# Roger Scruton - The Tyranny of Pop Music



## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Maybe he's a bit melodramatic? But I can sympathize...


----------



## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

I think he talks about two different things. 

First he attacks background music ('muzak'), which shuts down listening to music for this background noise is merely 'overheard', and it's omnipresence in shopping malls, restaurants, etc. I agree with him that this is annoying. But this muzak can also be (light) classical music. I actually have never understood that the owners apparantly think that everybody likes light, banal background music: I find these type of music much more annoying than punk or metal...

Then he attacks pop music and the bad, underdeveloped musical taste of the current youth. I have also often wondered why there is a tendency of pop music to become more and more simple, unisone and repetitious. While classical music has the tendency to become complexer in time, popular music tends to get only more basic and stripped down to the essentials of a simple, repetitious beat and a yell ('pop music is to (classical) music as pornography to (loving) sex'). The same thing is true of language by the way (e.g. the loss of grammatical cases in many languages). I am not sure why some cultural things only become more simple and others become - like life itself - more complex. But I like the fact that Scruton is relatively favorable to Metallica!


----------



## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

I remember listening to this quite recently, its an episode of BBC radio 4's _A Point of View_.

I disagree with Scruton on almost everything, but he has some very salient points about modern culture. Unfortunately his skill at extracting these flows from his personal dislike of popular culture, rather than, say, a critique of bland market dominance; something he doesn't seem to be quite so critical of as a major cause and facilitator. After all what else supports the popular music/media output he so despises?
His remedy is spurious. Musical instrument teaching has not gone away; in fact I'd say more young people have access to it than was previously the case. There's also the fact that e.g. a young horn player is likely to also enjoy pop music as much as the music she plays on the horn. His rigid ideas about 'correct' judgements are vintage Scruton. On the one hand a recognised scale of quality is a lifeline in a sea of equalised opinions, but deciding where to place these on the scale collapses easily in subjective aesthetics. Scruton is regularly guilty of this.


----------



## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Agamemnon said:


> But I like the fact that Scruton is relatively favorable to Metallica!


It's something I have noticed about myself: if I have to listen to a popular genre, I'd rather listen to heavy metal than light pop of the Bieber variety. The metalists at least seem to have something to say.



eugeneonagain said:


> I disagree with Scruton on almost everything, but he has some very salient points about modern culture. Unfortunately his skill at extracting these flows from his personal dislike of popular culture, rather than, say, a critique of bland market dominance; something he doesn't seem to be quite so critical of as a major cause and facilitator. After all what else supports the popular music/media output he so despises?


I have since noticed that he seems to hold to all manner of conservative views, among which presumably is support of a free market. And it is as you say above, it is his beloved free market that drives much of the pop culture he despises. Can't have your cake and eat it, it seems.


----------



## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)

Love me some Scruton... He also wrote the finest book yet on Wagner


----------



## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)

brianvds said:


> It's something I have noticed about myself: if I have to listen to a popular genre, I'd rather listen to heavy metal than light pop of the Bieber variety. The metalists at least seem to have something to say.
> 
> I have since noticed that he seems to hold to all manner of conservative views, among which presumably is support of a free market. And it is as you say above, it is his beloved free market that drives much of the pop culture he despises. Can't have your cake and eat it, it seems.


He's very reluctantly in favour of a free market. He recognises its problems but tolerates it because the opposite is worse


----------



## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

brianvds said:


> It's something I have noticed about myself: if I have to listen to a popular genre, I'd rather listen to heavy metal than light pop of the Bieber variety. The metalists at least seem to have something to say.


I don't know if Metallica has something to say (in words) but they definitely have an interest in melody and harmony; many of their classic songs, like Master of Puppets, are long not because of endless repetitions or even endless solos but because of true melodic/harmonic development which makes them some kind of little symphonies...


----------



## CypressWillow (Apr 2, 2013)

Looked him up on Wikipedia, as I'd never heard of him before. When I got to the part where he was an avid lover of fox-hunting, flying from Boston to England every week-end in order to go fox-hunting, I stopped reading and listening. Bad karma, old chap.


