WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1268 - Kelefa Sanneh

Episode Date: October 7, 2021

Kelefa Sanneh has been writing about music for his entire career. Drawing on his experience as the music critic at The New York Times, a staff writer for The New Yorker, and a lifelong music obsessive, Kelefa took a detailed look at how music unites and divides us with his new opus, Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres. Marc and Kelefa talk about their own personal musical journeys, how genres are comparable to communities, and how identities can be established and shaped by the music we love. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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All right, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck buddies? What the fuck sticks? What the fuck doodles? What's happening? I'm Mark Maron. This is my podcast. How are you? How's your head? How are your hands? How's your toe? How's your feet? How's your gut? How's your gut garden?

Are you feeding your gut garden with probiotics so your poop is good? What are you doing for yourself? Before it gets away from me and before i forget how to pronounce his name properly i would like to say that kelofa sene is here kelofa is a journalist a staff writer at the new yorker he used to work at the new york times he writes about music years ago uh the guy interviewed me at the new yer Festival, 2015. And then I hadn't seen or heard from him because I don't read shit. I'm out of the fucking loop on just about everything. It's amazing I know what's going on.

Maybe I don't. I only seem to know the bad stuff. Is there anything good happening? There is. There is. George Clooney walked right up to me and talked to me. Now, I know some of you think hey man does that still like you know you've been doing this a long time you talked to a lot of big celebrities

I mean come on dude does that still have an impact on you yes yes it does uh there are certain movie stars that are real fucking movie stars they they have the effect that a movie star would have on a human walked right up to me said hey mark how you doing walked right up to me i know some of you are like so what sure you can think that but has george clooney ever walked up to you and said hey your name has he and went on a minute i'll tell you but wait i distracted. Kellefer Sene is a guy who wrote a book. It's called Major Labels, A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres. He goes through all the genres of music that have defined and dominated the past 50 years. Rock, R&B, country, punk, hip hop, dance, and pop. And I thought this was sort of up my alley, but I don't know about you, but i see a book like that and i'm like maybe i need to learn something like there's i definitely

i don't know that much you know i buy a lot of records i'm i'm always late to the party i've missed almost everything there's a huge chunk of time between like 1989 and maybe 2000 where i'm just all comedy all the time not really focusing on music and then shifted a bit once i started getting into vinyl again and i'm just it's all new whole education the whole world of music is new to me basically and i've been playing catch up but when i read this book there's a whole lot of black music that I just, I don't know the history of. I don't know the nuances of, I don't know the different sub genres of R and B hip hop when it became soul, when it became smooth jazz, there's just a lot of black music. don't know about. It bothers me.

I know some jazz. I know some hip-hop. I know some R&B. I know some soul. But, yeah, mostly what everybody knows, and it makes me feel limited because I like new music. I don't know anything about dance, to be honest with you. I know very little about hip-hop in the big picture,

and I only know about old country for the most part except for a few people What i'm trying to say is i'm a fucking dummy I'm, not a poser. I'll admit it. I have a lot of records I listen to a lot of stuff, but I don't know how to contextualize anything And sometimes when you read these kind of books, you're like, all right, this is your context you decided it califasene so Let's lay it out does it make sense is it correct but i learned

some stuff so that's going to happen the george clooney thing do you want me to talk about george clooney i was invited to a screening of his new movie the tender bar it's uh it's a kind of a coming of age rites of passage movie about this kid ty sheridan is the kid uh ben affleck is the uh the bartender uncle christopher lloyd's in it as the old man saw him at the screening i met that ty sheridan kid he's a nice kid he enjoys the show but i was just there to watch it and then i'm going to the bathroom never met George Clooney I don't know this guy I talk about him a lot and I don't know how many times I've talked about Michael Clayton on this show and I don't know how many times I've talked

about that he's like a real movie star that's got the real chops he can do the business he can do the acting thing and he's a fucking movie star like you know like old timey but whatever I'm just walking over to the bathroom and I notice he's walking in with a group of people and he's a fucking movie star. Like, you know, like old timey. But whatever. I'm just walking over to the bathroom and I notice he's walking in with a group of people. And he's just walking in the door and I'm over to the side walking to the bathroom.

And I kind of look over and I catch his eye and he goes, hey, Mark, how you doing? And I'm like, wow, I'm pretty good. George, thank you. Thank you for asking you. He's like, I'm good. I'm happy to be here. I'm like, well, I'm excited to see the movie. And he goes, it's light. And I'm like, you know what? Light's good. I could use light.

And he said, yeah, I bet you could. I bet you could. And I was like, wow, he knows something about me. I don't know. I don't know what the details are. But but I imagine that would be a proper response to me no matter what he knew. You seem to need something light. But I imagine that would be a proper response to me, no matter what he knew. You seem to need something light. But I was excited. Is that wrong? I was not starstruck, but I was like, how does George Clooney know me?

Is that weird? I'm not going to assume anything, but there's still part of me that doesn't understand, right now, how George Clooney knows who I am. Is that weird? Huh? Is clooney great actor seemingly a nice guy to me very exciting and there's one line in the movie it won't spoil anything but it spoiled my fucking brain for a day not in a terrible way but it forced me to have a realization that i don't know i'm certainly ready to have it but i was surprised at uh how much it affected me and it's a throwaway line and it has nothing to do with the movie per se you know i've been processing grief for the last year and a half since, uh, Lynn Shelton passed away and you get a year out and you start to feel like, okay,

I'm okay. And I am okay. But then something happens to, it just opens up the portal. And it was really this simple line in the movie where he's describing this young kid is describing a, a college romance. And he, he was just talking about

how why he might like the girl he thought he loved and he said uh she gives me hope somehow and it was nebulous right and then like i don't know why it stuck with me but all of a sudden i was thrown back into thinking about you my my relationship because I've been struggling with something and that is you know have I grown at all you know am I a different person outside of just getting older and a little more exhausted with who I am in terms of bad habits or patterns of thought uh just the the the the fact of giving zero fucks of you as you get older i talked to uh to raji p henson the other day and she said all my fucks are behind me so there is i like that that the way she said that you'll hear it when she says it later whenever

we put that up but but there is there was something that i was trying to identify with this hope thing because it struck me and you know i've been on the road a lot and i've been in hotel rooms a lot and i've been you know with my brain a lot and i'm starting to realize like not a lot has changed in terms of like i feel like i am once again you know kind of resentful and and and uh you and certain types of insecurity and self-loathing are happening again. And a lot of things that I felt like I was moving past. And obviously, some of you listening to me are like, no, Mark, we all hear it all the time. Nothing has changed.

But there was a window there when I had surrendered to my love for Lynn and we began to engage it where I could feel like, you know, this made sense. Her and I made sense the way our personalities were together, our age together, you know, and the possibilities of a future where I could see a full life ahead of me and sharing it with somebody else. I could see it. And it seemed good. It seemed rich. It seemed like a full thing in my mind. And that all was gone. And I think that's what it triggered.

That she gave me hope, but it wasn't like, you know, I wasn't hanging anything on her. It wasn't like I was, you know, like, like putting that like this person's going to save me or anything. It was the idea of who we were together and what that could look like. you know gave me like it felt like hope to me when I saw it and I saw it a lot it led to my decision to sort of give in to the relationship and to my feelings and I've said before that that there has been there's people that that knew her for years that had a whole life with her and I did not and it was this this sense of like you know, the rest of life is going to be okay with this person, no matter what happens. And I guess it feels like hope to me. And I think now that it's totally dug in that that is not going to happen on top of that, whatever anger I might feel or whatever sadness I might feel around this loss. But now I'm back to my own patterns of thought.

You know, the small circle of life that I live in with myself. And I have to figure out, you know, how to open that back up again. Yeah, I mean, I'm not trying to bum anybody out. I saw a bunny in my yard just now. Like 10 minutes ago, I saw a bunny. And I had to look up whether or not I could feed him cauliflower. That's a whole story into itself. A whole fucking story. Look, right now, I'm going to talk to Kelifa Sene.

I want to learn. It's called Major Labels, A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres. It's now available wherever you get books. We talk it out. You can get anything you need with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats,

but meatballs and mozzarella balls, yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats. Get almost, almost anything. Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. Are you self-employed? Don't think you need business insurance? Think again. Business insurance from Zensurance is a no-brainer for every business owner because it provides peace of mind. A lot can go wrong. A fire, cyber attack, stolen equipment, or an unhappy customer suing you. That's why you need insurance.

Don't let the, I'm too small for this mindset, hold you back from protecting yourself. Zensurance provides customized business insurance policies starting at just $19 per month. Visit Zensurance today to get a free quote. Zensurance. Mind your business. Oh. What was the event we did? It was the New Yorker Festival. Okay.

