Adorno agues that popular music is standardized, for example, the part interchangability which is used to streamline costs can be seen in music where the same musical structure has been used in one song, and changed slightly to produce something different. (E.g. Hank Williams, 1974, Move It On Over, and Bill Haley, 1953, Rock Around the Clock). This illusion of uniqueness that Adorno argues is necessary to market a commodity, is in essence the same as the host, which is called pseudo individualisation.
Gendren agrees with Adorno arguing that classical music focuses on melody and harmony whereas popular music is more concentrated with timbre and connotation, yet recognition and the ability to create a three minute piece of music has not been expressed; it is much like trying to downsize a 1500 word essay to 150 words...very hard indeed! However this does not necessarily mean that popular music is less of an art. If art is an expression of an artist then whether it has elements of standardization or pseudo individualisation it is still arguably art. So as there are elements of originality, whether intentionally or not (as the voice is original) it can be argued that the popular music industry is not an all consuming production line that churns out mass produced, inferior commodities, as Adorno believes!
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Hank Williams had been dead 22 years by 1974, Move It On Over was recorded in 1947!
I like parallel that you draw between working within the strict confines of a three minute pop song and your blog posts. It can indeed be argued that Adorno's criticism of popular music on the grounds of its simplicity could be countered with Mies van der Rohe's famous suggestion that 'less is more'.
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