Authenticity and Music: What does it mean?

[Adam Crocker]

I had this thread idea for awhile, but only AFTER Jonathan pointed out that the Kevin Federline thread was the most active thread on the board did I actually get off my ass and put it up. Bad Adam! Bad!

So anyways, so conversation starter...

Maybe if she [Samantha Fox] records something new, less managed, and more authentic, there'll be something worth checking out.

What can I say, I just really like those Stones novelty songs. Hell, I even like their cover of Cherry O Baby because even if they can't do authentic reggae to save their lives, it's a good laugh.

So what really puzzles me about these lines is the use of the word "authetic." Ontir wants Samantha Fox to do something "more authentic" and Ilash says that the Stones cannot do "authentic reggae." But do these things really mean? What would something more "authentic" by Samantha Fox sound like? And what is "authentic reggae" to begin with? What does the quality of "authentic" have to do with music if anything?

[Jonathan Bogart]

Unsurprisingly, I have an opinion here. And my answer?

Fuck-all, that's what authenticity has to do with music.

Music -- and especially popular music -- is essentially theatrical. There is no such thing as authentic theater. There's good theater and bad, but it's always artificial, always dealing in pretense, and the forms that acknowledge the artifice and pretense are no less valid than the forms that pretend towards "realism" or "honesty."

(Yes, this is Brechtian theory. It's also just plain observation.)

The average music-listener knows this, of course. And despite my earlier outburst, that's why the interest in Britney and K-Fed, because their arena of performance is not limited to the music stage, but encompasses their entire lives. It's all live theater, and none of us knows the ending. But this is why the average music listener also tend to like the showmen and -women of music, the ones who apply the glitz and the pizzazz of show business to the act of making music, whether we're talking about Judy Garland, Diana Ross, Madonna, or Beyoncé. Or Barry Manilow, Journey, U2, and N'sync.

But everyone -- and I mean everyone -- is guilty of image-making, of giving the people what they want, of participating in show business. (Yes. Even Scott Walker, who's clearly one of the most theatrical singers around, and who also cultivates a hostile, enigmatic silence as his shtick.) The greatest performers often bend show business to their will, and make it incorporate something other, richer and deeper than it had before. Bob Dylan is the obvious example here, though Miles Davis works too.

Let me take two often-cited examples of the role of authenticity in music: blues and rap. I hope to deconstruct them to prove that the "authenticity" claimed in their name is just another artificial construct, like wearing masks in kabuki or singing rather than acting on opera, usual in the genre but which can be dispensed with if necessary.

First, the blues. The common line is that the blues was born of black suffering and cannot possibly be fully understood, much less played, by privileged white people. While I'm not about to deny a single atom of the immense, horrifying, and downright evil suffering perpetrated on black people in America since the dawn of civilization on the continent and continuing to this moment, the blues -- especially the blues as we understand them today -- are not primarily about suffering. Primarily, they're about entertainment. Perhaps there have been bluesmen -- perhaps they were even the greatest bluesmen ever -- who were content to sing their mournful songs to themselves and in that small way deal with the shit hand they'd been dealt. But if no one heard them, they weren't really the blues; at least not the blues that Bessie Smith, Charley Patton, Son House, Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and B. B. King sang. Bessie was a vaudeville act, who sang the blues because people wanted to hear her sing them (because she was good at it). How is she qualitatively different (except for dying younger) than Ethel Waters, who came out of the same rough background, made it as a jazz singer on Broadway, went to Hollywood, and played Mammys for fat paychecks? Or Billie Holiday, who almost never sang an actual blues song but is still regarded as one of the greatest voices of black suffering? She apparently never thought of herself that way; she was a pop singer who wanted more than goddamn anything to be treated with the same respect a white pop singer would be treated with, and who insisted on working the South, and dating white men, and getting violently drunk. Josephine Baker went to Paris, where she was hugely famous as a jungle-based caricature of black dance and song. Why would any of them be less authentic than Bessie Smith? Was their suffering less? (For one thing, how the hell you gonna measure that?) Was their response to suffering inappropriate? If Bessie's was the appropriate response -- singing the blues -- then it didn't help her survive. She died from an auto accident after a gig. (Rumors that she was refused medical attention because of her skin color are apparently unfounded, but noteworthy.) She was one of the greatest blues singers ever, and certainly the most popular female blues singer, but did the blues express her pain any more adequately than getting drunk, chasing down and screwing men (and women), and smacking around the wife of one of her chief supporters did? The blues, as a recorded form, as a tradition, and as an aesthetic legacy, needed her more than she seems to have needed the blues. She could (and did) sing anything; it was just that the blues were what people wanted.