So we sat on a stage. I interviewed you. Yeah. I accidentally you. Yeah. I accidentally made you cry. You did? Yeah. But what did you do? I played a couple clips because from the show, I played a couple clips of you and Louis.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was a little emotional. Before the fallout. Before the fallout. Right. Yeah. But that was less interesting even now to me than your history with him and just showing people what this show is capable of if there are some people in

the audience who didn't know so right i was i heard from a lot of people who love the event and yeah i thought it was good it was fun yeah i mean you know you never know what's going to happen with those events i know you don't and you know i get yeah sometimes you get a lot of the same questions and uh if i cried then it must have been a little uh around the side hopefully it wasn't from boredom and frustration no i i definitely don't cry because of that i'm more likely to get angry so you did it you did you did the book about everything in music except for you you you smartly said uh not gonna fuck with jazz you gotta draw some draw some lines. I'll tell you, it was a grim day when I sat down and had an empty Google doc and I wrote, chapter one, rock and roll. Was that grim for you?

That was not a happy feeling to realize I'd gotten myself into something like that. Well, I mean, when did the work start? Was this a pandemic book? No. No, it finished during the pandemic, but it started a year or so before. I think I thought I could bang it out in a year. A history of music, of modern music. It's called Major Labels, A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres. Well, at least you broke it down. Yeah, I got to break it down for people.

I mean, you know, on the other hand, this is what I've been doing kind of since the 90s. I've been obsessed with music. I know. Well, what's the story? You know, you do have, because I know in the beginning of the book, you do have, I don't know if, I don't want to use an insensitive word, but you have sort of an exotic past. Yes, yes, exotic. And where were you born? That was the insensitive word you were worried?

I thought you were going to say tribal or something. No, I don't know what descriptors are okay. I mean, it is exotic to me. It's exotic to me, too. My father grew up dodging hippos in a river. My father came from a little village on a little island in a little country called Gambia in West Africa. Yeah. Dodging hippos?

Yeah, because he said that was the scariest animal when they'd go swimming. They're like fucking dinosaurs, not snakes. Well, no, and hippos don't even eat people, right? No, they're just big. You just don't want to get... I guess you don't want to... If they kill you, it's just because they're assholes. Or they didn't see you.

No, no, no. They see you. They're known to be very cantankerous, apparently. Oh, really? Yeah. The hippo. The hippo. Are there still many left?

I think there are hippos. I don't think the hippo is endangered. Oh. Well, that's good to know. I've never seen a hippo. Have you? Yeah, I've seen a hippo in a safari driving around. You went on one?

Yeah, like a photograph safari, not a gun safari. Right. Of course. Yeah. And you went on one of those? Yeah. Where your dad's from? No, actually, my mother is from South Africa,

and so I've been on some safaris there in South Africa. See, now that to me, like, that's exotic to me. It's also exotic. My mother's white, so it's a different kind of exotic. White South African? White South African. My father's black from Gambia. They met in London.

They're both academics. It's interesting, because it's like, those are the spectrums of both of those races. Sure. If you're thinking white South African, I'm assuming Dutch heritage. No, the other side, the English side. Oh, okay. Yeah. But still white, white.

White. Yes, absolutely. So they were both academics? They're both academics. Your mom was, what was her academia? My mother taught Yale students how to speak Zulu. Wow. Wow. Yeah.

So if you know any Yale students who know how to speak Zulu, it's probably because of my mother. Did they both leave? How did they meet? They met at graduate school in London. My father died a couple years ago. He was a historian of religion. He grew up in a Muslim country and converted to Christianity as a teenager, and then made his life studying the history of Christianity and Islam. Well, it seems that Major Label, A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres, is sort of a study of religion.

Yes, exactly. Musical religion. And my musical religion was punk rock. Yeah. rock yeah which is you know it's it seems like it's true for a lot of people or a surprising number of people given that punk rock itself is like not all that popular i guess but like what was your dad what was the music you know your dad came up with i mean what i mean was there influence there because i've recently been kind of re-engaging with the music that my father loved but it's different than yours i I imagine. Well, like lately, I've been playing some musical performances

and I've been doing, you know, songs that he really liked. It was mostly that 50s rock and roll. I mean, you know, he was a big Buddy Holly guy, but he, you know,

he liked, you know, not the coasters, but the diamonds and there's just music from being a kid and driving in the station wagon with the American graffiti soundtrack, you know, and that was his music.

Right. But he seemed to be pretty partial to Buddy Holly. Well, I had, yes. So that was not exactly what was playing in my household. My father, you know, there's traditional music in the Gambia and his family, my family, I guess, would be traditionally the patrons of the arts. Yeah. His family, my family, I guess, would be traditionally the patrons of the arts. So there'd be griots singing songs of praise about people like us. My father actually named me for two of the most famous compositions in that tradition.

My name is Kelifa. And so there's a composition called Kuruntu Kelifa and one called Kelifa Ba about this great warrior. So there was that tradition. I called it finger chopping music when I was a kid because it sounded to me like these people were chopping. and one called Kellefaba about this great warrior. So there was that tradition. Yeah. I called it finger chopping music when I was a kid because it sounded to me like these people were chopping their fingers off and then screaming about it. Really?

Because it's this very kind of intense, keening sound. I mean, it's amazing. That's kind of punk rock. Yes. I mean, I realized that later, right? The thing about punk rock is depending on how you define it, just about anything could be punk rock. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it becomes sort of a, like, it's not just about music.

What, the griots? No, the punk rock. When you say something's punk rock. Well, it's a comparative term, right? Punk rock means rebellion, defiance, fuck you. Right. So something, in a sense, can only be punk rock in relation to something else. So when do you, so where were you born?

I was born in England. I lived for a couple of years in Ghana where my dad was teaching and then he got a job in Scotland. He's teaching religion in Ghana? History of religion at the university there. And then he got a job at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. So I lived in Scotland for a few years. How old were you? Do you remember? Yeah, from two to when I was five.

And then I moved to America when I was five yeah with a Scottish accent skinny brown skinned one of the worst kid one of the worst accents I feel like it's I feel like it's considered charming it is it's got a role to it I remember someone from Scotland telling me that a lot of in the UK a lot of call centers were located in Scotland because other people found the accent charming and it sort of disarmed people who wanted to yell at a company. They heard a Scottish voice at the end of the line. It soothed them? Yeah, but I don't think that as a five-year-old newly arrived in America, I'm not sure I had a soothing effect on my classmates and peers. Yeah. But I had, you know, I think like a lot of immigrants, I had this sense of wanting to figure out what America was and what was happening in America.

So what year, like, what are we talking? I don't know how old you are. You're younger than me. I'm 45. So I arrived in 1981 as a five-year-old. That's when I graduated high school. So you're there. Where'd you move? Massachusetts. I moved to Cambridge. My dad got a when I graduated high school. So you're there. Where'd you move, Massachusetts?

Moved to Cambridge. My dad got a gig at Harvard. Really? So you're in Cambridge. Yeah. Like what street? Well, for the first year, we lived across the road from the Divinity School on Francis Avenue. I know exactly where that is.

Yeah. At a place called the Center for the Study of World Religions. I walked by there because my cousins, they used to live right up on Spark Street. Oh, okay. Right next to that school. Sure. The Brown and Nichols School. Sure.

Yeah. And then near the Star Market probably. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right there, yeah. Kind of by the Star Market. It's by that fish store that's like right up,

see Sparks goes into Huron, is it maybe? Yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah, yeah, okay. Doesn't matter. Cambridge. Well, you know, Star Market and Stop and Shop were like the two supermarkets.

Star Market. And I remember when I discovered punk rock. Star Market. I remember getting super into the Sex Pistols. Yeah. And they have a bunch of, you know, there's the one album and there's a bunch of other recordings. Yeah. And they're playing Roadrunner.

Yeah, which is a Jonathan Richman song. And they're singing about the Stop and Shop. Stop and Shop, right. I remember being like, how? Yeah. Why? And then it was later I realized like, oh, Jonathan Richman was from Boston. Right.

Yeah. That whole album, did that record factor in? It was already probably, you know, it was already out and gone. Did the Modern Lovers factor in? Not until later. So, you know, I was kind of listening to regular stuff and rock and roll and kind of got into the- At five?

No, no, no. When I got older. Okay. When I was a kid, I was listening to more hip hop because that was the mid 80s by that point you talk about that in the book because honestly you know i one thing i realized from reading as much of the book as i read i i tended to like i feel like i'm good on country like and also was sort of cramming but i feel like i'm okay on country i i did realize he sort of like you know as a through line, which I liked. But I'm very unclear.

And I have a lot of records. And I consider myself a music guy. But I'm not a music nerd. And I don't claim to know everything. But I always am like, I go to the record store and I'm like, man, I need some more black stuff. Not meaning vinyl. You're talking about music. No, I need more black music because, like, I know blues okay. And I know some early R&B, but I get lost.

