Popular Music and Identity

Music becomes popular when it is commercially distributed to a large audience and thus perceived by the so-called mainstream culture (Shuker, 2001). Nowadays one can hardly escape pop music - it is played in supermarkets, in public toilets and you catch yourself humming along with a song on the radio that you thought you "hate". This all adds to some sort of an undeniable group experience that one has when listening to music. Pop music aims for a collective audience, individualism might be indicated but in the end the industry is about money and reaching as many people as possible. At this point, the question to what extend the music itself matters arises. I think that music is so deeply connected with culture that you cannot separate it from social groups, family values, clothing and fashion, or emotions and experiences. Especially on an emotional level, songs are often connected to certain memories, and suddenly the semiotics of this song become individual as you remember your first kiss or the day of your graduation from high school when a particular song comes up. Those songs carry a special meaning for one person, often despite their usual taste and can continue to do so for many years, long after the popularity of this song. It becomes clear that emotions might be the trigger to whether a certain genre or a song is considered valuable or not. Those emotions can be partly acquired (e.g. (grand)parents "teach" you that classical music is of high value and belongs to our cultural elite, or your group of friends consideres a certain type of music "cool"), and are often connected to a sense of belonging. 

Two concepts of popular culture were "invented" throughout the 19th, and into the 20th century by intellectuals of Romanticism, folklore and folk song, defining popular culture as a "quasi-mythical rural 'folk culture', and the other [...] was popular culture as the degraded 'mass culture' of the new urban-industrial working class" (Storey, 2003, p.1). This two-way definition is still visible today: while some would consider pop music as a genre in itself and recognizing it as a part of our culture, others degrade this fact and try to distance themselves of all kinds of 'mass culture', regardless whether they might like one song - if it is popular, it is suddenly not worth as much anymore and presumably also represents one's personality as less individual or special. 

The mediation processes of popular music nowadays are quite different to just a decade ago. While it is easy to become nostalgic and to miss self-made mix tapes made by friends for your birthday, it is also striking to be able to share and access songs so quickly and directly. YouTube is known for having opened up a sphere where everybody can become famous without a record label, but rather discovered by other individuals. One can now browse through all kinds of music and thus get to know different genres or bands from all over the world on their own account, being less dependent on the decisions that the music industry, our family or friends, or the supermarket around the corner make when it comes to finding that certain song or artist or genre that connects with your personality and emotions. 

A genre in itself?

References

Shuker, Roy (2001). Understanding Popular Music (2nd Ed.) Routledge. 

Storey, John (2003). Popular Culture as Folk Culture. In: Inventing Popular Culture. Oxford and Carlton: Blackwell, pp. 1-15. 

Subcultures

The term subculture is quite problematic as it is hard to define and has undergone a shift throughout time. While Dick Hebdige (Reader Week 7) argued that a subculture is a subversion to normalcy and could be perceived as negative due to their nature of criticism to the dominant societal standard, this seems only true for some subcultures - and even then only for some members of a subculture. I think nowadays subcultures are everywhere, and while many people belong to a (or several) mainstream or dominant culture/s (such as nationality), I feel that so-called subcultures are formed as a means of categorising everywhere. One can belong to several subcultures without even realising it - it all depends on how you define the term. There is a need of being individual, and at the same time belong to a group in every person, as much as there is a need to categorise others and the world around us. Subcultures can help us to identify with something, and is thus are a form of expression. Often the media shapes distinct images of such subcultures, creating hype around one or the other - putting a spin on it, either negative or positive, but most of all commersialising it. 

I think subcultures go hand in hand with stereotyping and thus one has to be careful not to be prejudice when seeing someone who wears a leather jacket, black make-up or board shorts and thongs. To me, the term 'subculture' became quite presumptuous and is not adequate to describe the social phenomenons that are happening around the world. 'Sub' indicates inferiority, and the term 'culture' is nearly impossible to define by itself (or has been tried to define too many times). I rather think of different networks that people form around them, creating an individual identity while being able to connect and have a feeling of belonging through language, music, fashion, work, sports and so on. This does not necessarily need to come with one strict set of 'cultural' values, but will be transformed and shaped anew with every person.