Media Investigation: Materialism in Pop Music

Media Investigation: Materialism in Pop Music

Aim

This investigation aims to explore the presence of materialistic values in pop music. The investigation will look at prominent artists within the pop genre, both past and present, and compare the levels of materialism in their music and music videos. Arguments for the reasons for any possibly differences between materialism will be made, discussed and evaluated, whilst the potential effects of these values on audiences will also be considered. The hypothesis that pop music has become more materialistic over time will be tested, using 'time' as the independent variable and a 'materialism score' as the dependent variable.

“Materialism”

For the purpose of this study, ‘materialism’ will be recognised as something negative, to be considered synonymous with greed, shallowness and covetousness, whilst being the opposite to generosity. Furthermore, the objectifying of a member of the opposite sex will also be considered to be a signifier of materialism.

Methodology

The investigation requires several stages and many precautions must be taken to ensure that it remains as objective as possible. The comparing of different levels of materialism must especially be scrutinised, therefore a checklist of ‘materialism signifiers’ will be prepared and this same checklist is to be used for every music video that will be analysed. The selection of which artists, and indeed which of their songs, that are to be chosen remains another crucial area which must be as objective as possible. In order to select a range of artists who represent a wide time-span (so that a ‘study over time’ can be produced), the three most influential artists from three time intervals will be chosen, and the music videos of their three most popular songs will be analysed. Although this can be seen as hugely subjective, these decisions will be made using massive popular opinion (i.e. that which is generally accepted among the public), as well as backed up by album sales or chart number one’s (where possible).

‘Materialism Signifiers’ Checklist

The following checklist has been created and will be used for the analysis of all music videos in the investigation:

The presence of each of things signifiers is worth one point. The points are added together to create a total score out of fourteen, the higher this is the more materialistic the music video is.

Selecting the Artists and Their Songs

In order for ‘time’ to be the independent variable, three time intervals will be studied, that is to say that artists will be selected from three different eras, so that differences between eras can be analysed. These intervals will be: 1980-89, 1990-99 and 2000-09. The three most influential artists from each era will be selected.

1980-89

1990-99

2000-09

Data collected from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums_worldwide on 29/08/09

These artists have been selected as the most influential within their respective decades. The artists have been selected based on worldwide album sales. Therefore, for the most part, these artists are the three top selling pop artists for each decade. There are, however, three exceptions to this rule. The first of which is Britney Spears, who is in fact the fourth best selling pop artist of the 90’s after Shania Twain. However, partly due to the fact that Britney Spears has a second album with 20 million sales (‘Oops I Did it Again’ – although it was released in 2000) whilst, furthermore, because Shania Twain borders on the ‘country’ genre, it appears that Britney Spears was, overall, a more influential artist. The other two exceptions to the rule are Justin Timberlake and Beyonce, as there wasn’t enough data representing current album sales (i.e. 2000 onwards), in fact Shakira was the only post 2000 pop artist with at least 20 million sales, below which the sales aren’t included. Therefore, Justin Timberlake and Beyonce were selected on the basis that they are currently extremely popular artists worldwide and regularly have number ones in the charts. It should also be explained that these figures represent the best selling artists of each decade rather than the best selling albums, as in some cases (such as with Michael Jackson, Backstreet and Boys Céline Dion) one artist has two albums which sold more copies than another artist’s best seller (for example Céline Dion’s ‘Let’s Talk About Love’ sold 31 million copies – more than Britney Spears’ ‘...Baby One More Time’), however it’s more important to find the three most influential artists than to find the best selling albums.

Now that the artists have been selected, three songs from each must also be selected. Again, this is based on what tends to be accepted as they’re most popular songs and will be backed up by single sales/ number ones where possible. Note that these songs are not necessarily selected from their bestselling album which was mentioned above.

The tables show the three songs for each artist, including the Materialism Score calculated using the checklist:

1980-89

1990-99

2000-09

Results

This graph includes each of the selected songs from each selected artist and shows their respective materialism scores out of fourteen. The songs are in decade order, and, within each decade, in a lowest to highest materialism score order. Although the trendline shows a positive correlation between time and materialism, it is hard to find any conclusive evidence from this graph due to the excess of outliers; in fact it’s hard to spot any real pattern of results. However, if only a few outliers are excluded then a positive correlation becomes more apparent:

This graph excludes five outliers (‘Material Girl’, ‘Because You Loved Me’ and all three of Shakira’s songs), and the difference is quite significant. A positive correlation is much stronger and therefore suggests a fairly strong link between materialism and the decade that the song belongs to. The strength of the correlation is supported when we look at the avergae materialism score for each artist (i.e. an average calculated from the score of each song):

