon after the band released “Abbey Road,” he <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/why-the-beatles-broke-up-113403/">had asked</a> his bandmates for a “divorce.” But the others convinced him not to go public to prevent disrupting some delicate contract negotiations. </p>
<p>Still, Lennon’s departure seemed imminent: He had played the Toronto Rock ‘n’ Roll Festival with his Plastic Ono Band in September 1969, and on Feb. 11, 1970, he performed a new solo track, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZQny1XxOdI">Instant Karma</a>,” on the popular British TV show “Top of the Pops.” Yoko Ono sat behind him, knitting while blindfolded by a sanitary napkin. </p>
<p>In fact, Lennon behaved more and more like a solo artist, until McCartney countered with his own eponymous album. He wanted Apple to release this solo debut alongside the group’s new album, “<a href="https://www.thebeatles.com/album/let-it-be">Let It Be</a>,” to dramatize the split. </p>
<p>By beating Lennon to the announcement, McCartney controlled the story and its timing, and undercut the other three’s interest in keeping it under wraps as new product hit stores.</p>
<p>Ray Connolly, a reporter at the Daily Mail, knew Lennon well enough to ring him up for comment. When I interviewed Connolly in 2008, he told me about their conversation. </p>
<p>Lennon was dumbfounded and enraged by the news. He had let Connolly in on his secret about leaving the band at his Montreal Bed-In in December 1969, but asked him to keep it quiet. Now he lambasted Connolly for not leaking it sooner. </p>
<p>“Why didn’t you write it when I told you in Canada at Christmas!” he exclaimed to Connolly, who reminded him that the conversation had been off the record. “You’re the f–king journalist, Connolly, not me,” snorted Lennon. </p>
<p>“We were all hurt [McCartney] didn’t tell us what he was going to do,” <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/lennon-remembers-part-one-186693/">Lennon later told Rolling Stone</a>. “Jesus Christ! He gets all the credit for it! I was a fool not to do what Paul did, which was use it to sell a record…”</p>
<h2>It all falls apart</h2>
<p>This public fracas had been bubbling under the band’s cheery surface for years. Timing and sales concealed deeper arguments about creative control and the return to live touring. </p>
<p>In January 1969, the group had started a roots project tentatively titled “Get Back.” It was supposed to be a back-to-the-basics recording without the artifice of studio trickery. But the whole venture was shelved as a new recording, “Abbey Road,” took shape.</p>
<p>When “Get Back” was eventually revived, Lennon – behind McCartney’s back – brought in American producer <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Phil-Spector">Phil Spector</a>, best known for girl group hits like “Be My Baby,” to salvage the project. But this album was supposed to be band only – not embroidered with added strings and voices – and McCartney fumed when Spector added a female choir to his song “The Long and Winding Road.” </p>
<p>“Get Back” – which was renamed “Let it Be” – nonetheless moved forward. Spector mixed the album, and a cut of the feature film was readied for summer. </p>
<p>McCartney’s announcement and release of his solo album effectively short-circuited the plan. By announcing the breakup, he launched his solo career in advance of “<a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/albums/let-it-be/">Let It Be</a>,” and nobody knew how it might disrupt the official Beatles’ project. </p>
<p>Throughout the remainder of 1970, fans watched in disbelief as the “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0HfT_a3bIw">Let It Be</a>” movie portrayed the hallowed Beatles circling musical doldrums, bickering about arrangements and killing time running through oldies. The film finished with an ironic triumph – <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/01/30/beatles-played-london-rooftop-it-wound-up-being-their-last-show/">the famous live set on the roof of their Apple headquarters</a> during which the band played “Get Back,” “Don’t Let Me Down” and a joyous “One After 909.”</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Beatles played their last live show in a January 1969 concert staged for the documentary ‘Let It Be.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The album, released on May 8, performed well and spawned two hit singles – the title track and “The Long and Winding Road” – but the group never recorded together again.</p>
<p>Their fans hoped against hope that four solo Beatles might someday find their way back to the thrills that had enchanted audiences for seven years. These rumors seemed most promising when <a href="https://longreads.com/2019/06/24/took-you-by-surprise-john-and-pauls-lost-reunion/">McCartney joined Lennon for a Los Angeles recording session</a> in 1974 with Stevie Wonder. But while they all played on one another’s solo efforts, the four never played a session together again. </p>
<p>At the beginning of 1970, autumn’s “Come Together”/“Something” single from “Abbey Road” still floated in the Billboard top 20; the “Let It Be” album and film helped extend fervor beyond what the papers reported. For a long time, the myth of the band endured on radio playlists and across several greatest hits compilations, but when John Lennon sang “The dream is over…” at the end of his own 1970 solo debut, “<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/john-lennon-plastic-ono-band-108294/">John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band</a>,” few grasped the lyrics’ implacable truth. </p>
<p>Fans and critics chased every sliver of hope for the “next” Beatles, but few came close to recreating the band’s magic. There were prospects – first bands like Three Dog Night, the Flaming Groovies, Big Star and the Raspberries; later, Cheap Trick, the Romantics and the Knack – but these groups only aimed at the same heights the Beatles had conquered, and none sported the range, songwriting ability or ineffable chemistry of the Liverpool quartet.</p>
<p>We’ve been living in the world without Beatles ever since.</p>
<p>[<em>Insight, in your inbox each day.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=insight">You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130980/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Riley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Unbridled ambition and bruised egos created an irreparable fissure.
Tim Riley, Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director for Journalism, Emerson College
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/124433
2019-09-30T12:16:01Z
2019-09-30T12:16:01Z
Beatles: Abbey Road at 50 is a marker of how pop music grew up in the 1960s
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294748/original/file-20190930-194829-xlqyt3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C1%2C995%2C664&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Imma Gambardella via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 50th anniversary re-issue of the seminal Beatles album Abbey Road – remixed and with a slew of alternative takes – along with the <a href="https://www.nme.com/news/music/paul-mccartney-ringo-starr-reunite-abbey-road-celebrate-50th-anniversary-2551762">celebrations by surviving band-members</a> and fans alike, illustrates the recording industry’s preoccupation with <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/nostalgia-in-music-the-1975-charli-xcx-troye-sivan-1999-pop-queen-a8729266.html">nostalgia</a>. </p>
<p>It’s also an opportunity to cash in on both the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-album-at-70-a-format-in-decline-99581">vinyl resurgence and the wave of anniversaries</a> that accompanies the canonisation of Baby Boomer rock pioneers. The Beatles lead the pack but <a href="https://www.ledzeppelin.com/news/first-official-feature-length-led-zeppelin-documentary-1270591">Led Zeppelin</a> and <a href="https://variety.com/2019/music/news/rolling-stones-let-it-bleed-50th-anniversary-exclusive-1203342975/">The Rolling Stones</a> have also put out anniversary re-releases and documentaries. </p>
<p>It’s easy to be cynical but Abbey Road is a musical moment with an anniversary that warrants marking. It received mixed reviews on release in September 1969. The Guardian found the record “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2012/oct/08/beatles-abbey-road-review-archive-1969">a slight matter</a>”, although Rolling Stone remarked that it showed that the band was “<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20140421055432/http:/www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/abbey-road-19691115">still unsurpassed</a>”. Commercially, there was no question. It entered the UK charts at number one, where it spent a total of 17 weeks, with similar performance internationally. </p>
<p>The album’s effect on musicians was both immediate and longstanding. Booker T and the MG’s recorded and released an instrumental cover of the album – <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kQxJEBDR90XXxs3zOWts4Fy7XWaXfxVZc">McLemore Avenue</a> – within a year, featuring themselves crossing the road outside their own Stax Studios. Frank Sinatra, meanwhile, made “Something” a feature of his concerts for years, recording it twice and calling it “<a href="https://ig.ft.com/life-of-a-song/something.html">the greatest love song of the last 50 years</a>”.</p>
<h2>Sublime swansong</h2>
<p>Abbey Road’s reach into the popular consciousness is long. It has immortalised the former EMI studios, now taking the name of their address, and the zebra crossing that featured on the iconic cover is <a href="https://www.earthcam.com/world/england/london/abbeyroad/?cam=abbeyroad_uk">a tourist attraction</a> today.</p>
<p>Its real emotional and musical weight, though, comes through the combination of songwriting and production craft with historical placement. Although Let It Be was released in 1970, Abbey Road was the <a href="https://www.thebeatles.com/album/abbey-road">last album the band recorded</a> – a mixing session for Lennon’s portentous “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” was <a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/1969/08/20/mixing-editing-i-want-you-shes-so-heavy/">the last time</a> all four members were in the studio together.</p>
<p>They were mired in financial difficulties – their <a href="https://www.udiscovermusic.com/in-depth-features/apple-records-the-story/">Apple venture</a> (a portfolio of ventures from record label to a shortlived boutique) was struggling after a ramshackle launch period. Their increasingly divergent social and musical lives were also shot through with legal disagreements, and whether to take on Allen Klein as their manager – as favoured by Lennon, Starr and Harrison – or, McCartney’s preference, the Eastman family of his new wife Linda.</p>
<p>Their recording swansong followed fragmentary, disparate work on <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-beatles-white-album-at-50-its-avant-garde-eclecticism-still-inspires-104505">1968’s White Album</a> and the fractious Get Back sessions in the early months of 1969. That was an attempt to rekindle their early, live energy first in Twickenham film studios and latterly their Apple building on Saville Row although it collapsed into discord, leaving hours of tape that would eventually surface as the 1970 album Let It Be, with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/06/arts/album-review-getting-back-to-essentials-beatles-refuse-to-let-it-be.html">Phil Spector tasked with finishing the job</a>. </p>
<p>Work on Abbey Road in summer 1969 wasn’t free of discord but, unlike the preceding Twickenham sessions, it didn’t result in sloppy and incomplete recordings. This was due in no small part to the reinstatement of George Martin as producer and the band’s return to EMI studios. Martin instilled a sense of discipline. His involvement came <a href="https://www.thebeatles.com/album/abbey-road">with the condition</a> that the band “let me produce it the way we used to”. </p>
