I tried to watch the VMA Award show Sunday night, assaulted by two hip-hop DJs yelling Twitter nonsense over the smoking spectacle spotlighting a series of twat twitching, cunt grabbing, sex squatting, herky-jerky robotic arm flailing, ass bumping productions, clarifying this generation’s female transformation from sex object to predator, all synced to repetitive, electronic noise and dumbed down rap slogans, and all I could think was WTF! I’m definitely now in the ‘older generation.’
Sex in Music is Nothing New
The urban influence on pop culture and sexual innuendo is nothing new. It started with the ‘black-faced’ minstrel shows of the 1800’s and the Storyville jazz influence of Jelly Roll Morton playing for prostitutes and their patrons that seeped into mainstream America. In the early 50’s to avoid the stigma of ‘race music,’ radio disc jockey Alan Freed coined the term ‘rock and roll’ to introduce R&B to his white audience (ironically slang for sex in the black community). With rock ‘n’ roll in its infancy, pop radio was pumping out the white Carvel soft ice cream music of Perry Como, Patty Page and the Lemon Sisters, when the culture shock of Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” suddenly hit. Followed shortly thereafter with his version of Willie May ‘Big Mama’ Thornton’s “Hound Dog.” His grinding hips suggestively personified sex at a time when you couldn’t say the word ‘pregnant’ on television. Collecting every fan magazine, record and picture, I learned all the lyrics and spent hours mimicking his groans. He was the symbol of youth and rebellion. Parents and teachers and ministers and politicians spoke out against him as I tried desperately to make my hair straight with hot metal combs and gobs of Brylcream. All over the country, teenage collars went up and side burns grew down. Pants got tighter and my lip began to curl when I sang. Radio broke wide open with the ‘satanic’ Negro music of Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis.
Urban Influence in Pop Culture
In the 60’s, Detroit’s Motown Records blurred the lines between R&B and Pop with the likes of Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross & The Supremes, Little Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, The Four Tops, etc. Constantly in the Billboard Hot 100 charts before moving to Los Angeles in the 70’s, then selling out to MCA, just as “Rappers Delight” was released by The Sugarhill Gang in New Jersey, and hip-hop arrived. Born in the NYC block parties of the 70’s, the break-dancing, scratching, and rap poetry of the inner city, like jazz and R&B music before it, soon crossed into mainstream, as a generation of ‘old folkies’ like me turned off the radio and retreated into reminiscence.
MTV Is Back
As noted in my previous blog ‘The Evolution Of SEXY: Revenge Of The Nerds’ “Even as a few male singers like Sinatra, Presley, and Jagger; and females, Joplin, Ronstadt, and Diana Ross broke through to stardom, for the most part, musicians were heard and not seen until the 1980’s, and the launch of MTV. Like the introduction of talkies, but in reverse, The Buggles’ “Video Killed The Radio Star” marked music’s metamorphosis. Soon Rock and Roll was creating more sex symbols than film and TV combined.” But as the music business decomposed in the internet revolution, so went MTV and the once exploding world of music videos… until now. Suddenly, as noted in a recent New York Times article, music videos have once again become relevant, as evidenced by Beyonce’s worldwide release of the VMA Award winning music video long-form,“Lemonade.”
Teenage Rebellion is Forever…
It was always ‘cool’ to piss-off our parents. Every decade introduced music that either annoyed or offended the previous generation, from Swing music of the 40’s to Rock’n’Roll of the 50’s, the Punk of the 60’s, to the Heavy Metal of the 70’s, to Disco, then Rap, to Electronica and beyond. And the current incarnation of house hip-hop hooks and beats, empty rhymes and multi-tasking repetition, against a backdrop of blatant mechanical sexuality, is another example of this fleeting fashion … So to this generation of young people all I can say is congratulations! You’ve done it again… I find this stuff really annoying!
My book Sex, No Drugs and Rock n’ Roll (Memoirs of a Music Junkie) is available now! Take a look at some excerpts here or my About section for more about yours truly.
Follow me on Twitter at @LEKalikow or Facebook at LEKalikowAuthor!