And I do have records. I got James Brown records, Curtis Mayfield records. I got the OJ's record that you talk about, which I love and I've got. But not much hip hop. Like, I don't, just because it wasn't the music i specifically grew up with i don't know how it all fits together right so this was very helpful to me and i was very sort of like into the rmb chapter and then the hip-hop chapter but i needed that education because i don't know those nuances right but anyway sorry so yeah well i i kind of wanted to do i kind of wanted to do a

friendly thing and an unfriendly thing in this book. And the friendly thing is just to sort of give my view of how all this stuff fits together and how do we get from this to that. And it is your view and it's not something that hasn't been attempted before. Right. Sure. But, okay, but you grew up, hip hop was actually appealing to almost, you know, preteen kids. Oh, yeah. I mean, if you're, you know, I'm however old,

I was eight years old or something, or 10 years old in 1986. Yeah. You've got like Run DMC and the Beastie Boys. Now, from a musical point of view, those Run DMC records were super radical. They stripped everything out of the music and it's just going to be a drum machine

and two guys shouting at you, like a really radical thing. But as a kid, I didn't realize that wasn't how you were previously supposed to make music I was like this stuff's amazing. Made sense to your brain. Yeah and it's funny and you can memorize what they're doing. Teach you how to talk. So I got into that and then I got into some normal rock and roll Beatles and Stones and stuff and then. Well you grew up in Cambridge so you had to.

Where were you going to school? I was going to school as a kid? I went to public schools in Cambridge, Arlington, and Belmont, and then I went to Shady Hill, which is a private school in Cambridge. But all those, that's like towny land. So you're kind of getting all of it, right? Yeah, but I was kind of too little for a lot of those divisions to apply. Like, you know, when you're 10, 11 years old, it's just like a bunch of kids. Yeah, sure. And they're kind of listening to what's on the radio or like what's cool like what's on what bcn

yeah bcn or whatever the the pop station was at the time so it wasn't but i didn't really get deep into music until uh around my 14th birthday and a friend of mine gives me a punk rock mixtape oh oh really yeah so now your dad's teaching at harvard at harvard yeah and then he moves to yale we moved down to connecticut oh but so but you're at harvard at 14 and someone gives you the punk rock mix by then we're living in connecticut and my friend gives me this punk rock mixtape what's on it uh what is on it uh some dead kennedy yeah some fugazi some sex pistols i remember the Exploited, Sex and Violence, the song where those are the only words, Sex and Violence.

And it just, it really did blow my mind. And I kind of have gone back and tried to figure out why it blew my mind. And? Because, and one of the things I realized was like, the songs on the radio and on MTV that I kind of rejected when I got into punk were really good. Like if you listen to Vogue by Madonna or Poison by Belle Biv Devoe, these are really interesting productions.

These are really important moments in musical history. Yeah, but you don't know that's how you're going to look at music. Exactly right. And what punk teaches me is I think that you can have opinions about music. You can say like, no, I'm setting all this other stuff aside and I'm going to choose this. But ultimately, like I did a little research that, you know, and I guess you wrote a thesis in college about the idea of the dominance of rock.

Right. I wrote an essay at the New York Times in 2004 about rockism. Rock, okay. Is that where it was? Yeah. York Times in 2004 about rockism. Okay. Is that where it was?

Yeah. But the thing is, is what I realized when reading this book is that a lot of the reasons people engage with music, certainly when you're younger, is because it is magic and you can't quite explain why it moves you. I mean, as you get more sophisticated and you understand things, but ultimately, and the weird thing about the idea of rockism is like, it turns out that you might have been a little off because it seems like some of those songs will last forever. Oh, yeah. Or, yeah, so they'll last as long as we do anyways. Yeah, forever.

I mean, I think Johnny B. Goode's in space. Right. But it's a weird phenomenon that I always say as a comic that, you know, people don't want to hear jokes more than twice. Right. But they'll hear music over and over again for their entire life and it will change with their life. Right. So it's magic.

But it's magic, but it's also, there's a, it's magic, but that makes it sound a little more friendly than it is. And the unfriendly thing I wanted to do in this book was talk about how part of loving music often means hating music, means hating something else, means hating what some other people listen to. You got to fight. You got to say, I don't want to be like those people. I want to be like these people. And then as you get older, you're sort of like, it's all okay. Well, yes, to a certain extent, but I'm not sure that those impulses to like be part of a community

and that means to not be part of some other community i'm not sure that ever really goes away i mean i think any i think to me a genre is a musical community and to me any community is defined by inclusion and exclusion so this is how you approach and you need a bit of both you approach that's how you approached your history was that you know that you were going to to figure out who the prime movers were in each of these genres and sub genres and then, you know, figure out how that define the community. Yeah. And figure out how people think about these things. I mean, you know, rock and roll. Like, what does rock and roll mean in the 70s?

How is that changing? How does it come to be that, like, if you say you like rock and roll in the 80s, like maybe that means Motley Crue. Right. No, I get it. How does how does rock more for evolve right from the beginning and and but i i thought it was sort of sort of you know what i always found is interesting is that you've got to judge it against whatever sense of community you have or who the audience is you've got to you've got to define it against the charts so like the charts are indicators the charts are indicators of how many people are listening, and that's, you know, that's the game that a lot of the record companies are playing.

And how it's defined as a business, right? Because they shift the names of the charts. And, like, for example, you're wearing the Aretha shirt. You played Jerry Wexler in the Aretha movie. How come you didn't mention Wexler? I thought he came up with the term rhythm and blues as a genre. I kind of somewhat arbitrarily start this book around 1970. So there's some earlier stuff, but the idea is like the last 50 years.

My idea was that like we sort of have an idea of this big explosion that happened in the 60s. Right. And I wanted to say something about, well, what happened since then? How did everything get so fragmented and weird in the past half century? Right. And Aretha Franklin's a great example because she's this amazing talent. And yet throughout her career, she maintains an obsession with the R&B charts. Throughout her career, she's like, well, who's number one on R&B?

How can I get a number one R&B hit? She was really interested in making R&B hits. I think partly because that was one way to measure, how am I resonating within this musical community? Yeah. And even someone like- Which at that time was the black audience. Yes, which kind of still is in the world of R&B.

I thought that was, for me, very engaging. Because I didn't know how- When you talk about this ongoing arguments within the R&B community, I'm sort of like, wait, there is? Yeah. Right. Who's there is? Yeah. Right. Who's having them? Right. The idea in the 1980s that people would look at Prince and Michael Jackson and be like,

are these guys sellouts? Yeah. That's so far from the way that we think of Prince today. But is that an academic conversation or is that like a, you know, on the ground conversation? It's both, right? Like when Whitney Houston gets booed at the Soul Train Awards because she's viewed by that audience as too pop and not R&B enough, that reflects something real in how she was perceived, right?

When Whitney Houston first comes out and is called the prom queen of soul, right? There's this idea that like, oh, is she a quote unquote real R&B singer or is she just making pop music? And what is the difference? And I real R&B singer, or is she just making pop music? And what is the difference? And I think R&B is a good example because you have this push and pull within the genre. You have people who really want pop success, who really want to reach a big audience and make more money and make a bigger impact. Right. But also, they want to feel like they're still accepted by the r&b audience well let's talk let's figure out how to talk about that the actual uh expanse of the book you know in relation to your life so at 14 you're

kind of doing the punk thing and that's it and like literally i put my rolling stones tapes tapes aside and i'm like i'm never listening to this band again really yeah yeah so the it but that was that's how it felt to me if you were gonna fight you're gonna fight the fight it felt well yeah or it wasn't even... I was going to create my own thing, and I was going to exist in this punk world, and the rest of the world was crap. So that was a life definer. Oh, absolutely.

Like you shifted your identity. Absolutely. It's like I'm not... Like that stuff is normal, and the punk stuff is weird, and has integrity, and is interesting, and is scary, and is cool, and that's where I want to be. So you're in Connecticut, and you're sitting there like you're getting what, Doc Martens? Yeah, but I never had, I was never that deep into the lifestyle. Like I had my Doc Martens.

I had some weird hair. Yeah. But it was mainly just being obsessed with records and trying to read about records and trying to learn about anything I could and saving up money to buy more. I say records. It was actually cassettes mainly. But saving up money to buy more. I say records, it was actually cassettes mainly. Saving up money to buy more music. Were you young enough to where you had to sort of like, it was hard to get those records?

Absolutely. It was hard to even find out which ones to get. You had to have some fanzine connections? Yes. Or you had to guess based on what record label the thing was on. People talk about gambling addiction and they say part of the addiction is losing as much as winning. Right. And there was something like that with record shopping, right? You pay your 10 bucks.

You don't got to tell me. And you come home, and you're like, did I just waste my money? And I'm buying old records, dude. You know, like records that are known quantities. And I'm sort of like, mm. You know, I don't, I don't. But you don't have any more records. I have some, but I don't have, I never, I was never that great at collecting.

Maybe because I was never, my tastes kind of kept changing. Mine too, but like, I don't look at myself as a collector. In my mind, I'm still just buying stuff I like to listen to. But then all of a sudden, like, I just got in a shipment of 30 records that I bought in St. Louis. A lot of jazz records, actually. And yesterday I was like, I got to go over to the record store. I'm like, dude, you didn't even listen to the ones you just got. Right, right.

You got to go get what? Right. What do you got to get? So then you got to question what's happening. Well, for me, I realized it was less about acquisition and more about curiosity. Right. It was more like, okay, this punk rock and like what's happening in this punk scene there? And then beyond a certain point, it was like, well, what's happening in the techno clubs?