<p>The band, <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/15-legendary-unreleased-albums-67688/the-beatles-get-back-1969-160197/">unable to face returning to the Get Back tapes</a> – “none of us would go near them”, remarked Lennon – concurred. As Harrison <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KbY5AQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=bob+spitz+the+beatles&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjzvvOTrfjkAhVytHEKHSpJCFQQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=bob%20spitz%20the%20beatles&f=false">would recall</a>: “We decided, ‘Let’s make a good album again’.”</p>
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<p>It’s plausible that, sensing the end was near, they wanted to go out on a high. The extent to which Abbey Road was planned as a finale is debatable. As with much of the Beatles’ final days, matters are shrouded in contradiction. The mix of schoolboy friendships, working relationships, a strained legal partnership and creative inspiration meant that the months of recording were unlikely to be either unremitting contention or unbroken harmony. It’s also almost impossible to discount hindsight and the tendency to read their final moments as a band into the music – “The End"’s elegiac conclusion to the medley on side two in particular.</p>
<p>Regardless, they were reaching the end of the road. All were involved in solo projects by the time they recorded Abbey Road and Harrison and Starr had already temporarily left the band during recordings for the White Album and Get Back.</p>
<h2>End of an era</h2>
<p>Abbey Road, though, reveals the possibilities and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19401159.2014.969976">strengths of the "band” as format</a> – the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. It’s the first time after perhaps Sergeant Pepper that their creative impetus is audible as merging across one another’s songs – the Beatles as an entity, beyond the group of individual musicians.</p>
<p>Abbey Road fuses song-craft and recording innovation with the confidence that the group dynamic brought to the table. Their first forays into eight-track tape and transistor technology gave the album a fuller sound than previously, while it was one of <a href="https://www.moogmusic.com/news/beatles-use-moog-synthesizer-abbey-road-sessions">the first mainstream albums to feature a synthesiser</a>. Sonically, it was as much the first album of the 1970s as an artefact of the late 1960s.</p>
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<p>Few, acts are as synonymous with a decade as the Beatles are with the 1960s. And while this is party historical accident – their creative collaboration ended with the decade – it also means that Abbey Road signposts the passing of one era into another. As we stumble uncertainly towards a new decade ourselves, there’s comfort in that album’s uneasy synthesis of sunshine and strife into a coherent musical statement.</p>
<p>In 1963, The Beatles had recorded their first album Please Please Me in one lightning 13-hour session. By the time they walked out onto the zebra crossing in 1969, they had expanded the parameters of popular music, helping to turn it a recording art form. Their success also solidified the concept of the band as a preeminent creative unit in popular music. Even at the end, they continued to point the way forward.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124433/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Behr has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>
Regarded as one of The Beatles finest albums, Abbey Road is the last time all four band members were in the studio together.
Adam Behr, Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104505
2018-11-20T11:56:01Z
2018-11-20T11:56:01Z
The Beatles White Album at 50: its avant garde eclecticism still inspires
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245569/original/file-20181114-172710-19vnxrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">badgreeb via Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For an LP with a plain white cover, the Beatles eponymous ninth studio album – more commonly referred to as the “<a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/albums/the-beatles-white-album/">White Album</a>” – has generated a mass of symbolism since its release 50 years ago in November 1968.</p>
<p>With its glossy all-white gatefold cover, black inner sleeves and portraits of the Fab Four hidden inside the sleeve, the influence of the White Album can be traced across a huge range of cultural artefacts. For example, the author of New Journalism, Joan Didion, named her study of the end of the 1960s dream, <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/v02/n02/martin-amis/joan-didions-style">The White Album</a>. The starkness of the LP’s presentation seemed aligned to the collapse of post-war idealism documented by Didion’s book. </p>
<p>For cult leader Charles Manson, the record <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/charles-manson-how-cult-leaders-twisted-beatles-obsession-inspired-family-murders-107176/">contained a litany of hidden messages</a> that only he and The Beatles understood. George Harrison’s Piggies and Paul McCartney’s (admittedly crazed) Helter Skelter foretold the chaos of a bloody race war, a new apocalypse that Manson was to instigate and alone survive.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/revolution-50-the-beatles-white-album-remixed-106784">Revolution 50: The Beatles’ White Album remixed</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In 2004 Brian Joseph Burton, AKA Danger Mouse, issued <a href="https://www.nme.com/reviews/album/reviews-nme-7347">The Grey Album</a>, a mash-up of The Beatles and rapper Jay-Z’s <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/the-black-album-88686/">The Black Album</a>.</p>
<p>And, as if the cultural and commercial importance of the White Album could be doubted, a re-issue of the record to coincide with its 50th anniversary went into the Billboard top 200 <a href="https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/8485591/the-beatles-white-album-returns-billboard-200-chart-top-10">with a bullet</a> at number six. Interestingly, of the 63,000 units sold in the week from November 9 to 16, 52,000 were in traditional album sales.</p>
<h2>After Sgt Pepper’s</h2>
<p>The album remains the Beatles’ most intriguing contribution to the art of sound. It’s hard to imagine in today’s landscape of remakes, sequels and parodies that the pop fans of the 1960s expected their favourite artists to keep moving forward and with each new recording to have developed something entirely fresh. So, the lush, psychedelic world of the previous LP Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, with its iconic Peter Blake designed cover, was substituted by a stark minimalist aesthetic (albeit one created by another legendary <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/richard-hamilton-1244">British pop artist, Richard Hamilton</a>).</p>
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<p>The music inside Hamilton’s sleeve revealed a similar shift of gear. For practically the first time, Beatles songs appeared as solo efforts – some of the record’s 30 tracks had even been recorded by a single member of the band. This had occurred before (think of McCartney singing Yesterday accompanied by a string quartet or Harrison’s forays into Eastern mysticism) and yet for the first time the group was revealed as a collection of individuals rather than a well-oiled unit. </p>
<p>As the late Roy Carr, who co-wrote one of the best books on the group, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/627259.The_Beatles">The Beatles: an Illustrated Record</a>, put it, “on this double LP they act as each other’s session men”. The individual characters of each group member were also laid bare: Lennon’s dark cynicism, McCartney’s eclectic optimism, Harrison’s mysticism and Starr’s love of country music. The collaborative aspect of a pop/rock group dynamic had begun to dissolve. The White Album in fact marks the clearest instance of the disintegration of the Beatles as a group and was thus the springboard for the various solo careers of the band, with tantalising glimpses – good and bad – of what was to come in the years following the split.</p>
<p>It is the sprawling mixture of music and ideas on the record that makes is so fascinating, especially in hindsight. For example, Revolution 9 is a tape collage put together by Lennon and Yoko Ono echoing the experiments in this field by <a href="http://120years.net/the-grm-group-and-rtf-electronic-music-studio-pierre-schaeffer-jacques-poullin-france-1951/">RTF and GRM in France</a> and the <a href="https://www.soundonsound.com/people/story-bbc-radiophonic-workshop">BBC Radiophonic Workshop</a> in the UK and reviewed by the NME at the time as a “pretentious piece of old codswallop”. Birthday and Helter Skelter contain distorted blasts of guitar <a href="https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/general_music_news/is_helter_skelter_really_the_first_metal_song_ever_made_paul_mccartney_replies.html">prefiguring Heavy Metal</a>. McCartney was here trying to top The Who: “Pete Townshend said I Can See For Miles was the dirtiest, filthiest record ever, so we were trying to out-filth The Who.”</p>
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<p>There is also Lennon and McCartney’s trademark virtuoso vocal performances set to new diverse means (I’m So Tired, Happiness is a Warm Gun and Martha My Dear) and moments of great beauty such as Lennon’s <a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/julia/">tribute to his deceased mother</a>: Julia.</p>
<h2>Growing pleasures</h2>
<p>The Beatles’ closet allies though believed they had gone too far. Their producer, <a href="https://www.beatlesbible.com/people/george-martin/">George Martin</a>, probably recalling the perfection of albums such as “Revolver” (1966), famously declared on the Anthology documentary: “I thought we should probably have made a very, very good single album rather than a double,” while stalwart engineer <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/oct/03/beatles-recording-engineer-geoff-emerick-dies-age-72">Geoff Emerick</a> described the LP as “unlistenable”. </p>
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<p>Yet ultimately it is the messiness and eclecticism of the White Album that makes it so great – an aspect I tried to capture in <a href="https://headpress.com/product/the-beatles-white-album/">my book</a> of individual reflections on the songs on the LP by artists, poets, academics and performers. The White Album is perhaps the truest deconstruction of The Beatles as a unique group of musicians that we have.</p>
<p>And still the LP continues to fascinate. New York artist <a href="http://rutherfordchang.com/white.html">Rutherford Chang</a>’s response to the record is an obsessive project. Since 2006, Chang has collected as many copies of the LP as he can, no matter the state of decay (he currently holds around 2,200 copies). In fact, it is the individual modifications (markings and collaging on the cover, and so on) that make the collection so unique. Chang has also sonically layered multiple copies of the LP one on top of another so that those so familiar songs become unrecognisable – a phased mush of noise. </p>
<p>This is precisely the kind of iconoclastic experimentation that the Beatles themselves hoped to achieve with the original 1968 project. </p>
<p>The White Album may have contained the first hints at the limits to the Beatles longevity as a group. But its avant garde eclecticism, or what <a href="https://www.thebeatles.com/story-tags/barry-miles">Beatles biographer Barry Miles</a> referred to as “multipurpose Beatle music”, is one of the very things that ensures their work continues to inspire and provoke creativity 50 years on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104505/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Goodall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Fifty years after its release, the Beatles’ White Album continues to inspire and provoke creativity.
