The recent Grammy Awards Show was frightening in its implications. It demonstrated the extent to which public demand for special effects has completely overtaken human interest. The arena has replaced the stage; gladiators have replaced singers. The music has died. The singer and the song have gone down in defeat amidst the roar of the crowds. Personal rendition is lost in extravaganza.
This Awards Show was a three-ring circus raised to the nth degree. We had Lady Gaga and Elton John dressed as futuristic figures, battered from battle in some Terminator-like post-Armageddon of a world. We had dominatrix dresses - women crouching, swinging their hair like lassos – rappers madly declaiming inaudible lyrics – 3-D video projections – and much, much more. Finally, we had the “show-stopping” performance of Pink spinning high up in a harness, spraying water in all directions. But again, where was the music?
Perhaps Taylor Swift won so many awards because, as nondescript as her singing is, she was one of the few nominees still producing anything even remotely identifiable as music – with melody, poetry, and resonance.
In general though, the music has been getting pushed farther and farther into the background for years. Now it has all but vanished. Like the Cheshire cat, only its garish grin is left. It is hard to imagine how the various performers could try to distinguish themselves with any more sensationalism far removed from music the next time around. What’s left to do that could be yet more “daring,” that could “push the envelope” further? I’m reminded of a New Yorker cartoon that appeared years ago – showing a stark naked stripper smilingly dangling her entrails over her arm for the ogling spectators. After she’d appeared completely naked, what else was there left for her to display, to expose to her expectant audience? How else could she top herself?
And why aren’t people protesting this trend toward Roman decadence and decline? The day after the Grammy Awards, everyone was preoccupied critiquing the performers’ various costumes. Commentary focused on the length of the show, on Steven Colbert’s comedy introductions. But no one pointed out that the emperor had no clothes – that there was almost no music being honored at the music awards!
Did this trend toward making the spectacle the message manifest itself so slowly that virtually no one noticed the change? Well, the final shift of emphasis seems to have been compressed into the last decade or so, and that is a short enough time that it should have been evident. The transformation can be traced in the changing style of one particular band – U2.
Musically, the zenith of U2, for me at least, was their 1988 “Rattle and Hum” album and their live performances featuring that collection of songs. That music had enough of the rebel call in it to be clearly rock and roll. It was strident and sensual. But it still had a human face.
One Time magazine essayist who did notice this trend toward over-the-top, once commented on how rock musicians are left struggling to stay ahead of their technical projections, to maintain a presence against the backdrop of all their special effects. For a while, U2 was accomplishing that. Bono and the band members were still human presences on stage, the focus and heart of the music. Bono was an arresting figure on stage, with his black panther prowling through the songs.
With their video “The Fly,” Bono’s singing took back seat to the fractured multiplex presentation. However, his singing was still an integral part of what was still preeminently music. What’s more, the multifaceted screen that dominated the video and the stage performances of this song had a reason for being there and for flashing different scenes in each of the panels. It mimicked what a fly’s world might actually be like, with its compound eyes darting, gleaming beacons into its surroundings for danger and for prey.
But that was the last time that U2 band members came across to me as being salient to their own output. After that, with their “Achtung Baby” and certainly then their “Zooropa” albums and tours, it was multi-screen, fracturing, flashing, fireworks, for their own sake - not in service to the theme of any particular song. Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen all disappeared into their pyrotechnics. They were dwarfed, and then completely drowned by the noise and distraction they had going on behind them all the time – the ultimate concession to short attention spans.
And so most mainstream music has gone in general. These recent Grammies were testimony to how far this appetite for sensation over sense has gone. As performers emoted their pseudo-anguished, unintelligible lyrics into the mikes they were swallowing rather than projecting themselves into – as women stomped the stage in platform shoes – as men in baggy pants pounded out their anger against a background of grindhouse gyrations – as Pink stripped and spun – as the whole three-ring circus spun faster and faster in a “widening gyre” whose center could not hold – I wondered when the music had died.