And the men. Robert Johnson was maybe the least authentic bluesman of the 1930s. (Maybe that's also why he's so popular. His lyrics are certainly theatrical.) He studied hard, learned his trade, swiped shit from older guys, dressed as snappily as he could manage for the few photos he had taken, and would certainly have tried an urban Northern career if he hadn't died a great rock & roll death. Any suffering he seems to have undergone was either self-inflicted or what any black man of the time would have known. The blues met a great performer in him, but the key there is performer; the blues needed him more than he needed the blues.

Muddy and the Wolf were sharecroppers who lit out for Chicago at the first whiff of money to be made; much of their greatest work was after they were established stars with hit records under their belts. What's so authentic about that? Muddy was a self-destructive asshole, sure, but name ten great artists who weren't. Anyway. They may have suffered -- and certainly, they did; they were black in 20th-century America -- but like any decent artist, they used their experience to create something new. The blues was not an unmediated cry of the soul for them; it was a job, a vocation, and a work. Again, the blues needed them more than they needed the blues.

Ditto House, Patton, Hooker, and King, in varying ways and degrees and modes. Sure, Hooker was less commercial and stuck to his deep-Delta style with greater tenacity, but that's the fierce individualism of a crochety old man, not any grand stand for the authenticity of the blues. King, of course, sells everything from soda to life insurance with his guitar licks. And good on him for finding the suckers to pay him for it; but ain't no primeval cries of racial injustice and suffering playing in a prime-time commercial. Not just that it wouldn't happen; but the context changes the meaning. Just like Son House laying down his spare, dark verses on tape for Alan Lomax; once you make that record, you're in show business, baby. (Hell, once you sing or play for anyone but yourself, you're in show business. More so if they ask you to; and you really know you've arrived when they pay for the privilege.)

Okay, on to hip-hop.

Surely authenticity is the biggest mug's game here? I mean, more people think that professional wrestling is real than think that P. Diddy's got street cred, right? (Dude still carries, or his posse do. Or did. Yeah, that was a while ago, wasn't it?) 50 Cent's stardom is based on the fact that he's been shot nine times -- wait, no, it's based on the fact that an established star (Eminem) bankrolled him, and he got a good producer to give him some pop hits. Of course stardom doesn't equal cred (often the reverse), but once you leave the charts you're in a no-man's-land of local scenes, underground joints, and artistic quality which looks daily more like the indie rock scene circa 1988. A lot of heads are still talking trash like Maximum Rock & Roll, but the rest of the world is so over the gangsta stuff except as pop fantasy.

More clearly: being from the streets, from the projects, from the hood, from the gangs, from prison, from dealing crack, from whatever, don't mean a damn thing if you ain't got the flow and the beats to back it up so stop frontin' motherfucker. Again, it's a theatrical construct obvious to everyone except thirteen-year-old white boys and their worried parents. The fact that occasionally it does spill out into actual violence means two things: first, that engaging a theatrical construct as lived life is way dangerous, and second, that people are still people and when you get involved with creative artists you can die easily and young. Just ask Kit Marlowe, Jim Europe, Sam Cooke, and that dude at Altamont.

Okay.

To address the actual examples Adam brings up:

I haven't heard Samantha Fox, but I doubt a lack of authenticity is her main problem; simply being good at what she does is. Like the man says, if you can fake sincerity you've got it made.