Mark Goodall, Senior Lecturer Film and Media, University of Bradford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/87547
2017-12-22T13:43:31Z
2017-12-22T13:43:31Z
Magical Mystery Tour: a rare Beatles flop – but it paved the way for Monty Python
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</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/november-8-2015-vector-illustration-beatles-337587353?src=JlUF0ktJHM7Ufa4zmEapnw-1-2">Shutterstock/Anita Ponne</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 50th anniversary of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was <a href="http://theconversation.com/sgt-peppers-at-50-the-greatest-thing-you-ever-heard-or-just-another-album-77458">much celebrated in 2017</a>. But this Christmas also marks 50 years since the release of another Beatles production that received much less critical acclaim – the Magical Mystery Tour film. </p>
<p>Much of the music within it was produced during a particularly fecund period (even by the Beatles’ standards) and is, or course, peerless – from the music hall echoes of Your Mother Should Know through the plaintive, melodic <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGEX_7IqaC4">Fool on the Hill</a> to the boundary breaking <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKIs1J_nB4A">I Am the Walrus</a>.</p>
<p>Unfortunately the film itself fell far short of that artistic bar. First broadcast on Boxing Day 1967, it is, to put it mildly, seriously flawed. Incoherent, sexist, technically shaky and verging on boring, history hasn’t been kind to its cinematic qualities. </p>
<p>Contemporary reviews and audience responses were also so generally scathing that Paul McCartney was moved to issue an apology of sorts to the television broadcast’s 20m viewers. He said in a <a href="http://www.beatlesinterviews.org/db67.html">hastily convened interview</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We don’t say it was a good film. It was our first attempt. If we goofed, then we goofed. It was a challenge and it didn’t come off. We’ll know better next time.</p>
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<p>Matters weren’t helped by the Beatles’ psychedelic, colourful exploration being broadcast in black and white on BBC1. A repeat on BBC2 (then the only colour TV service) a few days later did little to redress the situation, if only because there were <a href="https://www.radios-tv.co.uk/colour-lauches-in-the-uk/">fewer than 200,000 colour sets</a> in the UK at the time. </p>
<h2>Pushing institutional boundaries</h2>
<p>For all the defensiveness of McCartney’s response (“You could hardly call the Queen’s speech a gasser”) they do point towards some retrospectively mitigating aspects of the Magical Mystery Tour film. </p>
<p>The film’s distinctly British surrealism and cavalcade of barking sergeant majors, fat aunts, dolly birds, wacky racers and midgets clearly prefigured Monty Python’s explosion of absurdity into mainstream television. </p>
<p>Indeed, George Harrison said later on that he saw Monty Python as a <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/10-things-you-didnt-know-george-harrison-did-w452593">continuation of the spirit of the Beatles</a>. He also funded some of their films, including The Meaning of Life – whose notorious <a href="https://laughingsquid.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/terry-jones-talks-about-playing.jpg">Mr Creosote sketch</a> has visual echoes of a scene in Magical Mystery Tour where John Lennon, dressed as a waiter, serves pasta to Ringo’s fictional Aunt Jessie <a href="http://www.magicalmysterytour.com/wp-content/gallery/what-happened-lisa-uploads/siteedp4317-045-mf.png">by the spade full</a>.</p>
<p>What the Pythons added to the mix were sharply honed scripts. Magical Mystery Tour, by contrast, was almost entirely ad-libbed from a <a href="http://www.magicalmysterytour.com/wp-content/gallery/piechart2/piechart-911x1024.jpg">one-page diagram</a>. The Beatles’ skill as writers and arrangers was poured into their music instead. </p>
<p>Something else the Pythons had, and which the Beatles lacked, was the benefit of Oxbridge educations. Magical Mystery Tour’s sensibility was more rooted in working class entertainment and tropes than the Pythons’ Oxbridge-infused references. </p>
<p>The very concept of a coach journey – albeit one largely filmed at a decommissioned RAF base – was based on the “charabanc” trips (<a href="http://onabbeyroad.com/0mmt2.html">group bus excursions</a>) of the band members’ childhoods.</p>
<p>The film evokes the past – both a British past in general and, more specifically, as filtered through the Beatles’ own histories. It certainly shows them pushing the boundaries of what a rock band of four Liverpudlians (whose post-school education essentially took place in the nightclubs of Hamburg) could attempt, both artistically and institutionally. Their commercial and creative clout allowed them to broadcast the film during a key annual peak slot for British television viewing.</p>
<h2>Prime time</h2>
<p>Magical Mystery Tour occupied a particular space in the history of mass entertainment – from the “end of the pier” shows, through the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_McGill">Donald McGill</a> postcards that George Orwell defended against artistic snobbery, to the anarchic weirdness of the likes of Mr Blobby on Saturday night TV. </p>
<p>The Beatles infused that particular strand of entertainment with the forward looking experimentalism of their music, while retaining a characteristic, widely recognisable Britishness. It was this that paved the road for Python and others to follow.</p>
<p>That Magical Mystery Tour was their first real failure since breaking through into the mainstream was also partly a matter of practicalities. While still flowering creatively, they were logistically rudderless after the death earlier that year of their manager Brian Epstein. </p>
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<p>Their lack of understanding of the demands of editing a film foreshadowed their later <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/apple-the-short-strange-blossoming-of-the-beatles-dream-2113050.html">business-related shortcomings</a>, notably the Apple boutique and record label. If the latter of these was <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/neil-aspinall-beatles-friend-and-road-manager-who-became-the-boss-of-apple-800235.html">revived to become the familiar Beatles brand of today</a>, it was initially a costly failure that contributed to the band’s demise.</p>
<p>But while the film may have overreached, it still demonstrates a clear broadening of mainstream creative boundaries. Popular music fans were certainly receptive to their successful experiments. And even if the broader television public was less ready for a caustic, psychedelic vision of Britain in prime time during the Christmas holidays, Magical Mystery Tour still stands as a useful cultural document. </p>
<p>The Beatles being what they ultimately became, there’s much to be gleaned from their falls as well as their flights.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87547/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Behr receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>
The Fab Four made a less than fabulous film.
Adam Behr, Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/75421
2017-05-12T11:19:34Z
2017-05-12T11:19:34Z
Ten ways the UK could ensure a Eurovision triumph
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163162/original/image-20170329-8577-1pmxx3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=20%2C693%2C3435%2C1629&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Iron Maiden at Ottawa Bluesfest in 2012.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/ekozPj">ceedub13/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Eurovision song contest is about to roll around again, and it’s safe to say the UK’s chances are about as horrible as ever – even the UK entrant, former X-Factor contestant Lucie Jones, said she would just be happy <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2017/05/10/eurovision-2017-uk-entry-lucie-jones-high-hopes-final-just/">not to come last</a>. And with Brexit now thrown into the mix, the country’s status on the continent has seen better days. But the UK’s most valuable cultural capital isn’t traded on the London Stock Exchange. No – it’s rock n roll.</p>
<p>Classic rock, punk rock, glam rock, space rock, heavy metal, indie rock, gothic rock – ask anyone in the world to list their favourite bands and it’s likely that one of the names on the list will be British. But going on the UK’s Eurovision entries alone you’d be forgiven for thinking this wasn’t the case. Another year, another forgettable song. Each time earnestly losing while <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1022689/UK-quit-Eurovision-amid-fears-tactical-voting-turning-competition-farce.html">lamenting the politicisation</a> of the contest. </p>
<p>No more, I say. It’s time to troll the competition with the cynical self-awareness that truly makes the UK. No one likes us? In the immortal words of Johnny Rotten: we don’t care. With that in mind here are ten bands that would greatly improve Britain’s chances.</p>
<p><strong>1. The Darkness</strong></p>
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<p>Catsuits, innuendo, and a wall of Marshall amps. With their debut album, Permission to Land, reaching quadruple platinum in the UK, The Darkness are arguably the last of the British Rock megastars. It’s hard to imagine a band winning a BRIT Award for “best album” with a classic rock record ever again, but that’s what this band from Lowestoft, in Suffolk, did in 2004.</p>
<p>The Darkness have it in them to write one last tongue-in-cheek hit. At Eurovision, Brits would either ride high or crash and burn in a sea of smiles (and glitter, and fireworks). What could be better than that?</p>
<p><strong>2. Iron Maiden</strong></p>
<p>Remember when the Finnish metal band Lordi won Eurovision in 2006? Well, they did. And they did so in full demon make-up, with a song called <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAh9NRGNhUU">Hard Rock Hallelujah</a>. It’s about time Britain reminded its neighbours who invented camp, theatrical, leather-clad heavy metal in the first place.</p>
<p>You don’t have to be a huge Iron Maiden fan to think a flaming 666 and a giant puppet called “Eddie” would be a spectacle to behold (and win votes) at Eurovision. Also, Bruce Dickinson is an accomplished fencer and commercial pilot. Are you? Well then.</p>
<p><strong>3. Paul McCartney</strong></p>
<p>“Hey Paul, fancy entering Eurovision this year?”</p>
<p>“Nope.”</p>
<p>“None of that hippy stuff though – we need you to ROCK!”</p>
<p>“I said no.”</p>
<p>Probably should’ve waited before cashing in the knighthood. But let’s face it, Macca is worth ten Engelbert Humperdincks.</p>
<p><strong>4. PINS</strong></p>
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<p>If we wanted some young blood in the competition there are few better bands around today. Take PINS, a rock band formed in Manchester in 2011. Their low-fi indie pop style isn’t very Eurovision, but that’s exactly the point. Britain’s too cool to care about winning anyway.</p>
<p><strong>5. Adele</strong></p>
<p>Something of a segue from a fairly throwback-style list, but come on. If winning was top priority, the BBC would move heaven and earth to enter Adele and <a href="http://wiwibloggs.com/2013/12/30/editorial-adele-sing-uk-eurovision/35697/">I’m not the first to say so</a>. Eminently likeable and multi-platinum in most countries on the planet, if anyone could win it, it’s her.</p>
<p><strong>6. Happy Mondays</strong></p>
<p>You can’t get much more British than unleashing a bunch of Mancunian party animals onto an unsuspecting European city. Seeing Bez, Shaun and the gang dancing away is something to get behind. Britain’s cousins on the mainland might not “get it”, but clearly a vote against them would be a vote against fun. You don’t hate fun, do you, Europe?</p>
<p><strong>7. Manic Street Preachers</strong></p>
<p>Despite being an elder statesman type figure in British indie today, the Manics continue to introduce fresh styles to their work. But, as their 2016 Welsh <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmHnnkzgjCI">football anthem</a> proves, they’re never shy of the pop limelight either. Would they mix it up with some europop or go full post-punk? Who knows? But they’re always on form and usually up for a laugh.</p>
<p><strong>8. Girlschool</strong></p>
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<p>If heavy metal culture emerged in Britain, so too did its subversion. Not only did Girlschool hold their own in the overwhelmingly male-dominated genre throughout the 70s and 80s, but managed to maintain a worldwide fanbase across punk and metal subgenres– their influence <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/nightmare-at-maple-cross-mw0000839846">credited</a> with reaching the American Riot Grrrl movement. The US had Joan Jett; in the UK there was Girlschool. Luckily for the Brits, aside from the unfortunate loss of Kelly Johnson in 2007, they are still playing.</p>