Or like, what's happening in the world of hip hop? Or what's happening in R&B? But you weren't thinking that then? No, but over the next few years. But who were your punk people? Who were your bands? Who were you loyal to? Like, what was the ones that sort of like,

I got to get all of these? Well, I mean, I think, you know, bands like Dead Kennedys were very influential to me, but it was a wide range of stuff from minor threat to Japanese noise music to all sorts of- Well, earlier than that, more like boredoms. Yeah. And there was a whole kind of sub-genre where it was actually pretty close to just static.

I wanted the weirdest stuff you could find. That's so funny, because for me, when I was a kid, and I had a friend at the record store next door who turned me on to like Fred Frith and like to me or The Residence that was the equivalent to that for me.

absolutely. But again, the thing about punk is it's a very unstable way to think about the world because once you start thinking like I want bands that bands should define

the rules, should defy the rules of how music is made. No matter how. Right. But then the next step is like, well who says bands should be defiant? Right.

Who made that rule? Right. And so you- So then you're being dragged back to the stones. Well, yeah, then you're gravitating towards other things that defy rules in other ways. And I remember going to a dance hall reggae concert that blew my mind because of the energy and the chaos of it. And I started to get obsessed with hip hop

and started to hear the kind of audacity of hip hop and started to really fall in love with that. I started to fall in love with R&B and hearing some of the production in modern R&B, you know, stuff that Timbaland was doing. And this is all when you were in your teens? This is later. This is, you know, maybe when I'm 20, 21.

So where'd you go to college? I went to Harvard. That's fancy. It's a fancy college, and it had a very fancy radio station where they were obsessed with punk rock, where you have to take a semester-long, you have to take an exam. What were you studying? I was studying comparative literature. But were you doing anything like a minor in music, or they don't have that at Harvard?

No, I was doing music just on the side. I was at this radio station. the side. I was doing, I was at this radio station. Comparative literature. Is that Henry Gates? Yeah, I worked on his academic journal, which was called Transition, which was a journal

of race and culture. Uh-huh. But especially in the early years, I just wanted to like do radio shows and organize punk shows. Yeah.

And you organized punk shows? You produced them? Yeah, we're part of like a crew of people who like, you know, have some band play in the basement of a health food store. Would you bring them in? The band? Sometimes. You mean bring them in to where? To like, were you booking concerts? Yeah. I mean, booking makes it sound more fancy than it was. But with punk rock, you know, they kind of need people to sort of find them a place. So like what kind

of bands? Who were they? And I wasn't, you know, I wasn't the ringleader, but I recently was going through my old stuff and found a flyer for a rhode island band called drop dead oh yeah furious like animal rights hardcore band did you know dung beetle uh i've heard of dung i heard of dung beetle on your show probably for the first time yeah yeah but but i realized so yes i was doing kind of all that stuff and it was i was working in record stores and I was that was record store uh let's see the first one I worked it was discount records Harvard Square yeah oh yeah yeah and then I worked at pipeline records uh-huh which my friends owned I spent a year working in the warehouse of Newberry Comics record I took a year off from Harvard yeah to spend a year working in the warehouse of

Newberry comments as a learning thing just because that was all I cared about music was all I could do on vinyl or thing? Just because that was all I cared about. Music was all I cared about. Was it still on vinyl or that was CD time? That was CD time. My job was to put stickers on CDs, like price stickers. So you saw everything coming in? Yeah, I remember the day there was a Red Hot Chili Peppers album that came out. I think the One Hot Minute, the one with Dave Navarro on it.

Yeah. And I remember that because all I did from nine to five that day was just put stickers on that CD. Non-stop. But it was great. It's a big record, I guess. There was a warehouse stereo. And so you got to hear what your fellow workers were into.

And it was just another way to be around music. So what disciplines did you learn? Because in reading the book, I realized that the amount of reading that you had to do, there had to be an approach to this thing and it seems That you wrote you read a tremendous amount of biographies and autobiographies of people within all of these genres Yeah And and media coverage from the time so that so you like in setting up to do the research of a history of popular music You know like what what were you drawing from in terms of your experience in organization?

Was it something you learned? Did you have to whiteboard it? No, I didn't whiteboard. I mean, I think, you know, I've been so I eventually became a pop music critic at the New York Times. So you've been writing about music all the time. Yeah, and then went to the New Yorker where I've been for, I guess, 13 years now. Right. So the research element was second nature.

Yeah. And I think so. I think over the course of those years, hopefully I learned how to get a little better at telling a story. I wanted this book to feel like a series of stories, not like an encyclopedia. Well, I thought it was interesting that you sort of basically opened with Grand Funk.

You know, out of everybody, out of anything. And this is like, this is a band that, because I'm in the vinyl hole, and I remember Grand Funk when I was a kid, because I grew up in that that, because I'm in the vinyl hole. Right. And I remember Grand Funk when I was a kid. Right. Because I grew up in that time. But I'm trying to reassess them as a band. But your basic example in terms of the rock part, the rock and roll part of this is that they're important because they were a band no one gave a shit about, but they were huge. Right.

And it kind of creates this crisis of faith among a certain number of people who love and write about rock music. Right. Which is like, is this even our genre anymore genre anymore like what does rock and roll even mean like we thought rock and roll was cool but like maybe now rock and roll is popular and not that cool and maybe this idea that we take for granted today that there's going to be bands that are beloved by the critics and bands that are selling out arenas and maybe those won't be the same bands that was kind of a new idea back then right but and then you're able to sort of like you know move through you know kind of pick up towards the towards the end of the 60s and on into the 70s and how these these genres struggle to uh maintain relevance if but like so much of it i is rarely it seems on the conscious

part of the artists and it more becomes about that relationship with the actual labels themselves. Yeah, it's a bit of both, right? I mean, one of the things about genres, and one of the ways in which you can think about genres, is you can rebel against them, right? You can be a country singer who's like, hell no, I'm not putting a string section on my album.

You can be a country singer who says, no, I'm not going to use Nashville studio musicians, I'm going to use my touring band, band. But those decisions, even by making those decisions, you're rebelling against country music, but you're also showing that you're part of that community. Because if you're a different kind of artist, you never even think about string sections and studio musicians. I like that whole thing, that line in there about country and that, like, it's really, it's sort of like being Jewish. It's like, you don't have to be religious to be jewish it's an identity so if you're jewish you're jewish really it's same with country it's like it doesn't matter that was dolly parton's thing right and

dolly parton was going to be country even when she was making disco records right it didn't matter she was going to because she's country and that's an interesting way to think about country right because that means one of the things that means is it's like kind of a closed society like if you're not born into it you're not in it right but at the same time that means, one of the things that means is it's like kind of a closed society. Like if you're not born into it, you're not in it. Right. But at the same time, that means there's like a certain amount of freedom. Right. That once you're in it, you can do whatever.

And that actually turns out to be true in a lot of genres. I think about, I talk about this with hair metal. And the hair metal bands, their whole thing was like, we look super rock and roll. Right. We're the most rock and roll. But like for a lot of them, their big hits were power ballads. Well, that was always the weird thing about Alice Cooper. You know, Alice Cooper is that like most of his hits,

a lot of them are kind of sweet. Right. You know, and he's like, this is a guy that was like best friends with Bernie Taupin. Right. And so if you look the part and act the part, sometimes you have more freedom to do other stuff that isn't traditionally what people do.

You see that in country music today, where you see these songs that are like about people are singing, I'm really country. I'm the countryist. I like to do country stuff. And they'll be rapping or they'll be doing it with a beat. And the idea is my identity is cultural. Therefore, I have more freedom to explore different kinds of music. But then there's always within it. It must be so hard to do a book

like this because there are these movements within it. There's been several different times where like New Country or Alt Country or whatever's happening now with Sturgill and Margot and that crew. Casey Musgraves. Yeah. That there's a kind of resurgence of outlaw country format. Sure. Right. And even the outlaw country thing, right, turns out to be this weird hybrid because it's not exactly a revival because it doesn't exactly sound like any of the records that came before.

No, I think it was a completely sort of weird, you know, time appropriate integrity they were trying to capture. That there was something about that time, right? The early 70s where these guys like Willie and Wayalen were like, they didn't want to make those kind of like horn oriented Nashville driven records because it didn't speak to what was happening. Right. And that was another way of being country. And one of the ironies is that over the years, a lot of the biggest country acts have defined themselves by saying, like, I'm not like those Nashville guys.

Right. Right. George Strait comes along right after that. And by saying like, I'm not like those Nashville guys. Right. Right. George Strait comes along right after that. And he's like, I'm not like this stuff. I'm doing real pure straight ahead country. Not like this Nashville stuff. Well,

it's interesting because I don't know how many people know about that sound or why that still holds up as this mythic sort of pushback. But like they're that generation of guys, George Strait's generation of guys, you know, that was pretty country. Yes, it was country in a different sense. Even Reba McEntire comes out and her whole thing is like,

I'm not going to give you this polished, smooth stuff they're doing in Nashville. I'm going to give you something else. And then- Done in Nashville though. Well, yeah. And 10 years later, Garth Brooks comes along talking the same way,

saying, well, Nashville's kind of lost its way. I'm going to give you some real country music. So it's a mythic Nashville. Well, yeah. It's a little bit like the way politicians talk about Washington, right? Sure. These people in Washington are like, dude, you've been in the Senate for 20 years. That's right. I could never lock into Garth Brooks. I don't follow country that much, but I do have a lot of old country records. I did watch the Ken Burns series, which was amazing, I did watch the Ken Burns series, which was amazing, right?