And of course the Stones can't do authentic reggae, if by that you mean a genre of music made by Jamaicans from within a certain political and ethnocultural framework. They're aging British rockstars. Unfortunately, neither can they do good reggae, and anyone saying their attempts at it are "a good laugh" only means they've got no respect for real reggae, which is another problem but one that has nothing to do with authenticity, just taste and manners.

[Jessica Drew]

Speaking of authenticity, taste, manners, and music: my wife still likes "Blame It on the Rain" by Milli Vanilli.

On that point, JB: I challenge you to include and defend a Milli Vanilli song on your '80s list (when you write it). I double-dog dare you. You know you can do it. If you can't, well, damn it, then I'll have to...and I sure as hell don't want to, 'cause my wife would find out ('cause I talk in my sleep), and I'd never live it down till the day I die; therefore, you have to do it.

YOU JUST GOTTA!

[Ilash]

And of course the Stones can't do authentic reggae, if by that you mean a genre of music made by Jamaicans from within a certain political and ethnocultural framework. They're aging British rockstars. Unfortunately, neither can they do good reggae, and anyone saying their attempts at it are "a good laugh" only means they've got no respect for real reggae, which is another problem but one that has nothing to do with authenticity, just taste and manners.

Great post and one that I do generally agree with. However, I just want to explain my position on this Stones thing. Firstly, the Stones are British rockers as you point out so the idea of them ever doing authentic black American music seems ludicrous. Well, if you base the idea of "authenticity" on social, economic, racial, etc. factors then yeah, they never could do authentic black American music and they never did. Thing is though, I wasn't really referring to authenticity in this way because I too think it is, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant as you so excellently pointed out. No, I'm referring to SOUNDING authentic, which is a whole other matter. On Exile On Main Street, The Rolling Stones covered a wide variety of black American music and they were able to make it sound very much like the real thing, just filtered through The Stones' own inimitable sound. The Stones played gospel, country and the blues and though it could never be entirely authentic in the conventional sense, it did SOUND that way to me.

On the other side of the coin is Cherry O Baby. Cherry O Baby doesn't even sound like they're trying to do a convincing, authentic-sounding take on Reggae. It sounds very much to me that the Stones simply took a genre that they very much admired and just had some fun with it, never really intending for it to be taken seriously. And that's why I like it. I have plenty of respect for real reggae (more respect than love mind you but still) but I like The Stones' take on Cherry O Baby simply because when I listen to it, I could almost hear the boys saying "hey, this ain't the real deal, we get that, we're just having a bit of fun so why not join in on the party". In short, I don't enjoy it (or their country send ups where the same basically applies) because it's taking the piss out of these genres but because I find the jovial, lighthearted feel of these songs so damned inviting.

[Adam Crocker]

(Apologies, my thoughts are probably going to sound rough and a bit unformed, but I got called to come into work earlier than my original scheduled time.)


No, I'm referring to SOUNDING authentic, which is a whole other matter. On Exile On Main Street, The Rolling Stones covered a wide variety of black American music and they were able to make it sound very much like the real thing, just filtered through The Stones' own inimitable sound. The Stones played gospel, country and the blues and though it could never be entirely authentic in the conventional sense, it did SOUND that way to me.

Not for me they don't. For one thing Jagger's distinctive voice always remains a constant reminder that I am a listening to white guys on the record. For another the Stones are just too skilled with production and arrangement to mistake their stuff for the real thing. I've never heard a slide guitar blues song like "Sister Morphine." It's just too elaborate, too dark, too beautifully creepy to actually sound like anything cut by any old slide blues number I know of. Ditto the weird staccato rhythm of "Ventilator Blues" with the scratchy guitar distortion. Similarly "Sweet Virginia" has an R&B saxophone you wouldn't hear on any old country production (even with Western Swing) and while "Dead Flowers" has not only elaborate rock production, but a driving rock rhythm. And what is up with "Rocks Off" with the way it slips into a brief narcotic haze in the middle and Jagger's voice sort of cracks? Does it actually sound like any previous soul or rock production? These seem to invoke less the actual American music that influenced them than an idea of that music. (Of course that's probably why I enjoy peak era Stones so much.)