<p><strong>9. The Wildhearts</strong></p>
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<p>Ginger Wildheart’s prolific output since the band’s 90s heyday demonstrates arguably the biggest songwriting chops on this list. With former bass player Danny McCormack back on the scene after having his leg amputated and now supporting his old band with his new outfit, The Main Grains, the past year has seen the unlikely reunion of a pair that “<a href="http://teamrock.com/feature/2016-11-29/ginger-wildheart-danny-mccormack-and-i-should-both-be-dead-by-now">should both be dead</a>” by their own admission. The Wildhearts unite a motley fanbase that spans sub-genres that embody all that is shambolic, chaotic and perennially underdog in cheerful chorus. They’re ideal ambassadors for British music.</p>
<p><strong>10. Morrissey</strong></p>
<p>OK. So we’ll probably never get the Smiths reunion, and this is a pretty unlikely suggestion anyway, but it would be the ultimate trolling. Sending Mozza out to perform the most miserable song he can come up with, sitting awkwardly through interviews, would be a wonderful sight. </p>
<p>He could recreate his 1994 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_Bh-G9whv4">collaboration</a> with Siouxie for maximum indie points.</p>
<h2>Honourable mentions</h2>
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<p><strong>Motorhead</strong>: if Lemmy was still alive he’d probably tell you where to stick the suggestion, but how cool would that be? There’s always <strong>Asomvel</strong> though. <strong>Cardiacs</strong>: again, <a href="http://www.cardiacs.net/news/">tragic health circumstances</a> rule this one out. But it would have been a win/win. <strong>Siouxie Sioux</strong>: so cool and everyone knows it. You may not hear much from her fans by day, but by night they dance the world over. <strong>Black Sabbath</strong>: the UK would place in the top half on street cred alone. <strong>Sleaford Mods</strong>: anti-pop perfection. <strong>The Slits</strong> and <strong>X-Ray Spex</strong>: Oh Ari. Oh Poly. Oh Eurovision! Up Yours! How the world needs you now … <strong>1919</strong>: I won’t hold my breath, but audiences would be well up for the gig.</p>
<h2>Playing to strengths</h2>
<p>With the UK’s nations competing separately in most sporting events, international competition usually manages to deepen rather than heal divisions in British culture. But while it would be a delusion to suggest Eurovision could magically heal the wounds of Brexit Britain, it could provide a much needed moment of shared cultural celebration. This isn’t an exhaustive list either. If not the Manics, <strong>Super Furry Animals</strong> would be an excellent Welsh choice, while north of the border <strong>Biffy Clyro</strong>, <strong>Primal Scream</strong>, or <strong>The Jesus and Mary Chain</strong> would be ideal entries.</p>
<p>In 2009, music fans in the UK <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/dec/20/rage-against-machine-christmas-number-1">hijacked the charts</a> to push <strong>Rage Against the Machine</strong> to Christmas No 1. Is it far-fetched to imagine fans across Europe doing the same for Iron Maiden or Biffy? Of course not. Just as Adele does, these artists are headlining stadium tours across Europe, and yet the UK has backed <a href="http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2017-01-30/former-x-factor-contestant-lucie-jones-will-represent-the-uk-at-eurovision-2017">another X-Factor candidate in Jones</a>. Jones has a nice voice, sure. But the question Britain should be asking is this: will it mobilise the Lordi vote? The answer is probably not.</p>
<p>If Britain is true to its musical history and has fun with it, it should at least be enough to earn a begrudging respect from rivals, if nothing else. And surely that’s the most quintessentially British ambition to pursue?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75421/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rio Goldhammer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
For many years now the UK has been a Eurovision laughing stock, despite a wealth of pop talent. What about if it was to pick one of these sure-fire rockstar winners instead?
Rio Goldhammer, Doctoral Researcher in Leisure Studies, Leeds Beckett University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/49937
2015-11-05T11:10:49Z
2015-11-05T11:10:49Z
Sam Smith’s ambitious attempt to reshape the Bond song lands with a whimper
<p>Like most James Bond fans, we couldn’t wait to hear the theme song for Spectre, the 24th installment in the series. And having just spent two years writing <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-James-Bond-Songs-Capitalism/dp/0190234520">a book about Bond songs</a>, we were hoping it’d get people excited about what these songs can do. </p>
<p>But when we did finally hear Sam Smith’s Writing’s on the Wall, we were disappointed. </p>
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<p>The Bond songs have always behaved differently from your average theme song. Five to 10 minutes into an exciting spy movie, the action stops and we get three minutes of abstract visuals and a mysterious, vaguely threatening, vaguely old-timey song. Sometimes, just by making us sit there and listen, these odd songs can get us thinking about why we care about pop music in the first place.</p>
<p>Writing’s on the Wall never quite turns into a Bond song. It kind of acts like it will: it’s got a throwback melody, the strings and horns of its forebears, and a deliberateness that reminds you of Adele’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeumyOzKqgI">Skyfall</a>. </p>
<p>Still, it’s missing something. </p>
<p>A Bond song like Paul McCartney’s Live and Let Die threw everything into the mix: old-time-pop piano, hard-rock power chords, orchestral freakouts, demented reggae, schoolyard-taunt backing vocals. And it didn’t seem to worry whether or not these elements would cohere. </p>
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<p>On the other hand, Writing’s on the Wall is a title song for the YouTube age. Like the viral hits <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ed/Nyan_cat_250px_frame.PNG">Nyan Cat</a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqSTXuJeTks">Leave Britney Alone</a>, it does only one thing; it has only one mood and one sound: Sam Smith’s voice – in particular, his aching falsetto. </p>
<p>And what does that sound have to do with James Bond?</p>
<p>Most of the earliest commentators heard Smith’s song the same way we did. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2015/sep/25/sam-smith-james-bond-theme-writing-on-the-wall">According to The Guardian</a>, Writing’s on the Wall is so slow, so long, “you need a high falsetto threshold to get through the whole thing.” </p>
<p>The song’s only memorable feature is that very falsetto, Smith’s “familiar Winnie-the-Pooh-is-lonely-and-crying vocals,” as one reviewer <a href="http://www.hitfix.com/the-dartboard/is-sam-smiths-writings-on-the-wall-a-bond-classic">put it</a>. And Pooh was one of the more flattering comparisons. Everyone who weighed in – critics, musicians, fans – felt like Smith’s falsetto was doing something strange to James Bond’s manhood.</p>
<p>But since when did Bond’s masculinity ever make sense? This is a franchise in which 30-something female singers perform songs written by middle-aged men that warn 20-year-old women about a 30-year-old man played by a 40-year-old actor – all to titillate 13-year-old boys. </p>
<p>Once you start to imagine the kind of voice that could truly speak to the hypersexual James Bond, you realize there’s no way to do it seriously. It’s no accident that some of the best Bond songs are the campiest (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCiqsrB2zTc">Goldfinger</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNA7DcVppEs">Nobody Does It Better</a>), and that women have sung them.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100805/original/image-20151104-29070-1qwx3fo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100805/original/image-20151104-29070-1qwx3fo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100805/original/image-20151104-29070-1qwx3fo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100805/original/image-20151104-29070-1qwx3fo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100805/original/image-20151104-29070-1qwx3fo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100805/original/image-20151104-29070-1qwx3fo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100805/original/image-20151104-29070-1qwx3fo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100805/original/image-20151104-29070-1qwx3fo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Matt Monro, the voice behind From Russia With Love.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Matt_Monro.png">Capitol Records/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It seems that Smith confronts the Bond songs’ last taboo: thou shalt not challenge traditional masculinity. Even though the songs have rarely, if ever, sought to mimic Bond’s manliness, they seem to have a much easier time with masculine-sounding women than with feminine-sounding men. </p>
<p>The first male Bond singer was Matt Monro, a classic crooner. Next came Tom Jones, whose Thunderball tries to be an ode to Bond’s virility (and tries so hard, in fact, that poor Tom Jones <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1544163">passed out singing it</a>). </p>
<p>Paul McCartney amplified his usual sobriety with some 70s swagger in Live and Let Die. The new-wave acts Duran Duran and A-ha went for some high notes, but in service of punchy pop songs about dying and dancing and fire. The last men to sing Bond songs before Smith were aging rock stars like Chris Cornell and Jack White, whose grizzled voices reminded us that rock itself had long grown old.</p>
<p>None of these male Bond singers makes a virtue of the fact that they’re nothing like James Bond – not even the belly-flopping Jones, nor the “I’m still here” post-Beatles McCartney. </p>
<p>Smith does. His song has the first sustained falsetto in the Bond-song canon, and Smith doesn’t exactly hide this. The instrumentation recedes, the orchestra pipes down, and in a moment of almost melodramatic vulnerability Smith tells us he can’t breathe, maybe can’t even live. </p>
<p>To think that a Bond song proposes that you can be vulnerable, excitable, anxious and still be a man – no wonder some fans freaked out.</p>
<p>At the same time, the song’s most audacious move is also its most problematic. </p>
<p>That’s because simply equating falsetto with vulnerability – as both Smith and critics of his song seem to do – is a pretty dramatic misreading of falsetto’s cultural history, a history in which falsetto has signified power as much as delicacy.</p>
<p>Of course, Smith has mined the falsetto time and again. There are few tracks on his 2014 album In the Lonely Hour that don’t have any falsetto. But Smith can do a sexy falsetto, a coy falsetto, even a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3BLywhPiF4">menacing falsetto</a>. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, Writing’s on the Wall instead goes for what The Atlantic <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/09/writings-on-the-wall-sam-smiths-radically-wimpy-james-bond-theme/407383/">calls</a> a “radically wimpy” stance. And it’s a stance that has as much to do with race as it does with masculinity.</p>
<p>Smith’s falsetto is powered by white male agency: the hand-snipping, ain’t-I-a-stinker falsetto of the prep-school a capella singer. </p>
<p>He represses the mode of falsetto typical to soul music – a falsetto that’s seductive and persuasive, one that plays off a deep groove and can even read as vaguely threatening (think of Prince’s <a href="http://www.discogs.com/Prince-And-The-Revolution-Kiss/master/16168">Kiss</a>). As Sam Smith takes one step forward by making room for nontraditional masculinity in the Bond song, he takes a big step back by making his gay male voice a white gay male voice.</p>
<p>So why does Writing’s on the Wall retreat into whiteness, and why is it so single-minded? </p>
<p>What’s Smith afraid of? </p>
<p>Probably the market: us, his audience. He doesn’t trust his listeners – or himself – to live with the tensions and contradictions that Bond songs have always flaunted. </p>
<p>Most Bond singers are scared of what they might do to the Bond-song tradition; Smith is scared of what that tradition might do to him. But Smith’s impulse toward self-preservation becomes the song’s power source; his fear-response is to make himself look fragile, to sound small just when you expect the song to go big. And vulnerability is Smith’s strength. Fright is his comfort zone. </p>