Yeah. In terms of laying that out. But what did you, in investigating, you use rock, R&B, and country. You're laying the groundwork with that. And then you move into punk, hip-hop, and dance. But in pop, was that another one? Pop, yeah. Pop is the seventh genre.

It might not even be a genre at all. It's kind of hard to tell. My contention... I dropped off at dance. My contention is that pop music sort of, you know, it's used as a catch-all term, and it's used as kind of a negative term. Right. Like, you're pop if you don't belong to any other community. Right. Or you're pop if you've left your community.

You used to be an R&B act and now you've gone pop. I guess so, but it seems like, you know, like these labels, sometimes it's just semantics because, you know, pop runs through all of it. Yes. You know, from the beginning. But if you're the Carpenters in the 70s, it's not merely semantic that a big part of their identity and a big part of what they thought about was that they weren't rock and roll and they weren't considered rock and roll. And sometimes they tried to push back by, you know, putting an electric guitar solo on the album. Sometimes in interviews, Richard Carpenter was like really bummed out about this. Like, we're cool just like Led Zeppelin. Why are you guys viewing us as just a pop act? And so it really does shape a lot of times the way people make music, even if they don't think it does. And what you see in the eighties kind of for the first time is a bunch of artists. I talk a lot about boy George, but a bunch of these British artists really waving the flag for pop and saying, we are pop acts.

We're not rock and roll acts. In fact, they're saying rock and roll is lame. It's old. It's tired. It's played out. Pop is cool. It's new. It's it's shiny it's fun and we're going to reject rock and roll and be pop right and and that that turned out to be so not all those bands turned out to be super popular right if we talk about abc and scritty polity and haircut 100 haircut 100 yeah thompson twins but that way of thinking turned out to be really influential. Yeah. Really influential to this idea of rockism, this idea that maybe there's a different way to think about music. How do you define rockism? Rockism is taking the ideals of rock and roll and applying them to all the other genres. Right.

So the idea is that if you're a pop singer or an R&B singer or something else, you're cool insofar as what you're doing feels like rock and roll. So, right, is it, you know, is it- Is it the feeling? Well, yeah, it's treating that feeling like the supreme thing. You mean like rock star? Well, even those values of rock and roll and applying them everywhere.

Which are what? So the idea that music should be kind of scruffy, should be kind of raw, should be kind of loud, should be kind of rebellious right yeah and and the question that you ask is like well what about music that's like kind of clean kind of slick yeah kind of fun right kind of friendly right and and one of the ideas of this idea of rockism is that if that's what you're looking for if you're looking for like bruce springsteen's everywhere you look you might miss anita baker and

luther vandross right you might miss these amazing incredibly smooth black r&b well i mean i think that your separation is important though too because you know the whole kind of evolution of r&b and you know and it's sort of uh the the the kind of movement from race records right as they used to be called yeah that and and then the sort of struggle to for rmb's identity through people like barry gordy and and then through people who who are sort of anti gordy's right in terms of like you know that i didn't realize there was an argument around sort of like why you got to make this for white people right yes you know why betray us that's kind of the central argument in rmb yeah and and you got to make this for white people? Right. Yes. Why betray us? That's kind of the central argument. In R&B.

Yeah. And there's this moment, I think, in 1981 where Billboard renames its R&B chart. It renames it Black Music. Yeah. Isn't that the same as race records? Yeah, kind of, right? Right, yeah. And people don't know exactly how to feel about that.

Because in one sense, you're kind of, are you saying that like, this is, is this just segregation? Yeah. Like, what are we doing? Right. Or in another sense, you could think of black music as an inclusive term, meaning like,

okay, what's playing on these radio stations isn't just R&B, like it might be jazz, it might be a little bit of hip hop, it might be something that's even closer to easy listening.

Right. So in a way, you can think of black music as an inclusive term, but it's also a very exclusive way of thinking. Yeah, but it's interesting. It really depends way, you can think of black music as an inclusive term, but it's also a very exclusive way of thinking. Yeah, but it's interesting. It really depends on, you know, what point of view you're coming from in the sense that, you know, if you're black and want it to be identified as black music in an almost fuck you way. Thank you. Right. But if you're you're black and is looking to expand the audience, you're like, what are you doing? Right. And especially and this is where it gets also in America. Yeah. Twelve percent of the population is black. Yeah. So the existence of black music as a genre where listeners and musicians are disproportionately black means that you'll also have white genres.

you'll also have white genres. Sure. Which is... So, like, can we... How do we think about that? Can we... Is it possible to celebrate white music as white music? Is it possible? Right now?

I don't know. Well, in other words, like, when you look at white music... I think most people assume country... Right. ...is pretty white and rocky to a degree. There's a desire for, sometimes in those discussions, that those genres should be more integrated. Yeah.

Well, yeah, of course. But it's one of those things that like everything should be more integrated. Well, should it? Well, should black music be more integrated? Let me rephrase it. Is that when people say that, like even in the sense of like, you know, having friends or diversifying entertainment, right? So that, you know, that writer's room out applications for more diverse friends after a certain point. It's just you have you can feel the way you're going to feel and appreciate what's happening. But you you can't diversify your life after a certain point without it looking weird. Well, there's also the reality of black people in this case being a minority.

So any is so if a genre genre if the audience and the musicians if a genre kind of looks like america and is diverse in that sense yeah that means that black people will be a minority no like i i think that you're correct i don't think that that those need to be diversified right i think that these are identities and they're driven by you know cultural identity and by community identity and also by musical identity. And, you know, you put them all together as separate things and you can sort of see the fabric of America. But no, I don't think that you there needs to be more white drummers. Well, but what I'm saying is that's kind of what you get, right? If black people are disproportionately drawn to, quote unquote genres both as musicians and as listeners yeah then you're going to have non-black people disproportionately disproportionately drawn

to some non-black genres like you don't get one without the other yeah but is that a problem well that's the question when you look at country music is it a problem that country music is white music is it a problem that rock and roll comes to be perceived as white music well you know it's weird is that at some different points in all of these genres, it seems that they kind of want to be more black. Some of them. I mean, again, rock and roll is self-conscious about this, right? Like the Rolling Stones and bands in the 70s

are self-conscious about the fact that they're not blues guys. Yeah. You know, I write... But they love the blues guys. Yeah, and I write about how you can hear Brown Sugar, right? This crazy song about kind of interracial sex and slavery, maybe. Yeah, kind of. But maybe it's a song about like white English guys who hear black music and their blood runs hot, right?

Maybe it's a song about the Rolling Stones being self-conscious about their position as white Englishmen. I always thought it was a song about like a slave ship captain fucking a slave woman. But I'm saying in that you can hear it as like the Rolling Stones or those slave ship captains. I guess so. I guess if you read into it. I mean, there is. But you make a sort of interesting case around a lot of the language of some of these songs, you know, not only in rock and roll, but in rap as well. That, you know, do you, you know, is it a point of contention when these things seem,

you know, insensitive and that's being fairly diplomatic? Yeah. But again, that's related to, that's related to the unfriendly thing I was hoping to do in this book, which was sort of make a case that at least in music, there's a lot of upsides to division. Not just, not just diversity, but divisiveness. The fact that certain songs, certain bands, certain genres are kind of repulsive in a literal sense. They're pushing certain people out. And that's what helps create the kind of diversity of the musical landscape. And those of us, people like me, people like you who love listening to a bunch of different genres. Yeah. Those different genres only exist because other people before us cared enough to really be devoted to a thing. But right.

And it's but I think also you're speaking to sort of a like a premise that's been around for a while that if there is relatively healthy competitiveness amongst artists, that's how the art evolves or breaks off. Yes. amongst artists, that's how the art evolves or breaks off. Yes, and usually that competitiveness happens in some sense within genres or sub-genres. You have to care enough about death metal so that you can get really into discussions of different guitar tones and you're drawing from things in death metal that an outsider wouldn't necessarily hear. And that intensity is really exciting.

For music nerds of that ilk. But for non-nerds you know, that intensity is really exciting for music nerds of that ilk. But for non-nerds tend to enjoy that intensity too, right? In other words, like even you don't

have to be super into the history of hip hop and battle rapping to watch 8 Mile and like fall in love with Eminem. In fact,

like the moment it's a story and part of what people responded to when they watched 8 Mile and heard Lose Yourself was Eminem's intensity about rapping. Like they didn't want to be rap nerds but they love that eminem is a rap nerd yeah and and and that's appealing that that intensity i think is appealing

to us even if we don't want to take the plunge and go deep into any particular genre right well i mean that's also his character right right so i, and it's pretty clear in the book that all these artists, once there's a shift in how the music is evolving, will make an attempt to change with it. And I think some of the more tragic attempts are around hair metal guys going for the grunge look. Also, when you realize that it's just show business. Well, yeah. For so many people. And I think it's easy to write. I think this book unapologetically talks about charts and success and sales because I think it's easy to write that stuff out and to imagine that musicians are existing in a bubble and they're just expressing themselves and whatever happens, happens.