[Adam Crocker]

Muddy and the Wolf were sharecroppers who lit out for Chicago at the first whiff of money to be made; much of their greatest work was after they were established stars with hit records under their belts. What's so authentic about that? Muddy was a self-destructive asshole, sure, but name ten great artists who weren't. Anyway. They may have suffered -- and certainly, they did; they were black in 20th-century America -- but like any decent artist, they used their experience to create something new. The blues was not an unmediated cry of the soul for them; it was a job, a vocation, and a work. Again, the blues needed them more than they needed the blues.

My biggest obstacle to accepting the standard myths about the Blues was that my initial education in it came from post-war electric blues particularly Chicago blues. And when some sixty to seventy percent of those songs are about sex it's really, really hard to think of the blues as some mythical phenomena evoking the horrible plight of black people in America.

[Ilash]

(Apologies, my thoughts are probably going to sound rough and a bit unformed, but I got called to come into work earlier than my original scheduled time.)



Not for me they don't. For one thing Jagger's distinctive voice always remains a constant reminder that I am a listening to white guys on the record. For another the Stones are just too skilled with production and arrangement to mistake their stuff for the real thing. I've never heard a slide guitar blues song like "Sister Morphine." It's just too elaborate, too dark, too beautifully creepy to actually sound like anything cut by any old slide blues number I know of. Ditto the weird staccato rhythm of "Ventilator Blues" with the scratchy guitar distortion. Similarly "Sweet Virginia" has an R&B saxophone you wouldn't hear on any old country production (even with Western Swing) and while "Dead Flowers" has not only elaborate rock production, but a driving rock rhythm. And what is up with "Rocks Off" with the way it slips into a brief narcotic haze in the middle and Jagger's voice sort of cracks? Does it actually sound like any previous soul or rock production? These seem to invoke less the actual American music that influenced them than an idea of that music. (Of course that's probably why I enjoy peak era Stones so much.)

Okay, fair enough but that is what I meant when I said "filtered through The Stones' own inimitable sound". Sweet Virginia might sound like no other country song, I've ever heard but it still does sound like country.

[scratchie]

Jonathan, as usual, makes several excellent points. Anyone over the age of 15 who worries about "authenticity" in their music is severely in need of help. From Robert Johnson to Joe Strummer, very few musicians live up to their image in terms of "street cred".

However, as Ilash points out, there's another side of the coin, which is the question of musical authenticity. This, I suppose, comes down to a question of musical taste, but, for example, I tend to dislike a lot of the Stones' "country" songs not because they weren't performed by poor white sharecroppers, but because it sounds like the band is smirking the whole time they were recording them, and simply aping the most obvious characteristics of country music with none of its subtlety ("Hey, chaps, we're singing like a bunch of poor white sharecroppers! What a lark!").

Even in cases where the object is not sarcasm, rock bands often fail miserably when they try to branch out into other styles (reggae, country, blues, etc). In a lot of cases, it seems, this is due to ignorance of the style in question, i.e., lack of authenticity. A classic example would be any of the nine million rock bands from the 70s who thought they could play "reggae" simply by strumming their guitars on the off-beat ("Hey, chaps, we're playing like a bunch of stoned rastas! What a lark!").

That said, it occurs to me that there are cases where bands can "inauthentically" adopt another style and still create something exciting. The Clash's "White Man in Hammersmith Palais" or their cover of "Police & Thieves" spring to mind. They weren't trying to play reggae, they were adapting elements of reggae into their own rock style. So in that regard, authenticity really has nothing to do with the quality of music; what's more important is (surprise) talent and creativity to start with, and a knowledge of the music in question, even if you aren't trying to reproduce it authentically.

[Ilash]

Even in cases where the object is not sarcasm, rock bands often fail miserably when they try to branch out into other styles (reggae, country, blues, etc). In a lot of cases, it seems, this is due to ignorance of the style in question, i.e., lack of authenticity. A classic example would be any of the nine million rock bands from the 70s who thought they could play "reggae" simply by strumming their guitars on the off-beat ("Hey, chaps, we're playing like a bunch of stoned rastas! What a lark!").