<p>Writing’s on the Wall does the Bond song backwards – which means that like the best of these songs, it makes us ask what the Bond song is good for.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49937/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Sam Smith’s Writing’s on the Wall confronts the last taboo of the canon: Bond’s hypermasculinity.
Adrian Daub, Associate Professor of German Studies, Stanford University
Charles Kronengold, Assistant Professor of Musicology, Stanford University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/48575
2015-11-03T02:10:19Z
2015-11-03T02:10:19Z
Musical literacy: a skill of some note(s)
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97140/original/image-20151004-23109-8qosnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Music notation itself has changed from the early modern period to the present day.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/58558794@N07/5428554536/in/photolist-9MY1Gf-9bU3gu-9gGLeC-fQeqp1-fQenso-fPWPoT-fPWSjn-fPWQgF-fQepy9-fTVAbT-oVk6AH-oCQtn7-fPWRsg-oCQZN4-oTibAj-fN5mLn-cRqHWw-cRqLtA-cRqFWs-oVieg3-9gGL8S-a6hP8t-fPWR54-fPWQC4-oVigwA-cRqCuG-cRqK9d-cRqDDG-cRqEUb-cRqGW7-cRqBtW-oCQ7uz-oTidmd-oV4qfV-oVifsS-oCQ7b8-oCQZ2K-oCQLsh-oVig5U-oV4qsP-oCQtS5-fTVF9Q">Provenance Online Project/flickr</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Earlier this year a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/the-beatles/11750393/Very-musical-Heather-Mills-teaches-her-daughter-saxophone-because-Paul-McCartney-cant-read-music.html">story ran in the UK press</a> which revealed that it was Heather Mills who taught her daughter music, not her ex-husband, Sir Paul McCartney, because he cannot read music notation. McCartney and John Lennon left the job of notating their music for the Beatles to producer George Martin.</p>
<p>The news was received with frisson in some quarters, suggesting that a central goal of traditional music education, the ability to read music, was, self-evidently, unnecessary for a career, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/aug/09/gcses">let alone a qualification</a>, in music.</p>
<p>Given the ongoing threat to the funding of such music education in schools it certainly gives us pause for thought.</p>
<p>Should we teach music notation? Should the ability to read music be a prerequisite to take a music degree or, indeed, teach music?</p>
<p>This is much more than simply an academic question. After all, a specialist music teacher represents a significant investment by the state.</p>
<h2>More than simply notes on a page?</h2>
<p>Musical literacy is indeed no longer a prerequisite skill in many of the degree courses in music emerging at major Western universities. This is particularly true of courses that focus on popular musical genres and music production.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97145/original/image-20151005-13652-12qf70o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97145/original/image-20151005-13652-12qf70o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97145/original/image-20151005-13652-12qf70o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97145/original/image-20151005-13652-12qf70o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97145/original/image-20151005-13652-12qf70o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97145/original/image-20151005-13652-12qf70o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97145/original/image-20151005-13652-12qf70o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97145/original/image-20151005-13652-12qf70o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Music production today is largely concerned with technology rather than notation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anna Baburkina/www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This shift reflects not so much the example of McCartney and others. Rather, technological advances in music production have all but obliterated the need for popular music to be transcribed into musical notation for it to be exchanged between producers, performers, and listeners.</p>
<p>Recall that it was not so long ago when the latest commercial musical hits could be bought as sheet music to be played at home on the piano or guitar. Sheet music may still be available today, but in the digital era, neither the creation nor the consumption of music demands mediation through a written score.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97149/original/image-20151005-13667-e9uu52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97149/original/image-20151005-13667-e9uu52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97149/original/image-20151005-13667-e9uu52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=786&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97149/original/image-20151005-13667-e9uu52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=786&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97149/original/image-20151005-13667-e9uu52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=786&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97149/original/image-20151005-13667-e9uu52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97149/original/image-20151005-13667-e9uu52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97149/original/image-20151005-13667-e9uu52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=988&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Popular sheet music: Wonderful World of Disney (1970).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/randar/15003892477/in/photolist-oRQSvk-o57WDc-sco9qK-6UzK8B-5znSy-bsphig-dQybw7-5HHk2x-acFQL3-dkDvuz-577EuC-acFVpE-b86UBF-6UDNJo-ooReK7-oFiWxf-r4v3ys-4Yv8Je-5qbhui-6TdpYP-deqSR6-c2CpyA-5tiVio-kSxTQo-2m7fx-bzZCH-qHhZN3-5WxC3z-acD82R-ae6DTE-8M5vZi-gcQr5-gcQwN-7FSYiS-cXNaiQ-7xBBf9-e5MRTP-6UzK8T-QSp9F-akDm47-3ZMi1-8M5w1a-auP1F6-7JyRQp-7waaNV-gky66D-5WxChk-4xv1vu-kSwT6R-kSxeQe">Tom Simpson/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the tertiary level, I suspect this emerging lack of confidence in music notation can also be traced to a broader, utopian urge to rid the world of old-fashioned hegemonic norms and institutional values.</p>
<p>The teaching of notation as a cornerstone of music education can appear to some as merely “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5ApYxkU-U">just another brick in the wall</a>”, as Pink Floyd would have it; a means of subsuming individual artistic freedom into predetermined patterns of thought.</p>
<p>We thus end up with a rather Orwellian notion educational idea that here, at least, ignorance is strength.</p>
<p>Preordained systems of communication like musical notation are inevitably normative, and thus potentially oppressive to the creative expression of individuals and minorities.</p>
<p>The abolition of such norms has become, according to <a href="http://newleftreview.org/II/92/fredric-jameson-the-aesthetics-of-singularity">a recent essay</a> by the great theorist of postmodernism Frederick Jameson, “a burning political issue”, often associated with “identity politics and the politics of secessionist groups and marginal or oppressed cultures.”</p>
<h2>Preserving music, preserving culture</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97150/original/image-20151005-13654-1rbyygi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97150/original/image-20151005-13654-1rbyygi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97150/original/image-20151005-13654-1rbyygi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97150/original/image-20151005-13654-1rbyygi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97150/original/image-20151005-13654-1rbyygi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1096&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97150/original/image-20151005-13654-1rbyygi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1096&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97150/original/image-20151005-13654-1rbyygi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1096&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Symbolum Nicenum from the Mass in B minor (1749) (BWV 232), by Johann Sebastian Bach.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bach_Symbolum.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To be sure, musical notation is indeed a reductive system that inevitably shapes and limits what it attempts to describe.</p>
<p>But it still provides the most powerful means yet developed for turning the musical work into something preservable, transferable, and analysable. It connects us to well over a millennium’s worth of historical music practice. Above all, it allows us to render music into object of heightened critical contemplation. </p>
<p>Just as the printed word not only made it possible not just to preserve, but also deconstruct and reflect upon the various ways we construct words to help give meaning to our world, musical notation gave us a similar capacity to reflect deeply on how music does the same.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97151/original/image-20151005-13679-ubpjx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97151/original/image-20151005-13679-ubpjx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97151/original/image-20151005-13679-ubpjx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97151/original/image-20151005-13679-ubpjx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97151/original/image-20151005-13679-ubpjx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97151/original/image-20151005-13679-ubpjx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97151/original/image-20151005-13679-ubpjx9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robert Schumann’s draft for Des Abends from Fantasiestücke (1837), Op. 12, Nr. 1.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schumann_-_Des_Abends_-_draft.jpg">Sotheby's/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Rather than being a utopian moment of artistic (and thus political) freedom, an emerging loss of confidence in notated musical culture might in fact foretell its very opposite: a loss of a particular type of imaginative, historical, and political capacity in our society. </p>
<p>As early as 1938, in the provocatively titled essay “<a href="http://www.musiccog.ohio-state.edu/Music839B/Approaches/Adorno.html">On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening</a>”, the German philosopher and social critic Theodor Adorno suggested what such a loss might mean in practice. The real dichotomy faced by Western musical culture, he thought, was not between “light” and “serious” music but rather “between music that was market-oriented and music that was not”.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97169/original/image-20151005-11321-lucq0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97169/original/image-20151005-11321-lucq0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97169/original/image-20151005-11321-lucq0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97169/original/image-20151005-11321-lucq0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97169/original/image-20151005-11321-lucq0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97169/original/image-20151005-11321-lucq0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1000&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97169/original/image-20151005-11321-lucq0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1000&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97169/original/image-20151005-11321-lucq0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1000&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Don t Jazz Me - Rag (1921), by James Scott.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Don%27t_Jazz_Me_Rag_2.jpg">Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A significant question the music critic must ask, then, is: to what extent is the music offering any resistance to its appropriation as a tool in social and economic domination?</p>
<p>Adorno was deeply distrusting of what he thought was the pseudo folk-culture around popular music. In his analysis, this ethos concealed a commercial imperative that was premised on manipulation and imposition of the populace from above.</p>
<p>So the role of tertiary music institutions in preserving the forms and critical tools of musical culture is crucial. As musicologist Ian Pace <a href="https://ianpace.wordpress.com/2015/09/23/musicological-observations-4-can-commercial-music-be-research/">wrote recently</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>(Tertiary music education should) provide arenas where it is possible to carry out intellectual and creative (and other) work, involving genuinely independent critical and self-critical thinking, in which few things are taken as read, everything is rigorously questioned on a regular basis, with a fair degree of autonomy from commercial or other external function.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Music and late capitalism</h2>
