Pop music relies on several different factors in order to survive. Namely, it has to be catchy. The song has to seize your ears and ask the question, “What is this?” After hearing the answer uttered by a record store clerk or radio announcer you’ll say to yourself, “Of course! I should have known.” Now, it’s time to be honest with yourself. Should you really have known who did that track? Do you benefit? Does the song benefit? Is the artist important to your decision to like or dislike a song?
In his essay, “Death of the Author” Roland Barthes states, “To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified to close the writing.” Taking these ideas into account when looking at pop music allows for the over-the-top lives of most of America’s pop stars to be removed from the listener’s perception of a song. Acceptability is important to the success of pop music; the genre’s significance comes from its overarching appeal. By removing the artist the listener enables him or herself to truly understand the implications of a song. The signified is no longer implied by authorship, it is handled by the listener.
Pop music isn’t well known for its originality, but is often lauded for its ability to create a representation of society. “We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single theological meaning,” says Barthes, “but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writing, none of them original, blend and clash.” In this respect, pop music functions as a combination of influences the world over. All of which, without the star, can be heard and understood by a large nation and reflected upon differently. The listener can accept a star and their persona of the moment, hearing a song in various ways– even if a song remains consistent to the one moment of creation. Removing the artist it increases the longevity of a song and enhances the listening experience.
One of the most interesting aspects of pop music is its universal appeal to listeners. It operates in each and every moment differently, and can often transcend time. This is an important fact to consider when removing the pop star. If a song can be looked at individually, without the spectacle that surrounds a star, it can be deciphered and decoded much more accurately. This is helpful when considering that pop music often functions as a reflection of society’s ideals. Consider that after the September 11 attacks, John Lennon’s “Imagine” was one of the most widely requested songs at radio stations. At the time of its original release in 1971, the song’s meaning was drastically different than it was after September 11. The lyrics, “Imagine there’s no heaven / it’s easy if you try… imagine there’s no country/ it isn’t hard to do / nothing to kill or die for / and no religion too” once symbolized a singers ideals and have more recently become an anthem for a nation in mourning. This was a case in which the listener was able to relinquish the star in order to apply their own feelings to a text, and exemplifies why the removal of pop-stardom is essential for a listener’s understanding both of their society as well a song.
Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” is another example of the death of authorship allowing for a new way to experience and understand a song. Regardless of his intentions, the song has become an Independence Day tradition. According to several interviews, the effect was unintentional on Springsteen’s part, but the fact remains that the collective listening public has decided that Springsteen’s intentions aren’t important. What is important is what the listener takes away from the listening experience, and in the case of “Born in the U.S.A.” it’s a sense of pride.
The two above examples came years after the songs were originally released. It may be difficult to imagine “Womanizer,” Britney Spears newest single being anything more than a sugar-coated pop footnote, but by removing Spears’ the performer and accepting the songs steady beat and simple message one may find oneself more open to the song down the road. By removing the stigma that is Spears, the song’s already universal appeal can be broadened even further, effectively selling more records and garnering a better following. There are pop icons who will argue that they are just as important as their creations, that these two things are inseparable. It is that egoism that keeps pop culture from being transcendent and from being truly universally appealing.
When a listener can remove a star’s identity, it allows for the music to speak for itself. With pop music it creates an experience that is shared with a large collective of people. The song is given the capacity to change meaning according to a societies need and the collective listeners are allowed to have their own signified.
In the end, the birth of the listener must be at the cost of the death of the star.