----------



## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

CypressWillow said:


> Looked him up on Wikipedia, as I'd never heard of him before. When I got to the part where he was an avid lover of fox-hunting, flying from Boston to England every week-end in order to go fox-hunting, I stopped reading and listening. Bad karma, old chap.


What you need to know about Scruton is that he is a typical conservative thinker who is fond of criticizing modern culture for all of it's banality, baseness and lack of elevating goals and true beauty (as exemplified in the modern addiction to pornography and stupid pop music).


----------



## CypressWillow (Apr 2, 2013)

I'm sure Mr. Scruton finds "elevating goals and true beauty" in participating in the pastime of "the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable."


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Is Muzak still common in Britain? Where I live (Oregon, USA) the stuff I hear in stores is contemporary pop, which is much harder to ignore than the bland wallpaper of Muzak. This pop stuff is almost entirely vocal, and so I'm forced to hear not only two-note "melodies," two or three chords cycled over and over, and canned, mind-numbing rhythms, but short verbal ejaculations about the concerns of adolescents repeated ad nauseam by some whiny voiced prepubescent or semi-adult pretending to be prepubescent. It's all loathsome beyond description, and what should be pleasant outings are ravaged by my suppressed desire to complain to innocent cashiers and the growing need to get the hell out of the torture chamber and into the sun and fresh air.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Agamemnon said:


> What you need to know about Scruton is that he is a typical conservative thinker who is fond of criticizing modern culture for all of it's banality, baseness and lack of elevating goals and true beauty (as exemplified in the modern addiction to pornography and stupid pop music).


I would guess that _typical_ conservative thinkers are less intelligent than Scruton. I don't always agree with him, but some things are worth conserving. Silence, the sacred matrix of music and thought, is one of them. I'm afraid it's lost forever, though, and that the best I can do to find it again is to forbid music at my funeral.


----------



## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Tallisman said:


> Love me some Scruton... He also wrote the finest book yet on Wagner


I think Bryan Magee's book is better and less biased.


----------



## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Tallisman said:


> ...He recognises its problems but tolerates it because the opposite is worse


In his opinion of course.


----------



## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> I would guess that _typical_ conservative thinkers are less intelligent than Scruton. I don't always agree with him, but some things are worth conserving. Silence, the sacred matrix of music and thought, is one of them. I'm afraid it's lost forever, though, and that the best I can do to find it again is to forbid music at my funeral.


Yes, Scruton has some good insights (but he is still a typical conservative thinker ). And one of them is that our society unfortunately has banned silence which seems to me to be some kind of 'horror vacui'...


----------



## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Is Muzak still common in Britain? Where I live (Oregon, USA) the stuff I hear in stores is contemporary pop, which is much harder to ignore than the bland wallpaper of Muzak.


Most of the music I hear in Albuquerque stores is pop/rock music from the 1960's and 70's. Some of it is still quite appealing. However, for the most part I hardly hear it as I'm concentrating on my purchases.


----------



## Johnnie Burgess (Aug 30, 2015)

eugeneonagain said:


> In his opinion of course.


Opinion? Socialism is failing in Venezuela. And things are so great in Cuba, people are risking death to leave there. Wonder why socialism fans in the west are not going to live in those two countries if they love that system?


----------



## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

Scruton is a well known reactionary in these parts. I doubt that he knows very much about the pop music he's criticising and his portrait of 'young people today' is a rather ludicrous and patronising caricature. 

In response to Woodduck's question - no, I think muzak is much less common than it once was in the UK. Certainly I'm not aware of supermarkets playing it nowadays as they certainly did in the late 60s and 70s. I remember it all too well.


----------



## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Agamemnon said:


> Yes, Scruton has some good insights (but he is still a typical conservative thinker ). And one of them is that our society unfortunately has banned silence which seems to me to be some kind of 'horror vacui'...


That lament is luckily not confined to the Scrutons of the world. George Orwell made the same lament in his essay _The Moon Under Water_, writing that radio now functioned as a provider of background noise for people unable to tolerate silence or just talking.


----------



## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

TurnaboutVox said:


> Scruton is a well known reactionary in these parts. I doubt that he knows very much about the pop music he's criticising and his portrait of 'young people today' is a rather ludicrous and patronising caricature.
> 
> In response to Woodduck's question - no, I think muzak is much less common than it once was in the UK. Certainly I'm not aware of supermarkets playing it nowadays as they certainly did in the late 60s and 70s. I remember it all too well.