<p>What might a world without a critical music culture look and sound like? Some commentators suggest we already know.</p>
<p>For cultural historian Ted Gioia, music criticism is becoming mere “<a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/18/music-criticism-has-degenerated-into-lifestyle-reporting.html">lifestyle reporting</a>”. Or as music critic Jessica Duchen <a href="http://jessicamusic.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/why-pop-is-played-everywhere-you-go.html">suggests</a>, pop music itself is becoming “watered-down tat with scant musical content, using only a few basic chords.”</p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-34357110">good example</a> might be found in Sam Smith’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVRRj3wAeE0">Writing’s on the Wall</a> (2015), the theme song for the latest Bond film. Heightened music production values cannot rescue incoherent lyrics and an unimaginative melodic and rhythmic design. It should flop, but it hasn’t.</p>
<p>We should be asking ourselves why this is the case.</p>
<p>Surely our capacity to make such evaluative judgements depends in part on an educated musical populace. Music notation is a key tool in being able to turn mere opinion into forensic judgement.</p>
<p>Might an emerging lack of confidence in the educational centrality of music notation really be just another manifestation of the <a href="http://newleftreview.org/I/146/fredric-jameson-postmodernism-or-the-cultural-logic-of-late-capitalism">cultural logic of late capitalism</a>? </p>
<p>Whatever we think, maybe educational debates like these should occasionally be couched at such a level. Questions like these, after all, are what higher education in the arts should be about. Questions about what it means to be rational agents in civil society, and what kinds of investments – educational and economic – we need to make to sustain such a society. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97147/original/image-20151005-13669-efkvhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97147/original/image-20151005-13669-efkvhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97147/original/image-20151005-13669-efkvhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97147/original/image-20151005-13669-efkvhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97147/original/image-20151005-13669-efkvhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97147/original/image-20151005-13669-efkvhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97147/original/image-20151005-13669-efkvhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97147/original/image-20151005-13669-efkvhc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Music notation has, and continues to be, essential for preserving music.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Africa Studio/www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Oh, and just for the record, Lennon and McCartney may not have read music. But you can be quite sure that pretty much everyone else involved in the transfer of their musical ideas into monuments of world culture did.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/48575/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Tregear does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Technological advances in music production have all but obliterated the need for popular music to be transcribed into musical notation. So why is musical literacy still important?
Peter Tregear, Teaching Fellow, Royal Holloway University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/47590
2015-09-15T15:18:56Z
2015-09-15T15:18:56Z
The internet is eating your memory, but something better is taking its place
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94849/original/image-20150915-29607-onz075.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Computer memory goes up; ours comes down</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&searchterm=memory%20loss&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=98211377">Lightspring</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the years since the world started going digital, one of the big changes has been that we don’t need to remember very much. Why risk forgetting a partner’s birthday or a dinner date with a close friend when you can commit the details to your computer, laptop, smartphone or tablet and get a reminder at the appropriate time?</p>
<p>Paul McCartney <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jul/31/the-beatles-forgot-dozens-of-songs">gave a</a> useful insight into this in an interview. He claimed that back in the 1960s The Beatles may have written dozens of songs that were never released because he and John Lennon would forget the songs the following morning. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We would write a song and just have to remember it. And there was always the risk that we’d just forget it. If the next morning you couldn’t remember it – it was gone. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>How different to the way he records now then, when he can “form the thing, have it all finished, remember it all, go in pretty quickly and record it”. </p>
<p>With technology now well ingratiated into our everyday life, researchers have been investigating the lasting impact that it is having on the way that we learn and remember information. Some research has <a href="https://blog.kaspersky.com/files/2015/06/005-Kaspersky-Digital-Amnesia-19.6.15.pdf">suggested that</a> our reliance on technology and the internet is leading to “digital amnesia”, where individuals are no longer able to retain information as a result of storing information on a digital device. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://blog.kaspersky.com/files/2015/06/005-Kaspersky-Digital-Amnesia-19.6.15.pdf">one study</a>, for example, 1000 consumers aged 16 and over were asked about their use of technology. It found that 91% of them depended on the internet and digital devices as a tool for remembering. In another survey of 6000 people, the same study found that 71% of people could not remember their children’s phone numbers and 57% could not remember their work phone number. This suggests that relying on digital devices to remember information is impairing our own memory systems.</p>
<h2>The upgrade</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94838/original/image-20150915-29648-i80afj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94838/original/image-20150915-29648-i80afj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94838/original/image-20150915-29648-i80afj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94838/original/image-20150915-29648-i80afj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94838/original/image-20150915-29648-i80afj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94838/original/image-20150915-29648-i80afj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94838/original/image-20150915-29648-i80afj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94838/original/image-20150915-29648-i80afj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Who you calling stoopid?’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&search_tracking_id=CmZ-M-TSyzKsE_Zx9-bcRA&searchterm=ostrich%20eye&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=13502884">Four Oaks</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But before we mourn this apparent loss of memory, more recent studies suggest that we may be adapting. <a href="http://twileshare.com/uploads/Science-2011-Sparrow-776-8.pdf">One such study from 2011</a> conducted a series of experiments looking at how our memories rely on computers. In one of them, participants were asked to type a series of statements, such as “an ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain”. </p>
<p>Half of them were told that their documents would be saved, and half were told that they would not. Everyone was then tested to see if they could remember what they had typed. Those who had been told their work would be saved were significantly poorer at remembering the information. </p>
<p>In another experiment, participants were asked to type a series of statements that would be saved in specific folders. They were then asked to recall the statements and the folders in which the files were located. Overall, they were better at recalling the file locations than the statements. The conclusion from the two experiments? Technology has changed the way we organise information so that we only remember details which are no longer available, and prioritise the location of information over the content itself. </p>
<h2>Group mind</h2>
<p>This idea that individuals prioritise where information is located has led some researchers to <a href="http://scholar.harvard.edu/dwegner/publications/computer-network-model-human-transactive-memory">propose that</a> digital devices and the internet have become a form of transactive memory. This idea, which <a href="http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-4612-4634-3_9">dates back to</a> the 1980s, refers to a group memory that is superior to that of any individual. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94837/original/image-20150915-29611-1pwl7lm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94837/original/image-20150915-29611-1pwl7lm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94837/original/image-20150915-29611-1pwl7lm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94837/original/image-20150915-29611-1pwl7lm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94837/original/image-20150915-29611-1pwl7lm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94837/original/image-20150915-29611-1pwl7lm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94837/original/image-20150915-29611-1pwl7lm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94837/original/image-20150915-29611-1pwl7lm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hive talkin’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&searchterm=group%20think&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=140181325">djem</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to this account, individuals can collectively store and distribute information using a shared store of knowledge. This store of knowledge means that individuals can access details that they may not know themselves by knowing that another individual remembers it, thus enhancing what information is available to them by communicating with other people. In the same way, <a href="http://twileshare.com/uploads/Science-2011-Sparrow-776-8.pdf">individuals develop</a> a transactive memory with the internet and rely on it for information by focusing on where details are located rather than the details themselves. </p>
<p>More recent research has extended this line of work and found that saving information on a computer not only changes how our brains interact with it, but also makes it easier to learn new information. In <a href="http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/12/09/0956797614559285.abstract">a study</a> published last year, the participants were presented with two files that each contained a list of words. They were asked to memorise both lists. Half of the participants were asked to save the first file before moving on to the next list, while the others had to close it without saving. </p>
<p>The experiment revealed that the participants recalled significantly more information from the second file if they had saved the previous file. This suggests that by saving or “offloading” information on to a computer, we are freeing up cognitive resources that enable us to memorise and recall new information instead. </p>
<p>In sum, anyone worrying that technology is wrecking one of our most important abilities should take some reassurance from these findings. It doesn’t necessarily mean that there is no cause for concern: for instance McCartney said in the same interview that the songs in the 1960s that did make it to the recording studio were the most memorable ones. So it is possible that the lack of technology made The Beatles better songwriters. </p>
<p>But it may be that just as oral storytelling was usurped by the written word, having digital devices to outsource our memories means that it is no longer necessary for us to try to remember everything. And if we can now remember more with a little help from our technology friends, that is arguably a great step forward. Rather than worrying about what we have lost, perhaps we need to focus on what we have gained.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47590/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Saima Noreen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The modern world’s effect on our ability to remember has got an ugly name. But digital amnesia is not a one-way street. Technology may be helping us to remember more than it has caused us to forget.