And I think the business part of show business is really important. You had, um, my former, I was at the times for six years. Um, Ben Ratliff was one of my colleagues, just like one of the most careful and like intelligent listeners I've ever come across. Jazz guy. Jazz guy. But he can listen to, I heard your conversation and he can listen to any, not just jazz. Like you give him a metal record and he'll like, he'll hear some stuff. Yeah. Oh really? And Ben Ratliff has, has written about how genres are kind of a record company plot. They're kind of the thing that the industry uses to try to sell us music.

Right. And I think I agree with that. But my question is, not all plots succeed. Right. And why have genres succeeded? Like, why do people respond to that? why do people wave the flag for hip-hop the way they do why do people even now write songs country songs about being country well what do you make of that is it a tribal thing it's a tribal thing it's a community thing and

and part of the reason we listen to music is for that sense of community right and you know part of what genre gives you is this idea that there's a whole bunch of people thinking about some of the same stuff I'm thinking about. Right. And that doesn't mean we can't go outside of those limits. But one of the things I've noticed throughout the 50 years that this book covers is there's always these moments when it feels like genres are disappearing. Yeah. And people are saying, man, can't we all just, like, come together and break down the boundaries and musical freedom? Yeah.

Right? just like come together and break down the boundaries and musical freedom. Yeah. Right. And you see that like in the late seventies and the disco era where it seems like everything's going disco and Rolling Stones disco and Star Wars disco and BG's disco and Dolly Parton disco. And like, maybe this is just what music sounds like now. Right. Yeah. But, but didn't, isn't that like, as an example, so clearly a profit driven thing.

It's profit driven, but it's also kind of cool. The idea that the idea that you can have that kind of diversity on the dance floor is really cool. The idea that, like, Diana Ross... From the beginning of disco, the way it started was diversity in a way. Even the idea that Diana Ross and the Rolling Stones, who were kind of considered part of the same genre when Diana Ross was in the Supremes, and they were all considered part of the rock and roll explosion of the mid-60s. Sure. Then they kind of diverge. And by the late 70s, Diana Ross and the Rolling Stones are like making disco records again. Well, it's a groove, right?

Yeah. So it's really just sort of like we're a band. We're musicians. Yeah. This is the groove. It's bringing people together. And there's something really inspiring about that. But somehow the Stones did it specifically Stones-y.

Of course. Well, they do everything specifically Stones-y. But, you know, it's sort of interesting when I really think about it. Because I don't like Diana Ross as a performer, as a singer. Her style is relative to her. But where's the Stones? I mean, Charlie's got to lay into that goddamn beat. Yes, he does.

Yes, he does. And it doesn't sound like it. Like, even listening to some girls, the disco songs on that album or on Emotional Rescue, they don't sound like disco songs to me. No, but you can tell that they're all kind of part of this moment and you can understand why there was this worry among some people in the late seventies and into the eighties that these genres were disappearing, right?

There's a worry that like, look with, with Michael Jackson and Prince being as popular as they are, maybe like R and B is just going to like dissolve into pop music. Right. And what keeps happening is that those moments of coming together tend to be followed by moments of backlash and moments of people saying like, no, I don't want to be like you. I don't want to listen to what you're listening to.

But those are new artists, right? Those are artists that are sort of like, fuck this. Right. This is what I'm about. This is what I came up in. This is my world. Yeah. And we're going to take it back and and i feel like we're living through one of those moments now

where genre starts to seem kind of old-fashioned and like isn't it all just one music and like lil nas x and post malone like isn't that making kind of similar sounding stuff but but isn't that also relative to the way we hear music? Yeah. I mean, like so much of this book, like I didn't know any of that stuff about the Philadelphia Sound because I'm an idiot or the stations that we're defining or that station that defined the smooth storm. Quiet Storm, yes. Howard University. Right. That these were, you know, labels paid attention to that and formats, you know, were driven by personalities who made decisions.

So now when, you know, it's unclear how everyone's really getting their music. Right. Streaming and yes. However, or even serious radio. But that as an entity, the idea of satellite radio, you know, that is, that's what's, you know, how, how does that make everything not seem the same? Right. And that, that's what a lot of people are wondering in this moment. And I don't, you know, if I were better at like predicting the future and predicting hits, I'd be a record executive. Right.

I'm very much not. But I do observe that throughout history, those moments when everyone comes together are the moments when some other people start to get frustrated or angry or disgusted and say, I don't want to be listening to the same stuff you're listening to. But that always seems genre-specific still, too. I mean, because where else is there left to go on some level? What do you mean?

Well, I mean, like, it seems like every turn is sort of turned, you know, musically, in terms of rock is or hip hop is in in that it really becomes about nuance that's going to change it it can seem like that within genres but i don't think that anyone thought at the dawn of the night at the dawn of the 1980s you might have thought the same thing i don't think anyone would have predicted the trajectory of hip-hop or the trajectory of techno right in at At the dawn of the 1980s, it might have seemed like,

oh, we've kind of done everything. We've had progressive rock. Now we have synthesizers, and everyone's kind of getting together in these electronic grooves, and that's it. We're out of music. Well, it seems that what ultimately happens is somebody decides to go back and reconfigure what was.

That's one thing that happens. Another thing that happens is technology. Yeah. And a third thing that happens is just that, that's one thing that happens. Another thing that happens is technology. Yeah. And, and a third thing that happens is just that like humans are inventive. And so when there are communities of people, they find stuff to do that doesn't sound like other communities. Right. Well,

I guess like, I guess what, what's throwing me is that when it comes down to community definition or the art that comes out of a particular genre, that there's always individuals doing out there shit that is beyond anything that's happening. And you're sort of like, wow, he's out at the edge of it. But that's just one guy or one woman or one artist.

It doesn't become a community standard. So my hip-hop understanding or the albums that I do have are pretty standard, you know what I mean? But I know that there was, just reading about that that there was an argument about auto-tunering that which makes sense right you know and technology which makes sense jay-z releases death of auto-tune saying that basically all these auto-tune vocals are sort of like ruining hip-hop and it's time to get back to quote-unquote real hip-hop right where are we at now well now we're at this moment when hip-hop is kind of,

sometimes it feels like it's dissolving a little bit. There's a lot of the line between singing and rapping is getting really blurry. I noticed that. And then also like, what's with these guys? Like, and I don't like, again,

like it's all new to me, the history of hip hop in your book. Like I don't, I don't, I'd have to, I have to go back and I didn't know a lot of the songs, not because I like, I'm some sort of like,

you know, dumb white person, which is never my music i mean i have more soul records than i have hip-hop records because i would check in with hip-hop like if someone says you gotta listen you know i've got all the the early kanye stuff and jay-z and even some like i actually have the ghetto boys for something like there were times where i'm like i've got to listen to this right but i never locked into it right with my heart you know and it's not a race-driven thing. It's just a music style. But that's one of the things I learned when I had this ridiculous and ridiculously fun job as a music critic for the New York Times, right?

Yeah. Which is, again, it's absurd, right? The idea that you're going to be in the newspaper a few times a week telling everyone which records are good. Sure, sure. It's a really weird job. But one of the things I learned, two things I learned, one was that no matter what I thought I was into, there was someone out there who was a real expert.

And that was never going to be me. Is that true? I could be really into death metal, but there's someone who does nothing but death metal every day for decades. But your job is... There's someone who lives so deep into it. I know, but you are a contextualizer. Right.

That's your job. So that was the other thing I learned was like, if I'm interested in something, you know, I can learn about it. And I think that anyone who cares about music will care about some stuff more than they care about other stuff. Like, that's fine and normal. So what I'm trying to do in the book is just try to explain, like, here's the appeal of this kind of music to these people who love it and here's why some other people love this stuff and none of us will ever love it all or or should even want to love it all right of course to love everything would mean that you had actually no musical taste at all right i mean it's just passive but no but i also think what you do is you choose your people to drive your story about what defines these

genres and i think you did a very good job with that because, you know, like now I have to reassess, you know, that period of R&B, you know, that became that kind of smooth thing. Like, and I get it, but like- Have you listened to the Smokey Robinson Quiet Storm album? No.

That's amazing. It is? Yeah, it's really, yes, because it's like another, it shows you kind of another path for R&B, right? And coming on the heels of these years of Stax and Volt and stuff getting kind of gritty. Yeah, I have that stuff. You hear like, you see this album, like on the cover, Smokey Robinson is kneeling next to a horse.

Yeah. Like, what's going on? And this was a big shift. Yeah, yes. And it was just, yes. And it was a different way to think about this. Like, here's a different way R&B could provide pleasure. Not by being kind of bluesy and greasy, but by being sort of smooth and refined.

