Week 5

Whether popular music can be considered a mass produced commodity or a genuine art form is arguable.  It is true that much of today’s popular music is pieced together based off of past songs.  Beats, rhythms, lyrics, etc. are remastered, remixed, and reused.  Some artists even blatantly copy another’s song, such as Miley Cyrus’ and X Factor’s “The Climb”.  These processes can be categorized as part interchangeability and part pseudo individualization.  Hit songs can, however, prove to be original and artistic. Nevertheless, critics like Theodore Adorno beg to differ, though Adorno fails to see that pop music is still recorded by an artist at some point and is consumed in a different way than other commodities.  All in all, it seems a fair statement to say that popular music is sometimes just a mass produced commodity, but oftentimes it can be a genuine art form.