This graph of averages strengthens the argument that materialism is more prone to occur in more recent (and current) music videos than in older ones, as a fairly strong positive correlation is present even with the inclusion of of the outliers which were excluded from the previous graph. Shakira’s average score, however, remains a major outlier, whilst Céline Dion and Madonna’s average scores only appear to be minor outliers, suggesting that their songs previously excluded as outliers perhaps aren’t representative of their typical work. If we remove Shakira from the graph of averages then the correlation becomes very strong:

Providing the strongest correlation yet, here the trendline is able to match the results very closely with only minor outliers in each direction. These results could suggest several things about both the trendline and about the significance of Shakira’s exclusion:

a) That pop music is becoming increasingly materialistic

b) That Shakira is an unconventional artist and ignores current trends in order to pursue her own vision of her art

c) Shakira grew up in Colombia and may therefore have a different musical culture/ opinion than rival US artists, and that this is a reflection of differences between Western cultures and non-Western cultures

d) Three of Shakira’s closest contemporaries (Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys and Justin Timberlake) we’re, at some point or another, working alongside songwriter/ producer Max Martin, whilst Backstreet Boys and Justin Timberlake both worked with song writer/ producer Lou Pearlman. Both of these men had massive commercial success working with several big-name pop stars/ groups simultaneously and therefore heavily influenced the style of their artists. It could be that materialism signifiers are present in these artists’ work as a result of their producers direct audience targeting and perhaps Shakira was able to steer clear of a producer which such ambitions

Either of these arguments, or a combination of them, could have led to the results that we see, however we have no way of investigating this or the extent to which each factor may have influenced the results as it would just be speculation.

Another interesting perspective is if we create an average materialism score for each decade using each of the songs by each artist:

Interestingly, the graph suggests that materialism has peaked in the 1990s and is now slowly dropping. However, this graph includes Shakira’s results who, as we know, can be considered a major outlier compared to Justin Timberlake and Beyonce’s results.

Here the 2000-09 average was calculated using Justim Timberlake and Beyonce’s results (excluding Shakira’s) and it suggests something quite different. If we look at these two graphs, or indeed any of the other previous pairs of graphs, it becomes clear that it’s more likely for Shakira to be an outlier than for both Justin Timberlake and Beyonce to be an outlier, therefore it also appears more likely that this second graph is more accurate and therefore materialism in pop music videos appears to be increasing and may continue to do so.

Conclusion

These sets of graphs now provide enough evidence for us to say that, judging by the artists selected for the study (which were selected on the basis of being the most influential of each decade), pop music is becoming increasingly materialistic. However, the true measure of this may be with a separate case study analysing Madonna’s music videos, as some of her videos were analysed here and, although ‘Material Girl’ was an outlier with a high score of 8/ 14, her average score wasn’t identified as significantly above the average, however she is still making music videos therefore it would be interesting to see if her work has increased, decreased or stayed at the same level of materialism. This case study could provide an interisting follow-up study which may strengthen or possibly contradict these findings.

But if pop music is becoming more materialistic, what does this really mean? How will this affect the music of the future? How does this influence what audiences think about and want from music? Well all of these are interesting points of discussion, yet without proper audience research we can only speculate. If these trends are to continue, however, it seems worrying to think what a music video might be like twenty years from now, would it score 14/ 14 on the checklist of materialism signifiers? One possibility is that, although already the dominant force in popular music, producers/ songwriters in search of commercial success may become even more widespread, perhaps reducing popular music to watered-down, formulaic works. Although it could be argued that this has been the case for over ten years (starting with the likes of Lou Pearlman and Max Martin), if the trends found in the study continue then it’s possible that producers will become even bigger central figures. Examples of pop music becoming formulaic can be found almost everywhere we look, such as the popular new artist Pixie Lott, amongst others. Take an attractive young woman, write her a catchy song about teenage rebellion (i.e. ‘Mama Do’) and you have an instant number one for a few weeks. This is strongly reminiscent of Britney Spear’s breakthrough into instant fame and popularity through a song of similar themes (i.e. ‘...Baby One More Time’). But is there anything wrong with this? Perhaps not, if audiences are happy listening to a catchy song for a few weeks before being handed another one and so forth then it could be considered not to be a problem at all. However the problem could lie at the feet of artists not content with being flavour of the month, but who have passionate visions for their art. If their work is deemed not to be commercial enough and therefore not marketable or profitable, then it will be hard for them to survive in a world driven by commercial success, and with catchy new songs released every month by attractive new artists then audiences may have no need at all for passionate artists. On the other hand, using the example of Shakira, the results also suggest that there will always be exceptions to the general trend, perhaps even that creavitity and passion is also profitable, therefore maybe these results could be far less significant in terms of predicting how pop music will evolve. Furthermore, there seems to be a current trend whereby independant artists can become popular without the help of a production company. Does this provide a sufficient counter-argument? Perhaps it does, but according to record sales and chartshows it doesn’t, as artists run by powerful producers are, in these terms, significantly more popular. But whatever the argument, the answer will only be revealed as time goes by. In fact, it will ultimately be decided by the future generations of audiences. It brings up the crucial question; ‘is the media controlled by producers or the audience?’, i.e. are the audience happy with whatever the producer gives them or does the producer create what the audience demands? If we assume that materialism is a result of producer influence, and as materialism is increasing, it could be argued that the answer to this question is perhaps that the media is closer to being run by producers than it to being run by the audience. However, if materialism continues to increase, then it could also be argued that in time the media will become even closer to being run by producers, untill eventually it is completely run by producers and the audience becomes completely passive. On the other hand, considering the trend of artists who gain popularity without record companies, the situation could be the complete opposite. It seems, then, that the future of pop music is at a crossroads, where it could become increasingly materialistic and run by producers, or it could become more of a level playingfield where an active audience has control over what the artists create. However, history has taught us that equality on large scales cannot last for long. Ultimately, though, one of the critical deciding factors here could be how record companies and producers manage to remain appealing to artists, as modern technology seems to facilitate artists releasing their own music themselves cheaper than through record companies.

