Music & Postmodernism

Using Summercamp and a band of your choice explain how some artists can be called postmodern

Postmodernism is a rejection of modernism.  It brings into light a variety of different elements and can allow for them to become one.  For example bricolage is part of postmodernism and this is when two seemingly different things are brought together to create a new meaning and this is don’t within music a lot.  Also within postmodernism there is sampling used within music where an artist or artists will take snippets from other songs and use them in their own to emphasise their own work and make it sound better.  A man called Jean-Francois Lyotard was a man who rejected the ‘grand narratives’ which is history, science, religion and politics and postmodern people and artists do not believe in one of the grand narratives as they will take different parts of each of them and bring them together to create new meaning and this is something many people disagree with however postmodern people will agree with it and allow it to happen.  Postmodern artists will also use intertextual references in their own work which is their own adaptation or creation of existing work as it will make the audience remember the piece of work that is being referred to, and can see in what they are watching or listening to, the way it has been used for new meaning.  A lot of songs are remixed which is postmodern and this gives the song new meaning and so the music could be changed and the lyrics kept the same and the audience feel as if they are listening to a completely different song can take in the lyrics in a different way which is a good thing about remixes as they are recreating a song to their advantage to gain more listeners.

Some artists can be called postmodern from the way they do a variety of things within their music.  This includes the way they make the music, their image, the way they perform the music, the music itself, and also the way people see or hear the music. 

A band which I have been studying is Summercamp which is a postmodern band who creates and performs an Indie style of music and can be called postmodern for many things they have done.  First of all the band uses Bricolage where the band has put their own music with the visuals of 1980’s movie clips and make it fit together with the way that they do it even though the song and lyrics may have nothing to do with what is being seen and it is in doing this which creates the ‘Indie’ type genre.  The way they make themselves look as a band from what they wear is a deliberate way to seem naff and uncool however it is in doing this that makes them actually look retro and cool and this makes them ironic with their image.  The band pay homage to 1980’s bands from the inclusion of the 1980’s clips from films and this shows that they have a cultural aspect to their music as they always stick to this style and don’t go off and change it.  The band’s website allows for the audience to become interactive with the band as there is a selection of what seems to be randomly spread out phrases which when clicked on become crossed out to show they are loading and then plays a homemade clip with what looks like is from the 1980’s which reflects their music and repeats over and over until a different phrase is clicked on. As well as this they also have a Twitter page, Facebook page and MySpace which allows audiences and fans to keep up to date with the band.  On the cover of their album ‘Round The Moon’ there is a photo of a girl and a boy from the 1980’s which shows the audience that this is the band (which it isn’t) as it looks like they could be the band however they look nothing like the band (because they are not the band!)because they are from the 1980’s and we are living in 2012 and so it is a hyper reality for what people want the band to look like as from seeing their music videos and seeing that they are clips from 1980’s movies, you would think that the boy and girl on the photo would be the band.  The name of the band itself being Summercamp I think refers to America as many young Americans would go to a summer camp during their summer break and always call it summer camp, where in England very little people call it summer camp, it is usually just something simple like camping or the name of the place they camped like The Forest Of Dean and so the band have brought in even the 1980’s American culture to the name of their band as well.

Another artist who can be called postmodern and that I have studied is Eminem.  Eminem uses Mockery in many of his songs through his ‘Slim Shady’ character whom he created himself and does this in a lot of his songs about anyone, mainly other celebrities, but he himself is not like that in real life, and so this can possibly be a hyper reality as what the audiences is seeing in the videos is this artist being mean and harsh to others and this can possibly get them to think the same, but the truth is outside of the music the artist isn’t even like that.  Eminem samples different artists material in his own songs to emphasise the meaning of his own work and this is done to an advantage as in the song ‘Beautiful’ he samples Queen & Paul Rodgers’ song ‘Reaching Out’ where he uses the first verse from the song and uses it for the intro of his own song.  He does this to set the theme of the song which is about his depression and the lyrics fit in well with his own content.  Eminem is ironic in his work as in his older material he would refer to violence and suicide a the character ‘Slim Shady’ but on a different album he goes back on these claims and blames the parents of his younger listeners for the way they act when they are blaming Eminem for how they act.  The irony shown by this is that he as an artist is seen as a role model by many young people, however in this song he is saying that the parents of the listeners should be the better role models and so he is saying that they are not doing a good enough job as parents when it comes to their children's actions.  Throughout Eminem’s career he has had different styles where he has had his stage name Eminem and his alter ego Slim shady who he uses to mock and abuse other people and artists.  Three of his first albums were named after each of his names being called ‘The Slim Shady LP’, where he is sinister but funny, ‘The Marshall Mathers LP’ where he is dark and angry, and ‘The Eminem Show’ where there is a theme of fame.  On one of his latest albums ‘Recovery’ he raps in one of the songs ‘the last two albums don’t count, Encore i was on drugs, Relapse i was flushing them out’  and this shows he has again changed his style as he was under the influence of drugs on ‘Encore’ and trying to get rid of them on ‘Relapse’.  In many of Eminem’s songs there is an element of audience participation in which he relies on the audience to interpret him in the songs.  He does this by the way he raps his lyrics for example in the song ‘The Way I Am’ the chorus has the lyrics ‘I am whatever you say I am, and if I wasn’t then why would I say I am’.  Having these lyrics is a direct way of getting the audience involved as they are being told that Eminem is anything they think he is which throughout the whole of the song is him being harsh and mean to anyone that is against him. 

In music I have seen that many artists are copying, adapting, referencing, remixing or sampling other artists or other work and this can maybe be seen to be the future of music as nobody is coming up with their own ideas anymore, they are just recreating the past and present however artists who do this still have large audiences listening to them as what they do creates new meaning within a song which many people want t listen out for as it puts the music across in a different way and so it seems new to them even if it is an old song being listened to and this enables music to carry on being used again and again as otherwise the same song would just get boring.