One thing I want to say about this, again with regards to the Stones. It's important to remember that the Stones were not, by any stretch of the imagination, ignorant of either reggae or country music. Yes, something like Faraway Eyes is a joke song but to me it feels less like Jagger/ Richards viewing country as a joke genre so much as seeing it a good genre to base a comedy song on. The difference is subtle but it is an important one.

[DDM]

Music is theatre, true. But the music artist must be true to the artist's music integrity and/or the band's music integrity. This is where authenticity comes in. Yes, the artist can be commercially successful while being true to the music's integrity. Or, at the same time, the music may not be accepted at all as the fans reject the direction.

Any artist who has a debut album that sells millions of copies is going to have a tough time following up with the second album. Very few artists can accomplish this feat. Katrina & the Waves could never eclipse their own song, "Walking on Sunshine" from the major label debut.

I don't think any punk rock artist could successfully release a trife, easy listening song & be taken seriously. Sure, they can say it's irony, but will the people buy it? Maybe. Maybe not.

At the same time, I don't think a Britney Spears could release "Voodoo Dolly" from Siouxsie & the Banshees without being laughed off the stage. Britney is cotten candy fluff music. No thinking required.

The authenticity also depends on the artist.

[Jonathan Bogart]

Music is theatre, true. But the music artist must be true to the artist's music integrity and/or the band's music integrity. This is where authenticity comes in. Yes, the artist can be commercially successful while being true to the music's integrity. Or, at the same time, the music may not be accepted at all as the fans reject the direction.
What on earth does "music integrity" mean? The only way I can parse that phrase is that you think certain genres require certain formulas to be followed. This is the doctrine of essentialism -- the more Of Its Genre a work of art is, the better it is -- and it's an aesthetic I disagree with fundamentally. Comics don't have to exploit the unique properties of comics to be great comics, movies can be filmed plays and still be perfect films, punk bands can go pop and still be good ("I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" is as trite an easy-listening song as you can find, and it's still one of the greatest punk songs ever), country can mix with r&b, hip-hop can sample rock and jazz and new-wave pop, disco and punk can both inform the same music, and Elvis Costello is allowed to be both an Angry Young Man and a serious composer in a Neoclassical style. There are no absolutes in popular music, and anyone who says there are is either hopelessly naive or selling something.

Britney Spears could easily sing grown-up music; but if she wanted to be taken seriously, she'd have to fall out of the public eye, develop a drug habit, spend almost a decade on the streets, then return with a sensitive, canny producer, and surprise the world. It worked for Marianne Faithfull, who has since been able to do whatever she wants without being pigeonholed.

Punk, though, has its own special set of authenticity issues. Partly this is because punk is as much an attitude born of a very specific time and place as it is a style of music. Just like the blues, it's difficult to play punk music nowadays without being very aware of the rich history you're not living up to. In that sense, no one can "go punk" anymore (the Vibrators were about the last people who could), but like the blues the musical style has developed, shifted, and entered the pop mainstream in a variety of ways, both musical and amusical.

My primary concern is always the sounds and the words coming out of the speakers or the headphones; genre rhetoric, fashions, stupid interviews and dumbass p.r. stunts mean nothing. That way, I get to see that Britney Spears' "Toxic" is as excellent a pop song as the Clash's "Rock the Casbah." And given the time and political atmosphere it was released in (it used distinctly Middle-Eastern musical tropes in a time of major anti-Arab sentiment), it could be considered just as politically engaged. How much of this is Spears' fault, and how much her producers'? Who cares -- the music is what matters.

Finally, I get the sense that you mean, in some vague way, that the artist has to be "true to themselves" to have the kind of integrity you think is valuable.

First, gag. And second, no they don't; that's what theater is all about. Faking sincerity. My main problem with modern pop singers is that they can't even do that. In some ways the music in pop is better than ever: faster, more detailed, more complex, more inventive. But nobody is able to sell a song anymore the way the great jazz, blues, country, and rock artists of the past were. Except in hip-hop. They still know how to act with their voices there.

Rambling. Done.

