Pop music takes a lot of grief. “It’s too loud”. “Too much autotune”. “There’s no skill”. “It’s all the same”. Many, specifically those of an older generation, are quite up-in-arms about what music has come to in the modern era. They say today’s brand of music isn’t nearly reminiscent of what theirs is or used to be. To some, today’s popular music resides at a lower level of sophistication, quality and value than the beloved music of yesteryear. Conversely, modern popular music is not something to be deduced to good or bad, or even confined by the title ‘genre’. There’s a quality to modern popular music that makes it obviously discernable from genres like folk, country, metal and jazz to anyone remotely familiar with modern music. It’s difficult for many to put a finger on, but this difference has important implications in our impression and interpretation of today’s popular music. The identity of pop music, its implications and its value in our current society can be readily investigated through Suzanne Vega’s Tom’s Diner.

Vega’s 1989 single found success among indie and alternative circles throughout the 90’s, featuring solely her vocals without the support of instruments. Her voice rhythmically runs over a spoken beat as she recalls a morning in a local diner in New York City. Vega’s voice registers more like talking than singing as she rarely abandons a moderate tone and pitch. Vega’s piece was a well made song and was beloved by many listeners, but anyone could tell you that it wasn’t pop music. Its subdued stylistic techniques along with an emphasis on storytelling compel us to categorize this work as alternative or indie. Many likely appreciated the artistic aspect of this song rather than its aptitude for mutual enjoyment and listenership.

Moving forward, Tom’s Diner’s intersection with pop music comes not at the hand of Vega, but through the work of two British music producers, who refer to themselves as DNA. This duo produced a remix of Vega’s piece a year later, taking the original’s ad-libbed outro and transforming this beat into the song’s driving hook. Employing digital music production to morph her 5 seconds of spoken beat into an incredibly catchy remix, they overlayed thumping bass, building synthesizers and a snappy snare to send Vega’s niche, indie work atop the pop charts. Their piece peaked at the second spot in the UK charts and the fifth spot in the US Billboard charts in addition to reaching the top spot in 3 European countries. Billboard tagged this new take on her work as pop music and few would stand to argue with this categorization as the song’s listenership changed and appeal grew. Now, the question is this: What changed? If Vega’s original work was ‘un-pop’ and this new version was received with open arms into pop music’s upper rankings, the changes made by DNA must be close to what defines pop music.

So now, pop music seems to be nothing but the electronically produced version of acoustically made songs. But it can’t just be that. Songs can’t be all layered with identical features to create hits. Similar additions to other folk songs along the same vein of Vega, like those by Tori Amos and Sinead O’Connor, and many of Vega’s own songs would sound wrong and jumbled with additions similar to these. The changes that DNA enacted on Vega’s original work are a reflection of an inherent quality of certain works referred to by popular music scholar Motti Regev as the ‘rock aesthetic’. Regev defines this as production “based on the use of electric and electronic sound textures, amplification, sophisticated audio craftsmanship, and ‘untrained’ and spontaneous techniques of vocal delivery”(Pop-rockization of Popular Music). While not a fully fleshed out description of this quality in my mind, as I would propose the addition of a characteristic that works back towards some of the blues/swing qualities within modern music, this ‘rock aesthetic’ serves as a valuable tool when talking about what defines pop music.

Furthermore, when we look into the elements of the ‘rock aesthetic’ we can draw back on the history of what we now define as pop. Regev’s comment on ‘untrained’ vocal technique as a characteristic of rock music is a loaded statement. What he classifies as ‘trained’ vocals would be classically trained, as in opera skills, vocal range and consistent pronunciation across notes. What is classified as ‘untrained’ would be much of what we now see as rap, blues, scat, jazz and rock, as these styles are far from his definition of traditional. Now, when looking at his ‘untrained’ vocal categories, we can see that this is associated with forms of music rooted in African-American tradition. Amplification and electronic music also have roots in the work of black pioneers like Jimi Hendrix as well as in big band jazz. And, when Regev notes on sophisticated audio craftsmanship, he refers to sounds that, although now associated with electronic music and DJ’s, share associations with the blues in their focus on bass-central rhythm and non-traditional sounds, thus pegging this definition to the start of blues music in the post-emancipation south, another inherently African American quality.