A further interesting point to consider is whether or not this trend applies to other genres of music, or even to other aspects of popular culture. For example, hip- hop and R&B are often talked about as the most materialistic of music genres and there are probably examples of current hip-hop music videos which would score over 10/ 14 using the checklist, so what if they become even more materialistic? Not to mention the fact that an even bigger concern among these videos is the representation of women due to the role they play and the lack of clothes they often wear, some might even argue that hip-hop videos are already bordering on soft porn, what then twenty years from now? Regarding other aspects of popular culture, what is also worth noting is how popular MTV is and how vast its networks have become. In the UK, MTV has a total of ten television channels, at the forefront of which is the original MTV which is primarily made up of shows hosted by singers or other celebrities (e.g. Sharon Osbourne's Charm School, Xzibit’s Pimp My Ride, A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila, Cribs etc), all of which purposefully attract specific audiences with the celebrity host and all of which contain materialistic attitudes, not to mention shows such as My Super Sweet 16 which is incredibly materialistic. Furthermore, it is clear that the type of music a person listens to and the TV/ films they watch are likely to influence what other interests they have, what kind of friends they have, what clothes they tend to wear and perhaps even the way they think. This is indeed a worry if we assume that materialism in popular culture is increasing, as future generations could potentially be adversely affected.

But how does this affect the production of our own video, should we be influenced by these findings? Although we have not chosen a pop band but an indie band instead, and typically indie bands should be promoting ideology opposite to materialism, but if we have reached a stage where materialism is influencing all aspects of popular culture and spreading across different musical genres then perhaps we would not go too far wrong by incorporating some materialism signifiers in our own video. Do we perhaps expect, maybe even want, a certain level of materialism in our music videos? Does it perhaps provide another form of escapism? These videos increase celebrity worship, maybe absorbing ourselves in the rich, glamorous lifestyles of these "role models" helps us forget just how different our world is to theirs. But does this justify creating materialistic music videos? Truth is, this discussion can carry on forever because it's as subjective as anything else.

In my personal opinion, materialistic music videos are damaging to society because they have the power to adversely influence popular opinion, promoting greed, vanity and perhaps even ignorance whilst neglecting the value of genuine individuality.

Evaluation

Although my findings suggest a fairly strong correlation and some measures were taken to minimise subjectivity, the methodology can still be criticised for several reasons. For example, although the artists that were selected were selected on a fairly objective and considered basis in order to best represent the majority of other artists active at the same time, a large enough sample of artists for this to be true was still not possible to be collected due to the impossibly vast amount of analysis that this would require. Therefore, although these particular artists may represent a trend in increasing materialistic values, we cannot say for sure that this was true to every artist. In fact, we can say that it was not true to every artist because we found Shakira to be a strong outlier. Another criticism can be made for the 'materialism checklist' which was used as, although it was fairly comprehensive, it is never quite possible to encompass such a subjective matter as 'materialism' into a quantitative measurement. Furthermore, the ratings of materialism may have been subject to a certin level of bias as each rating was relative to what had been analysed before. Also, only one person (me) rated the videos. Needless to say, many other people may have given different ratings, therefore the rating system was subjective, so the reliability of the findings are weakened. In order to improve this aspect of the investigation, more judges must be used to rate the videos so that an averaged may be created and the reliability of the findings increased. In conclusion, many aspects of the investigation were controlled at a good level considering my limitations, however it is clear that there are several weaknesses to the investigation which must be considered when evaluating the strength of the findings.