[Jonathan Bogart]

Speaking of authenticity, taste, manners, and music: my wife still likes "Blame It on the Rain" by Milli Vanilli.

On that point, JB: I challenge you to include and defend a Milli Vanilli song on your '80s list (when you write it). I double-dog dare you. You know you can do it. If you can't, well, damn it, then I'll have to...and I sure as hell don't want to, 'cause my wife would find out ('cause I talk in my sleep), and I'd never live it down till the day I die; therefore, you have to do it.

YOU JUST GOTTA!
Um, yeah ... I don't know that I've ever actually heard a Milli Vanilli song, and without nostalgic hindsight there's no way they're going to be a favorite of mine.

Nice try, though.

[leonaozaki]

Unsurprisingly, I'm with Jonathan on this. One of my favorite musicians, David Bowie, is extremely blatant about his utter lack of authenticity, and he revels in it. That's part of why his music is so exciting.

I don't care about authenticity, integrity, street cred, or "keeping it real." I care about whether the sound coming out of the speakers has some or all of the qualities I require music to have to keep my interest: intelligent without being pretentious, resonant without being sentimental twaddle, honest (in some way!) without being "confessional," inventive, and lively/alive. Having a good beat helps.

I don't like either of the examples Adam cited, and Milli Vanilli are better left forgotten, but I don't dislike them because they're inauthentic; I dislike "Cherry O Baby" because it, like "Far Away Eyes," barely holds together as a song. I don't dislike "Far Away Eyes" because it isn't an authentic country song; I dislike it because Mick sounds so stupid on the verses that it's literally hard for me to listen to the song.

On the other hand I like "Dear Doctor" just fine. Yeah, it's goofy and ridiculous and probably verging on blackface (but not as bad as some of the Stones' early stuff, in which Mick tries way, way too hard to sound black) but, to my ears, it isn't even in the same universe of annoying of "Far Away Eyes." Oh well.

rob

[cadmium_blimp]

Like the man says, if you can fake sincerity you've got it made.

I think Johnny Cash was the master at this. Either that, or he believed every word he ever sang.

[howyadoin]

Britney Spears could easily sing grown-up music; but if she wanted to be taken seriously, she'd have to fall out of the public eye, develop a drug habit, spend almost a decade on the streets, then return with a sensitive, canny producer, and surprise the world.You left out the part about actually being able to sing, of course.

[Jonathan Bogart]

You left out the part about actually being able to sing, of course.
Ravage your voice enough, and it no longer matters. See Courtney Love.

[Adam Crocker]

I think Johnny Cash was the master at this. Either that, or he believed every word he ever sang.

That really depends on how you look at it. He never killed anyone and only spent a night in jail. On the other hand he did seem to have genuine sympathy with even those in jail.

It also depends on which song too. I mean sure we can say this for "Folsom Prison," "Hurt," and "Cocaine Blues." But what about "Man in Black," "When the Man Comes Around," and "Ring of Fire"?

[cadmium_blimp]

I meant it in the best possible way. When he sings a song, does he not sound like he means every word?

[Adam Crocker]

I meant it in the best possible way. When he sings a song, does he not sound like he means every word?

Yes he does. But you were said he was "master of this" in the context of responding to Bogart talking about being able to fake sincerity.

[Jonathan Bogart]

I meant it in the best possible way. When he sings a song, does he not sound like he means every word?
Agreed. And I'm being flippant with my "faking sincerity" soundbite. There's obviously a lot more to really being able to inhabit a song than mere fakery. It can frequently be more like method acting, in a way. And many songs -- and many singers -- don't require that kind of truthiness.

[scratchie]

Agreed. And I'm being flippant with my "faking sincerity" soundbite. There's obviously a lot more to really being able to inhabit a song than mere fakery. It can frequently be more like method acting, in a way.This reminds me of a comment someone made about Jerry Garcia once; that he could be onstage pouring his heart out in the saddest ballad you'd ever heard, and ten minutes later he'd be backstage laughing and joking around.

[Jessica Drew]

Ravage your voice enough, and it no longer matters. See Courtney Love.

Or Steven Tyler.