I don't know exactly where you hail from in Lancs, but I remember the muzak they used to play in the Co-op supermarket and when I think back it wasn't all that bad. Flute bossa novas and Mantovani, I can dig that more than some other things.


----------



## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

eugeneonagain said:


> I don't know exactly where you hail from in Lancs, but I remember the muzak they used to play in the Co-op supermarket and when I think back it wasn't all that bad. Flute bossa novas and Mantovani, I can dig that more than some other things.


I hail from Aberdeen in Scotland but 'with-it' businesses there played similar stuff. I remember an early small supermarket playing vibraphone jazz - it wasn't that bad! I liked it as a small child, I still like the sound of vibraphones and marimbas.

!


----------



## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

eugeneonagain said:


> That lament is luckily not confined to the Scrutons of the world. George Orwell made the same lament in his essay _The Moon Under Water_, writing that radio now functioned as a provider of background noise for people unable to tolerate silence or just talking.


Schopenhauer wrote an essay on his annoyance of boys in the street who clapped the whip for fun all the time (is 'clapping the whip' the right expression?). Schopenhauer's theory is that dumb people like loud bangs/noises because they have no thoughts that entertain them so they simply fill their head with noises.


----------



## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

Agamemnon said:


> [...] Schopenhauer's theory is that dumb people like loud bangs/noises because they have no thoughts that entertain them so they simply fill their head with noises.


Sounds like the theory of someone who has difficulty imagining what goes on in the minds of other people! 

Edit: As does Scruton's, actually.


----------



## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Agamemnon said:


> Schopenhauer wrote an essay on his annoyance of boys in the street who clapped the whip for fun all the time (is 'clapping the whip' the right expression?). Schopenhauer's theory is that dumb people like loud bangs/noises because they have no thoughts that entertain them so they simply fill their head with noises.


I know that essay! It's hilarious because his remedy is that they be: "forced to dismount and receive several blows with a stout stick". He wasn't one for tip-toeing around people!


----------



## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

eugeneonagain said:


> I know that essay! It's hilarious because his remedy is that they be: "forced to dismount and receive several blows with a stout stick". He wasn't one for tip-toeing around people!


He threw a woman down a flight of stairs and hated her even more when he was made to pay regular restitution for her injuries until her death... Even then one can only love this old grumpy man.


----------



## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)

eugeneonagain said:


> In his opinion of course.


**tries desperately not to start that debate**


----------



## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Tallisman said:


> **tries desperately not to start that debate**


Best not to. It's all been said before...and Srutonians were wrong then too:devil:

Seriously though, let's stick to music.


----------



## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)

eugeneonagain said:


> Best not to. It's all been said before...and Srutonians were wrong then too:devil:
> 
> Seriously though, let's stick to music.


Yes, yes.

PS: I'm by no means a hard right-winger, by the way. Rather centrist in fact:tiphat:


----------



## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Johnnie Burgess said:


> Opinion? Socialism is failing in Venezuela. And things are so great in Cuba, people are risking death to leave there. Wonder why socialism fans in the west are not going to live in those two countries if they love that system?


Not to mention the millions of Swedes and Canadians desperately fleeing across the U.S. borders...


----------



## PresenTense (May 7, 2016)




----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

PresenTense said:


>


For me it's usually too much. At the very least, it fails to help me test a melon for ripeness or choose a brand of toothpaste.


----------



## Timothy (Jul 19, 2017)

Scruton is like used toilet paper


----------



## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Johnnie Burgess said:


> Opinion? Socialism is failing in Venezuela. And things are so great in Cuba, people are risking death to leave there. Wonder why socialism fans in the west are not going to live in those two countries if they love that system?


Time to get that blockade lifted then and stop penalising them both for having the "wrong" political system. Socialism is as popular as ever in Venezuela, but it's being undermined by U.S.interference donating huge sums to opposition corporate crooks and because of the petroleum mono-economy.

Enough though. We should be talking music. When you get that all wrong it's much less frustrating.


----------