Additionally, the history of the rock aesthetic can be traced parallel to the history of the rock and roll genre. Obviously, the rock aesthetic sort of defines what we interpret as rock and roll, but looking into the history of rock and roll allows us much more depth and clarity on the actual roots of both. Rock historians, although finding conflict in some minutia of the growth of this genre, reach a general consensus on the basic origins of rock music. Rock music’s roots can be traced back to the blues movement in the post emancipation south and the birth of jazz music in early 19th century New Orleans along with the growth of swing and soul music. These styles morphed, mixed and worked with European-American styles of music like country and folk music to create the sound we now recognize as rock and roll. Many people, though, have serious grievances with the fusion of black and white music and accuse early white musicians like Elvis Presley of ‘stealing black music’. Although many white artists did in fact remake versions of earlier black songs, the integration of black and white music was more of mutualistic than parasitic. In his essay “The Church of the Sonic Guitar”, music writer and professor of American Music at the University of Mississippi, Robert Palmer argues for the positive, mutually beneficial relationship between black and white music during the dawn of rock and roll through the detailed history of the electric guitar. He argues, “Rock ‘n’ roll was an inevitable outgrowth of the social and musical interactions between blacks and whites in the South and Southwest. Its roots are a complex tangle … but the single most important process was the influence of black music on white.”(Present Tense). Palmer argues that the outgrowth of rock music was a positive result of black music transforming white music. He elaborates further in his piece saying that many of the defining characteristics of rock music noted in the aforementioned rock aesthetic are inherently black characteristics. Palmers argument allows us to concretely peg both rock and the rock aesthetic as the influences of black music.

Now, looking back to the earlier topic of Suzanne Vega’s Tom’s Diner and its subsequent ‘popification’. This would often be seen as a bad progression. To take a song that was so beautiful on its own right and turn it into mainstream, consumable pop would be heresy for many listeners. But, as we just broke down, the transformation of Vega’s piece wasn’t the commercialization of her work. The elements added to Vega’s work were inherently black features of music. What we initially interpreted as ‘popification’ was actually the ‘blackification’ of her work, but not in a manner that cheaply appeals to black listeners or those with tastes for black music, but in a sense that channels the roots of african american musical culture. In this way, the pop culture appears to not be a cheap channel for reproduced, identical music, but rather a place for integrated music to flourish without the title of black or integrated.

Furthermore, pop music serves an immensely beneficial purpose for society. Popular music, which we can now mark as music featuring the fusion of black and white musical elements, presents integration of the races in an incredibly positive light. This normalizes diversity in all aspects as it allows the product of racial integration to bring simple joy to the listener in a catchy beat or a hook that makes you get up and dance. When the mainstream listenership is exposed to versions of racial integration that positively reinforce diversity’s role in society, society is likely to benefit from decreased racial tension and increased acceptance of more diverse forms of culture.

Finally, what we saw in Suzanne Vega’s Tom’s Diner is able to inform, define and evaluate pop music. DNA’s recreation of her work allowed us to concretely identify what separates pop music from other genres with the assistance of Motti Regev’s rock aesthetic. After looking further into the history of rock and roll music along with breaking down Regev’s claim, it became relatively obvious that what we interpret as pop and rock music leans heavily on African-American musical styles, revealed by Palmer’s take on the development of rock and roll. Now, it’s easy to see that despite the common gripes that today’s pop music is cheap and lacks skill, pop music remains a solid example of how popular culture should function as it positively associates racially integrated works to the listener. What popular music already does can be applied to other areas of popular culture. Movies can depict comical characters of color to follow a similar vein, allowing the viewer to enjoy integration subconsciously, or a television show can build lovable, diverse characters, relatable to the viewer on a basic level. Pop music’s, and further pop culture’s, role isn’t and hopefully will never be one that lacks substance, but one that attempts to depict and promote a more accepting culture.