Yeah. And, you know, I think as a musical value, that's an example of the kind of thing that if you think about music through rock and roll, it's easy to sort of kind of thing that if you think about rock music through rock and roll it's easy to sort of um to put that to the side and and and one of the reasons why it's worthwhile thinking about genres is because sometimes it can help you identify your blind spots right it can help you identify like not just the country music that sounds like waylon jennings but like the shania twain records of the 1990s. The Mutt Lang records. Which sound like they were made in a lab by a robot. Who liked rock.

Who liked rock and all sorts of stuff, right? At a certain point she releases, I believe it's Up, in three different versions. There's the pop version, the country version, and the world music version. That's just, that's money. That's money, but it's a fascinating phenomenon. I guess so.

And it's a moment of people saying like, again, asking this question, like, well, what is country? If you're Shania Twain and you're a woman from Canada, no particular accent. It's George Jones, man. It is also George Jones.

But if it's just George Jones, then it becomes something in a museum, right? No, I get it. The reason people still fight about country in a way that they don't necessarily fight about some other genres is that it keeps changing i mean but the funny thing is is like there was that period where you know the birds and and graham parsons and emil harris and all those people you know were just shunned by country oh yeah even the eagles didn't get a lot of country

airplay in the 70s and then everything that they did has been integrated into country sure emil harris goes on to have country hits in the 80s. And even now, one of the biggest country album of the year is probably by this guy Morgan Wallen. And it's a double album. It's strong from rock. It's strong from hip hop. All sorts of stuff. But it's very culturally country.

And that kind of got heightened when he's caught on camera earlier this year. Oh, that guy. Talking to his friends and uses the N-word. Yeah. And so he gets kicked off of country radio for a few months. Yeah. But his country fan base never abandons him.

And that's a good example of how musically that audience is totally happy to hear him using hip-hop beats and drawing from these other modern genres. But culturally, they're claiming him as one of their own. And that's an example of how these divisions... to hear him using hip hop beats and drawing from these other modern genres, but culturally they're claiming him as one of their own. And that's an example of how these divisions- And you're just hoping it's not because he said the N word.

Well, I mean, again, I try to be more descriptive than prescriptive in this book. In other words, I try to, country music, I've always heard it as world music because this is a place with different values and this is a community that I was not born into. And I'm going to try to like figure out and learn to love this music, which I did, and learn about what's happening in this community. And sometimes part of the way you get musical diversity is that these communities, it's not just like, oh, they're different. They like different stuff. It's like, no, these communities can be like at war with each other. These communities can do things that other communities say,

this is really screwed up or this is really dangerous or this is really bad. Right. So I think it's important not to kind of sanitize this and imagine like, oh, people are just doing different things. Like, no, sometimes these are real fights. The way you talk about hip hop and the way you sort of flesh out the different, you know, things that were conflicting in terms of people who wanted a message, people who didn't want a message, people wanted to be a little easier spoken than people that

kind of push the envelope. But the idea that there was something performative and also honoring of this sort of language of the community in terms of even telling those big, you know, brassy stories about conquest and women and money and guns was always part of the bullshit. Yeah. And there is, I think, especially now, but I think it's throughout the history of popular music, there is a desire that you hear for musicians to be a little more reasonable, a little more decent.

Oh, really? And yeah. Right. And like, yeah. And obviously that's a thing that music can do. Right. Like that's a thing that like Bruce Springsteen is a good example. Seems like a very decent guy.

And that's really part of his appeal and part of what makes his music. But it's also manufactured to a certain degree. Well, it's all manufactured. Right. Well, right. So, so you're saying people should make different decisions about their acts. No, no, I'm not saying you're saying that, but that's what it comes down to. Like the part of the integrity of the gangster rap thing was that, you know, at some point people believed it, you know, and white kids believed it and black kids believed it.

And plausibility and believability remains. I mean, it has always been central to hip hop. That question of like, because you're not singing, you're doing something that's more like talking. So as soon as you open your mouth and start talking, as you well know, you're confronted with this issue of like, who the hell are you? Right.

Why are you talking to me? Yeah. Why should I believe anything you say? And so because of that, rappers tend to be obsessed with credibility and social standing and showing you or finding ways to let you know that they should be believed.

And Jay-Z does this in a really kind of interesting way where he says, I'm not a rapper. It also was kind of popping my brain a little bit about how that, you know, aligning yourself as a brand with other brands became this sort of like you're winning thing. Whereas like, you know, a decade ago it would have been like, what the fuck are you doing? Right, right. So, you know, that kind of honesty, I guess, is of the time. Yes. And success and realizing ambition is now something that is, you know, impressive.

Yes. And it's also like a more transparent approach, right? Yeah. like a more transparent approach, right? Like the idea was like for a rock and roll band, historically, you don't ever want to like sing a song about like, I just fired my manager and hired a new manager. You know what I mean?

Like you don't want to talk about the behind the scenes stuff. Whereas hip hop is all- Unless you're fucking off a label. Yes, yes. If you're Sex Pistols singing EMI, then sure. But hip hop is maybe partly because it has so many more words or maybe because there is this idea that the guy's sort of talking to you. Yeah.

There is this tendency to bring everything in. I just signed this deal. I'm doing this thing. I'm in the studio. Even the hip hop tradition of introducing yourself. Yeah. Right. I am Wonder Mike. Right, right. It's like, well, I'm telling you who I am. I'm introducing myself the way I would if I were giving a speech. I'm introducing myself the way I would if I were giving a speech. Well, it seems like, you know, like as those things go, that hip hop in terms of its ability to to kind of like, you know, take not chances, but to incorporate things.

It almost seems infinite more than anything else. think you know when you said that that that hip-hop and usually it's used for jazz or stand-up comedy obviously is a is one of the only true american art forms you know they're they're it seems like those type of things like jazz and stand-up that you know come out of these sort of mixing of traditions but it in jazz in the same way it seems that there's no end to hip-hop's ability to evolve. Yes, and sometimes it seems like it's evolving beyond rapping. Of course, yeah. Which is interesting because, like, well, if hip-hop doesn't mean rapping, like, what does it mean?

As opposed to R&B. Yeah, as opposed to singing, yes. Okay. And, you know, when you hear, you know, someone like Drake going back and forth between rapping and singing. Yeah. Or you hear someone like Future where you're not even sure sometimes or Travis Scott, like, is that rapping? Is that singing?

These lines kind of get blurred in an interesting way. But it seems like that issue is still the kind of like, is R&B obsolete as a defining genre? Right. You know, and has hip hop eaten it? Right. And the answer so far has been no, partly on the musical sense because hip hop has been still mainly rapping,

but also socially because race is still salient. That's what I say in the R&B chapter is that as long as you have black singers who are listened to disproportionately by black people yeah and that that's kind of like a group a thing you can identify all ages yeah because like older black people are gonna you know be nostalgic and there's still that world right right so like some of these soul has been integrated into classic hip formats but there's still a world of music that old black people listen to that I know nothing about.

You mean, you're talking about like Frankie Beverly and Maze, that kind of stuff? Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that, again, there is, I think we're living in a moment where there is a great desire to say like, to say that divisions are kind of bad

and to say in this society at this moment, can't we like come together a little more? Can't we, you know, do we have to kind of hate each other this much? Those divisions create a certain amount of frustration or a certain amount of anger or a certain amount of disdain. Like those people over there that we don't hang out with, like, yeah, we can say we respect everyone, but deep down, like fuck those people. respect everyone but deep down like fuck those people and i think that i think that that impulse is a very human impulse i think that's a very american impulse and i think it often lives side by side yes and i think that lives side by side with this desire for greater commingling and greater acceptance and greater freedom and i think like i think in these i think in the history of music and in the history of genres you see both and you see this push and pull. There was a country song a few years ago by Eric Church called Springsteen, which was about falling in love with a girl at a Bruce Springsteen concert. It was a huge hit in country.

And I was like, oh, that's fascinating. Right. Like Springsteen as a signifier of country identity. Yeah. You know, partly because of the way genres change and because Springsteen no longer sounds like mainstream music. Now it's sonically, it's closer to country in terms of the guitars and some of the other stuff.

Okay. And then this summer, there was a song by this guy, Aaron Lewis from Stained. He's like a rock singer. He's now a country singer called Am I the Only One? It's a kind of like anti-liberal protest song. And he sings, am I the only one who stops singing along every time they play a Springsteen song?

So now Springsteen is a divisive figure within the world of country music. Country saying like, we're country, we're not like that Springsteen guy.

And I think that, again, that push and pull, that wanting to be all listening to the same music, but also liking the idea that we have an identity that sets us apart

in some way. Again, I think that's, I think that's really, that's something that's hard to eliminate from the human experience or the human listening experience. Yeah. But like, there's something disconcerting to me and upsetting to me about, you know, this, you know, using Springsteen as this example of some kind of woke liberal, a liberal asshole that we've got to push back on that, you know, because of the culture we're living in and how tribal it's become and how shallow it's become, you know, I can't

see anything outside of the very seemingly real threat of fascism. So I can't, it's hard for me to assess things like that other than like, what the fuck is happening? Ah, see, and that's your own kind of pushback, right? Yeah. And, you know, again, I think certainly in the punk rock that converted me to a music obsessive in 1990, it was very tribal and in some ways quite shallow. Right.

