Sweet oddity

BMP voters break the trends with Beck

by Matt Ashare

Recently, I came across an article that Simon Frith, the British music and social critic (and English professor), wrote way back in 1976 for Rock File, a rock and pop almanac of sorts that was published annually in England for most of the '70s. The piece is included in The Beat Goes On: The Rock File Reader, a collection of Rock File writings that was brought back into circulation by Pluto Press in 1996. Since most of what Rock File had to offer was caged less as criticism (something Rock File did surprisingly little of) and more as factual analysis (something music critics do surprisingly little of), The Beat Goes On serves as a rather fascinating anthropological document for those of us who find such things fascinating. Want to know what a particular writer thought of the Ramones' first album when it first came out? Read through back issues of Rolling Stone. But wanna know what critics thought about the music industry, about the state of pop, about the quality of the culture they were adrift in 25 years ago? Then you need something like the evidence presented in Rock File.

"I've been surveying the year of singles again and come to the conclusion that 1974-'75 was a dull year up in the charts," Frith wrote in '76. "There was no dominant group or style but a series of overworked formulae. . . . Part of the reason for this was that nothing much was happening to the taste for pop; audiences seemed happy enough in their various grooves."

Two things struck me about Frith's comments: 1) by using singles as his measuring stick, Frith was making an effort to base his impressions of the state of music on what the music-consuming public favored in 1974-'75; and 2) Frith's description of 1974-'75 would apply equally well to 1999-2000.

Although this is by no means its primary purpose, the Best Music Poll is an opportunity for the writers and critics here at the Phoenix to see how well our impressions of the state of music correlate to those held by our readership. It's easy to keep tabs on the musical likes and dislikes of the country at large: just take a look at the weekly Billboard charts, and you come away with reasonably accurate information about which releases are selling particularly well, what singles are popular on radio, etc. But the US is not like Frith's relatively small England: individual regions of this huge country -- different cities, different towns -- don't always conform to the national average, so to speak. You need something like our Best Music Poll to even begin to get a handle on where local music fans are at.

The Phoenix demographic is a relatively enlightened one, so one of the more disturbing, disheartening trends of the past year really isn't reflected in this year's poll results. I'm talking about the return of a certain degree of misogyny in music, a development that came into focus most strikingly at Woodstock 1999 but that had been building and has continued to build in the attitude of certain male bands toward women. It was especially disappointing to find misogyny creeping back into the rock lexicon after a decade that had seen so many advances toward more equitable, respectful gender relations in the rock world. But whether it was punk bands like Blink-182 acting out as part of their goofy adolescent shtick or rap-rock acts like Limp Bizkit appropriating the 'ho-bashing perspective of hardcore hip-hoppers -- i.e., whether it was meant as a joke or as a serious signifier -- disrespect toward women took a particularly ugly turn at Woodstock, one that reflected some serious problems in the way artists relate to their audiences and vice versa.

With that in mind, it's nice to see Beck -- a white b-boy who's never felt it necessary to affect a hardcore pose -- besting Blink-182 and Kid Rock in the Best National Act category; and the soulful Macy Gray finishing on top in Best National New Act, where Eminem came in fifth. Similarly, we've got Rage Against the Machine -- an angry, aggressive rap-rock outfit who actually stand for something positive -- beating out Limp Bizkit and Korn in the Best National Extreme Act category; and the Lilith Fair winning for Best National Tour, a category that found Korn's Family Values tour way back in fifth position. The slot where both Blink-182 and Limp Bizkit did put in a strong showing is Best National Song. And, to the extent that singles require less of a commitment to the artist than just about any of the other categories, that suggests that although people may be digging individual songs by these artists, they're not signing on for anything more than that.

On a related note, the emergence of Grammy-winning female songstress Macy Gray in the Best National New Act category, coupled with the win of the strong-willed, soft-voiced Tori Amos as Best National Female Vocalist, indicates that the outlook for women in rock might not be as grim as it's sometimes seemed over the past year. The loss of Lilith Fair is a setback of sorts, but to a certain extent that tour did its job in proving that women artists can put bodies in seats at big venues, something that Amos and Alanis Morissette went off and did on their own last year.

Another disappointing, if not quite so disturbing, trend over the past year has been the continued growth of the teen-pop industry. When Rolling Stone, a commercial magazine that nevertheless thumbed its nose at New Kids on the Block during the teen invasion of the '80s, feels compelled to put a boy band like 'N Sync and a teeny popper like Britney Spears on its cover, it suggests that manufactured kiddie corn is bigger now than it's ever been before. However, you wouldn't know that from looking at the results of this year's Best Music Poll. Sure, Christina Aguilera finished second to Macy Gray in the Best National New Act category, but -- well, of all the teen-pop stars she's easily the most palatable, and she seems to have some genuine talent. Other than that, it's more or less a teen-free poll this year, which may just mean it's time for some major backlash against this whole phenomenon. We can only hope.

The fact that the huge popularity of teeny poppers like Britney isn't reflected in the Best Music Poll results, though, is an indication that the poll itself doesn't measure the tastes of America's mainstream music fans. Rather, it draws on a more rarefied demographic with more discriminating tastes -- the serious music fans who fall somewhere between the geeks, who direct their energies and passions toward the most challenging and obscure music, and the average consumer, who's happy to listen to whatever Top 40 radio has to offer from week to week. And there is perhaps no musical entity who represents the tastes of that group better than Beck, a performer who's equally at home messing about in the avant-garde or pulling off a slick pop number, and an artist who regularly bridges the gap between the hipster underground and the everyday mainstream. Indeed, Beck is in many ways the ideal artist for the 21st century. He works in sound bites but takes the time to form something cohesive and meaningful out of them; he's a devoted and serious fan of music, but he's not tied to any one style or genre; he is comfortable hopping from one considered stylistic excursion to the next without devaluing any of them; and, despite the big nostalgic streak running down the backbone of his music (whether it be his love of old Robert Johnson blues or his devotion to old-school hip-hop), he seems to be neither stuck in the past nor afraid of the future.

Beck will probably always be too much of an oddity to sell as many records as a Korn or a Limp Bizkit, much less an 'N Sync or a Britney Spears. But it's important that he's able to maintain a commercial presence without alienating the core audience that can be counted on to rate him higher in the Best Music Poll than acts that sell five to 10 times as many records as he does. Because, if nothing else, it keeps the singles charts from being anywhere near as dull as they'd surely be without him.