Saima Noreen, Lecturer in Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/35895
2015-01-14T19:31:32Z
2015-01-14T19:31:32Z
Hey, Sir Paul! Studying popular music doesn’t actually kill it
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68778/original/image-20150113-23789-1d5z5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sir Paul McCartney thinks it's ridiculous (but flattering) that people formally study The Beatles.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Robert Voss</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sir Paul McCartney has been making some waves. On New Year’s Eve, Kanye West released a new single, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUMOQct042g">Only One</a>, a collaboration with The Beatles great on keys. On Twitter, Kanye’s fans reacted, wanting to know “<a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/brianmcmanus/paul-mccartney-mystery#.qmzL0r60W">who is Paul McCartney</a>?” The broad reaction to this was particularly telling.</p>
<p>Mild panic ensued when the event was <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/people-tweet-kanye-west-has-discovered-paul-mccartney-have-to-fight-the-entire-internet-to-explain-the-joke-9957574.html">expertly exploited by a clever Twitter jokester</a> (below), highlighting the esteem in which Sir Paul is still held by many – and the very real fear some have that he might actually be forgotten one day.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"551042428523020289"}"></div></p>
<p>Just as telling were Sir Paul’s views on teaching popular music in universities that gently wafted from <a href="http://www.paulmccartney.com/news-blogs/news/paul-and-lily-cole-discuss-hope-for-the-future-full-transcript">a Q&A conducted on Lily Cole’s Impossible website</a> across the digital transom and onto the news feeds of the usual platforms. </p>
<h2>Why study pop music?</h2>
<p>Sir Paul’s main claim was that the whole idea of the formal study of popular music at the tertiary level was <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/paul-mccartney-flattered-beatles-in-history-books-20141229">“ridiculous” but flattering</a>.</p>
<p>It wasn’t so much the mere fact of his objections to tertiary study of popular music that brought me up short. These are common enough as to constitute a whole sub-genre of empty rhetoric. It was his justifications for them that caught my attention. These should be of interest to anyone interested in studying popular music. </p>
<p>First and foremost, Sir Paul’s views are rooted in <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-30641029">a rich nostalgia</a> for his youth: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We would record four tracks in a day - which is unheard of now - and those four tracks still sell more than most contemporary records. So obviously the system was pretty good. It was very simple, you had to just be very disciplined … we knew we had to play great.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Of course this was probably about 1963, a time when making music was a very different thing from what it is now. Like all musicians, The Beatles faced their own trials. But, with all due respect, these pale in comparison to the challenges facing musicians today. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68787/original/image-20150113-23792-t021s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68787/original/image-20150113-23792-t021s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68787/original/image-20150113-23792-t021s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68787/original/image-20150113-23792-t021s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68787/original/image-20150113-23792-t021s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68787/original/image-20150113-23792-t021s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68787/original/image-20150113-23792-t021s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68787/original/image-20150113-23792-t021s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kanye West and his entourage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ethan Bloch</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Beatles didn’t have to worry about the finer points of their licensing deal with a video-game company or raising the money to record their album from a fickle public rather than Parlophone or EMI. They didn’t have to continually massage their relationship with cranky music blogs or constantly reshape their social media profile to make sure they were trending at the right time. </p>
<p>More importantly, in terms of <a href="http://theconversation.com/stairway-to-hell-life-and-death-in-the-pop-music-industry-32735">health, longevity</a> and <a href="http://2014.australiacouncil.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/79108/Do_you_really_expect_to_get_paid.pdf">financial compensation</a>, being a professional musician is simply a lot harder than it was 50 years ago. </p>
<p>The music industry has been a demanding, often corrupt, even exploitative place to work for far longer than YouTube, Sony and Spotify have been bilking musicians out of fair compensation for their music. Even if a university degree does nothing more than convince young musicians to lawyer up from day one, it will have done some good in the world.</p>
<p>Given the obstacles the vast majority of musicians face, a few years of intense study in such diverse fields as history, aesthetics, law, economics, psychology or media, all with a heavy dose critical thinking, would seem be to a prerequisite, not a luxury. </p>
<h2>Myth of The Great Artist</h2>
<p>Sir Paul also worries that some bright-eyed youth might turn up to university thinking they will somehow emerge in a few years as a songwriting legend.</p>
<p>Sir Paul objects, however, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-30641029">saying</a> “you can’t tell them how to become a Bob Dylan or a John Lennon because, you know, nobody knows how that happens”.</p>
<p>Perhaps Bob Dylan was merely a rhetorical choice, but it was a particularly unfortunate one. Thanks to the extensive <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/21599.Books_about_Bob_Dylan">annals of Dylanology</a>, there are few artists about whom we know more. We know an especially large amount on “why it happened” with him. It wasn’t rocket science. Dylan <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2004/apr/04/entertainment/ca-dylan04">studied</a>, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/bob-dylan-the-beat-generation-and-allen-ginsbergs-america">read</a>, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/15/bob-dylan-exclusive-inter_n_187216.html">listened</a> and <a href="http://www.citylab.com/design/2013/06/808-cities-2503-shows-and-1007416-miles-staggering-geography-bob-dylans-never-ending-tour/5810/">worked and worked and worked</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68786/original/image-20150113-23798-1lwtkj8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68786/original/image-20150113-23798-1lwtkj8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68786/original/image-20150113-23798-1lwtkj8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68786/original/image-20150113-23798-1lwtkj8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68786/original/image-20150113-23798-1lwtkj8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68786/original/image-20150113-23798-1lwtkj8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68786/original/image-20150113-23798-1lwtkj8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68786/original/image-20150113-23798-1lwtkj8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bob Dylan and his manager Albert Grossman, London 1966.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Townsend</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In counselling us so, Sir Paul reanimates the many myths of The Great Artist. </p>
<p>Great artists are supposed to spring from the ground through some mysterious process of organic transmogrification. Careful study and critical reflection aren’t a necessary part of an aesthetic education. The hoary old stereotype is that too much study ruins “the magic”, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-30641029">says Sir Paul</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[W]e never studied anything, we just loved our popular music: Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino etc. And it wasn’t a case of “studying” it. I think for us, we’d have felt it would have ruined it to study it. We wanted to make our own minds up just by listening to it. So our study was listening.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is surprising that Sir Paul, the co-founder of the <a href="http://www.lipa.ac.uk/">Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts</a>, could appear to be so unclear about what people who study music in university actually do. </p>
<p>Careful, close, critical and engaged listening is right at the heart of it. Contrary to the numerous prognostications of doom about an entire generation supposedly unable to listen anymore, there are plenty of places where close listening is both demanded and rewarded. Many of these places are in universities. </p>
<p>The simple fact is that a tough, challenging university degree can do the same thing for a musician that it can for a barrister or a surgeon. Do you want your surgeon to worry that too much study might ruin the magic of your angioplasty? </p>
<p>So why are musicians still routinely spun such fantasies by their elders? Any education worthy of the name, whatever the source, makes you think. It challenges your preconceptions. It forces you to confront the world as it is and helps you to imagine how you’d like it to be. </p>
<p>Sir Paul’s status as soothsayer and pop icon is clearly getting a little worn. So are some of his attitudes. Instead of fear, magic or nostalgia, maybe we can try to let knowledge guide our understanding of the place popular music has in the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35895/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charles Fairchild does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Sir Paul McCartney has been making some waves. On New Year’s Eve, Kanye West released a new single, Only One, a collaboration with The Beatles great on keys. On Twitter, Kanye’s fans reacted, wanting to…
Charles Fairchild, Associate Professor of Popular Music, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/29424
2014-07-23T06:44:38Z
2014-07-23T06:44:38Z
Don’t knock Arctic Monkeys – most of us are tax avoiders
<p>Arctic Monkeys became members of a club they would probably have rather avoided recently. Joining the likes of Take That, Jimmy Carr and Anne Robinson, they became the latest celebrities to be vilified for tax avoidance. </p>
<p>“Criticism should especially apply to the Arctic Monkeys –- whose members have sheltered up to £1.1m in the Channel Islands -– as they’ve long traded on their image as a band of the people,” <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2014/jul/11/arctic-monkeys-tax-avoidance-liberty">opined The Guardian</a>. </p>
<p>In my view, such hostility towards tax avoidance looks misguided and unjustified. The onus is on those who vilify tax avoiders to give good grounds for their moral condemnation. Rhetoric, name-calling and expressions of deeply felt disapproval are no substitute for rational arguments. When the attacks are directed towards specified tax avoiders, there is even more need to substantiate them.</p>
<h2>Guilty of hypocrisy?</h2>
<p>Arctic Monkeys were described in the same article as tax dodgers. The writer, Simon Price, seems to accuse them of hypocrisy. But he does not justify the accusation. He suggests that they do not pay their fair share of tax. But he does not give an indication of what a fair share of tax might be.</p>