Right? Where's punk rock now? Well, it's funny. Punk rock seems to have a resurgence every few years. Yeah. Meaning something slightly different, right? Because one of the ironies was, as I was getting into all this punk rock stuff

And I hate the mainstream yeah like a year or two later nirvana comes along and like every kid is wearing doc Martens Yeah, and right at the time. I was annoyed of course in retrospect like that's amazing and funny Yeah, but they kind of took it to a different place Yes And everyone you know and Green Day takes it to different place and Avril Lavigne and blink 182 And now you have like another resurgence with Olivia Rodrigo drawing from punk records And Green Day takes it to a different place and Avril Lavigne and Blink-182. And now you have another resurgence with Olivia Rodrigo drawing from punk records. That's one of the biggest pop records of the year.

She's a Disney actress who makes this great sort of punk and pop breakup record called Sour. Well, it's sort of interesting. So that means it's always been designed for 14-year-olds. Maybe that is. I mean, if you can tap into sort of 14 year old angst and annoyance, there's always going to be a ready supply of people who want to hear that. And some of us are not 14.

Right. Yeah. Right. And you see, you see a crossover now where you see rappers like, like this guy MGK

reinventing themselves as like punk singers. So, so the, the kind of eternal return of punk music maybe because of its simplicity, is something that I definitely would not have predicted when I was getting obsessed with it.

And the thing that keeps it fresh is that it keeps meaning something slightly different. You know, it's not, you would think in how we're talking about this book, it was 900 pages, but you got it in, man. You were able to sort of really focus the through lines. It's only half that length. It's about 450 pages. It's designed to fit nicely on the back of your toilet. No, no, this is definitely not a toilet book. It is 450 pages.

Huh. So it's not 1,000 pages. It's not 1,000 pages. And again, I think to me all this- This is nice paper, I guess, because it doesn't look like 400 pages. No, it doesn't. It's not intimidating. But to me, hopefully,

that sense of delight comes through because that's been the thing I felt all my life. When I heard punk and then hearing other kinds of music is I'm just delighted and surprised over and over again. And one of the things that often has been the most educational for me

is popularity. Often I'll hear a song that's super popular and my first reaction will be like, huh, I wouldn't have thought that would be a big hit. And then you listen to it again and again, and maybe it's Stockholm syndrome that you just like give into it. Yeah. Well, that you're signing up for. Yeah. You're volunteering for it. Yes. But maybe that's how pop music works partly, right? Like is that it sort of, it sort of grows on you in this slightly insidious way. Yeah, like, there's a lot of stuff that I was like, I don't like that stuff. Right. And then I put myself through it, and eventually it takes, you know, sometimes 30 years after the fact. Well, sometimes you might not even know, right? You might be in the supermarket, and some

song comes on. Sure. And you sing along to it. But also, you start to make exceptions, and you, you know, your sort of, like, your ability to appreciate expands. And that's why I think that as you get older, some music falls off and some music gets deeper. I don't know why that is, but I find that there's stuff that I always liked that when I listen to it now, just because of my education or my exposure to other things, other music, my appreciation becomes deeper, which is the best that can happen. But isn't it still, I find that on some level, it can still be related to this question of like, who do you think you are? And by listening to a certain record or a certain genre, you can become, at least for a moment, the kind of person who listens to that music. Yeah. Yeah. That's right.

I think that's right. But you can still be you. And if you're that self-conscious about celebrating your ability to listen to a certain type of music and that you're that guy now, I yeah i get it you're vibing to it sure yeah i might you might you know yeah in the next year you might become someone who's like obsessed with techno music and you could be that guy yeah i don't know i have found that like i usually because my sense of self is more tenuous than i let on that i'm wary of letting myself become that guy you know because uh i'm not sure that i want, I don't want to be the techno guy. I think I'm a little old to surrender to techno. Techno's old too, so it might go together well. But wait, did you never have that sense of that music was helping you form your identity?

Of course. Over and over again. I mean, I remember early on the first time, like I got this box of records from the R&B record store that was next to where I worked in high school that they weren't going to play in the store. And so many of those records became sort of essential to me. I mean, Nighthawks at the Diner, Tom Waits' double live album was in there. And I dressed like Tom Waits as a sophomore in high school as best I could. I would definitely base my identity off of certain music. And I was definitely excited about being turned on to art rock at a young age, you know, and sort of thinking of myself as an artist, like I was a photographer. So it all sort of coincided. And then I remember there was a guy who worked at that record store, took me to his house, and we made a mixtape of all the fucking soul music that came out during Otis Redding's period, like Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, Aretha, all that stuff.

So I would know, you know, and he hit me to that. And then the other guy there turned me on to Eno and Fred Frith and Robert Fripp and the residents. So I got like because of that place. Right. You know, it was all defining. Yeah. And so much of that has to do with scarcity. Right.

So much of that has to do with like it was hard to hear that stuff. It was hard to be able to afford it if you were a kid and you needed some way in, you needed maybe someone to show you. You needed someone to contextualize it for you. Like, you know, if you weren't sitting there listening to a soul station, you know, how was I going to get that? You know, I mean, I did listen to oldies cause my dad turned me on to oldies and I was like kind of fascinated with it. But for somebody to sit me down and go this is this era of what you know you've pointed out was when you know it became soul music right so like for that all to be put together for me and to hear how that went like you know it was kind of mind-blowing but it's and i

think sometimes there's a fear that because we're living in a post-scarcity era when it comes to music you have all there all the time it's all there all the time. It's all there all the time. I think there's a fear that those musical communities will kind of disintegrate. Yeah. But I think the reason we have musical communities is because we love community. And so I think, I think there will be new ways to build those communities. And certainly one thing we've learned about the social media era is it doesn't necessarily always bring us all together. Like there's, there's ways in which it can exaggerate certain divisions. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, you know, I hope the national discourse

somehow kind of softens, and if music is going to be the facilitator of that, I'm all for it. But I think, I also think, that if the national discourse doesn't soften and digs in and these groups become, we become, everything becomes more divisive and more oppositional. You think we're going to get some good music out of that? Not, I'm not saying that it's better or worse, but I want to like hear what those other people

are listening to. Sure. I want to know what those records are. Yeah. I wonder, do you feel like there's new stuff coming out on that side that's defining or I want to know that music can kind of gain associations and gain identity even after it's released right when morgan's yeah when morgan wallen puts out his record in some ways it's kind of this inclusive record in a certain way yeah even though you know even though in certain ways it's a little exclusive he he has a lyric of a beer don't buzz with that hip-hop cuz but it damn

sure due to a little nitty-gritty right his ideas like he's yeah Maybe drawing a boundary and drawing a distinction even though he happens to be a hip-hop fan Then when he's when he's caught on tape saying the n-word and he's banished and he kind of comes back now He's a much more polarizing figure than he was yeah, right I get it, and I've never listened to one note of his music. It's good record. Okay. I just got the new Billie Eilish record I don't like Okay. I just got the new Billie Eilish record. You like it? I do. Do you? I like it. I think I like the previous one better.

Yeah. But that whole phenomenon is fascinating, right? And the idea that one question that people have is if it's possible for people to become, to kind of seemingly emerge from nowhere and become everywhere, does that mean that they go back to nowhere quicker too maybe sometimes or does that just mean that there's just more stuff out there i just like i can't like you know i try to keep up i don't know quite how to keep up it's not it's not possible no one can keep up with everything yeah it's just and and you know you're kind of picking and

choosing and you're hearing something there hearing something here i think that's always been true i think now maybe there's it's easier to imagine that you somehow could keep up with everything. I've gotten very vinyl specific. So that keeps me somewhat in the past. It's a limiting principle. Yeah. And also, but I get new vinyl and I'll listen to it when I can. But all right.

So I appreciate the book and thanks for opening my mind or at least give me the information that I needed to kind of have a little more grounded sense of R&B. One door opens, another door closes, right? Kind of. Or else they all stay open and then you just get exhausted. That's right. Thanks for talking, man.

Thanks, Mark. Okay, that was Califacene. The book is called Major Labels, A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres. It's now available wherever you get books. Calipha Sene. God, I hope that's correct. Now I'll play my new Stratocaster clean

with a little wobbly. You know what? You know what? I'm going to send some love to the guy that made this thing. Because I know who he is. It's a Fender Masterbuilt. They make it look old. So they actually have to put more time into it.

But the guy who built mine, a Fender Custom Shop Masterbuilder, Carlos Ruben Lopez Jr., made a fucking magic guitar. And I love it. So there you go. Okay, I'm going to play it now. Thank you. boomer lives monkey and lafonda cat angels are fucking everywhere man it's a night for the whole family be a part of kids night when the toronto rock take on the colorado mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m.

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