<p>“They could do with a reminder of just how much they owe to the state they’re so reluctant to fund,” he said. </p>
<p>How much do they owe the state? How much have they paid to the state in tax already? How much more can reasonably be demanded of them? Are they less reluctant to fund the state than the rest of us are?</p>
<p>It is far from obvious that it is hypocritical simultaneously to appear to be “of the people” and to avoid paying in tax that which one could legally avoid. Do “the people” try to pay as much tax as they possibly can? I suspect that “the people” are happy to avoid paying any tax which they can legally avoid. If they disapprove when other, richer people try to do the same, perhaps it is they rather than the richer tax avoiders who are hypocritical.</p>
<p>It is true that we all benefit from the government providing public services and that tax revenues are required to pay for them. But it does not follow that tax avoidance is immoral (as opposed to tax evasion, which is of course illegal).</p>
<p>To say that tax avoidance deprives society of hospitals and such like is misleading. If we refrain from smoking and drinking, the tax that we avoid paying as a result is money that will not be available for such public services as hospitals. But it does not follow that we are obliged to provide the state with such money. </p>
<p>That more hospitals might be built if Arctic Monkeys and other rich people were to pay more in tax is not a reason for supposing that they have a moral obligation to do so either. You could say we are morally obliged to obey the law and to pay what it requires us to pay in tax. Although there might be a general moral obligation to be charitable, that does not imply a specific moral obligation to pay more in tax than we are legally required to do.</p>
<h2>Maxim of equality of taxation</h2>
<p>Another of the arguments in The Guardian was: “Rock stars have long held an ambivalent view towards paying their fair share of tax.”</p>
<p>Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, suggested <a href="https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book05/ch02b.htm">four “maxims with regard to taxes in general”</a>. The first is most relevant here. Smith calls it the maxim of the equality of taxation. It is: “The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.”</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54695/original/9h8ht28y-1406142137.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54695/original/9h8ht28y-1406142137.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/54695/original/9h8ht28y-1406142137.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54695/original/9h8ht28y-1406142137.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54695/original/9h8ht28y-1406142137.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54695/original/9h8ht28y-1406142137.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54695/original/9h8ht28y-1406142137.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/54695/original/9h8ht28y-1406142137.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Adam Smith gets down to brass tax.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/surfstyle/272576639/in/photolist-q62xe-aEUPtx-app33-aqCXUQ-8tvpMW-i74bFh-21wSQ-tTm76-bcPbb2-oguxXi-bzPhpc-6icPNa-21wSv-5tett-ahU2XY-ncVBU6-fDQr7A-fDxQ5M-fDQqT3-fDQrrd-9Udxud-k1V5dV-fDQpTJ-fDQqG9-fDxPsK-fDQq6s-fDxQf4-fDxPBR-fDxQnZ-fDxR2v-ddUFez-k1TnpV-ahLQ4G-8oUkXq-8sDguv-hJou-k1TS46-aqAnNi-aqD3Yf-aqD489-aqAnvF-aqAmnF-aqD3qS-aqAnH8-aqAn8H-aqCXs7-aqAn2X-aqAmar-aqD3w3-4amzsz">marco</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>(Notice Smith was writing before the introduction of income tax. The taxation he had in mind was indirect taxes levied mainly on luxuries and taxation of rents.) </p>
<p>So we might agree that we all have a moral obligation to pay a fair amount of tax, to bear a fair burden of the public finances. Yet it is not obvious that the use of tax avoidance schemes is incompatible with this. To say that the taxation we pay should be in proportion to our revenue is to leave open the question of what the proportion should be.</p>
<p>And bear in mind that taxation is raised in various ways, not merely by income tax. That is another reason why the notion of a “fair share” of taxation is a troublesome one.</p>
<p>Also, if people should pay a fair share of taxation, it must be possible to pay more than their share. Consider, for instance, Paul McCartney. He has drawn little from the public purse and donated a vast amount to it through the direct and indirect taxation that he has paid over the years. </p>
<p>Under a system in which we were required to pay only a fair share of tax, McCartney would surely be exempt from all taxation on his future income and his future spending. Equally if the members of Arctic Monkeys were required to pay no more than a fair share of tax, there is no apparent good reason to assume they would pay more rather than less, regardless of whether they successfully avoid paying some tax.</p>
<h2>Plea for political consistency</h2>
<p>Speaking of what is fair, it is surely also fair that we examine our own behaviour in relation to taxes. For instance, at the suggestion of my friend and financial adviser, I have taken out an ISA in order to try to minimise the taxation which I am legally obliged to pay. These are hardly restricted to society’s rich and famous. My intention is also to postpone the taking up of my state pension beyond the date of my retirement for the same reason: to pay less tax.</p>
<p>To call me a tax dodger would, I would suggest, be offensive and unfair. There is no obvious difference in moral principle between my attempted tax avoidance and that of Arctic Monkeys. They are far richer and more famous than I am but that is not a relevant moral difference.</p>
<p>In spite of these arguments, politicians are often overtly hostile to tax avoidance. George Osborne <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e4b90a3c-7379-11e1-94ba-00144feab49a.html#axzz37k7tvJ6K">called it</a> “morally repugnant,” for example. Yet politicians frequently encourage tax avoidance, and not just with ISAs. They present the UK as a country with comparatively low rates of taxation. They are happy to encourage rich foreigners to avoid heavier rates of taxation in their own countries and to take up their residence here.</p>
<p>In the same way, our politicians encourage us to become tax avoiders too. Consider their support for that curious form of tax avoidance, the gift aid scheme. And don’t forget that many of them supported avoiding paying the <a href="http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/ukandireland/p/prpolltax.htm">poll tax</a> in the late 1980s/early 1990s. There is no logic to attacking Arctic Monkeys or any other rich famous people for doing the same thing on a larger scale. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29424/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hugh McLachlan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Arctic Monkeys became members of a club they would probably have rather avoided recently. Joining the likes of Take That, Jimmy Carr and Anne Robinson, they became the latest celebrities to be vilified…
Hugh McLachlan, Professor of Applied Philosophy, Glasgow Caledonian University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/29402
2014-07-18T05:08:54Z
2014-07-18T05:08:54Z
Music is becoming a multimedia experience
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7Bmr1_19HfI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Stranger - Goldfrapp.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Paul McCartney has released five of his classic post-Beatles albums as tablet apps. <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/band-on-run-paul-mccartney/id723450958?mt=8">Band on the Run</a>, <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/ram-paul-and-linda-mccartney/id655077662?mt=8">RAM</a>, <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/mccartney-paul-mccartney/id723450980?mt=8">McCartney</a>, <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/mccartney-ii-paul-mccartney/id723451015?mt=8">McCartney 2</a>, and <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/wings-over-america-paul-mccartney/id700913557?mt=8">Wings Over America</a> contain interviews, video footage, artwork and photos in addition to the music itself, and you still get change from A$10. </p>
<p>Of course the integration of music and smartphone tech is nothing new. Brian Eno’s fascinating 2008 <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/bloom/id292792586?mt=8">Bloom</a> app is an infinite music generator that responds to screen taps from the listener to mould the musical experience. </p>
<p>And since you’re on the internet reading an article about music then you probably know that Bjork’s hugely successful <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/bjork-biophilia/id434122935?mt=8">Biophilia</a> app links each musical piece to an interactive art work so that you watch as much as listen; and that there is a worldwide trend for adding YouTube views to Top 10 sales charts. </p>
<p>I would be interested in whatever tune Paul whistles to himself even as he makes his tea, and if he is into apps then we have to look seriously at the commercial potential it indicates. But the limitations inherent to the walled garden of smartphone apps have launched a thousand op-ed pieces, suggesting that apps per se might not be the future of music. </p>
<p>McCartney’s move is interesting though in signalling the coming of age of a broader trend: the digital age is seeing a blossoming of multimedia content, so that the radio is turning into TV (via in-studio cameras), the TV is turning into the internet (via smart TVs and on demand programming), and music is becoming visual. </p>
<p>Last year English electronic duo Goldfrapp released probably the greatest album in the history of all known music, Tales Of Us, which illustrates where multimedia music might be heading. Rather than release just a conventional album and videos for two or three stand-out tracks, there was an <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/goldfrapp-tales-of-us/id682451085?mt=8">iPhone app</a> which allows the user to produce images redolent of the style of the album’s artwork; there was a series of five thematically-linked videos that play a key role in adding real meaning to the songs - there is nothing in the lyrics to indicate that Stranger is really about a mass murderer of married women - that was filmed on a shoestring budget; and there was a <a href="http://goldfrapp.com/film/">live cinema event</a> across dozens of locations in which a broadcast of the videos was followed by an exclusive live performance. </p>
<p>There is nothing in itself revolutionary about any of these in isolation, but it does a good job of illustrating the more general shift away from music as <em>the</em> product to music as <em>one element</em> of a multimedia art form, and away from the release of the audio album as <em>the event</em> to instead representing just one event in a series of linked media releases.</p>
<p>Paul McCartney of course has considerable form as a spotter of trends that are ready for market. His move signals that music may be on the verge of evolving into a new cross-platform multimedia art form.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29402/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Paul McCartney has released five of his classic post-Beatles albums as tablet apps. Band on the Run, RAM, McCartney, McCartney 2, and Wings Over America contain interviews, video footage, artwork and photos…
Adrian North, Head of School of Psychology and Speech Pathology, Curtin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.