This article argues that pop music has never solely been about the music itself. It explores how visual imagery, from country stars' outfits to jazz musicians' mystique, has always played a crucial role in shaping public perception and defining the genre.
t’s unclear which artist first uttered the phrase, “It’s all about the music” – a quick Google search reveals it being deployed by indie bands, techno DJs, heavy metallers and, winningly, the Icelandic entrant in the 2024 Eurovision song contest – but whoever it was was lying. Pop music in its multifarious forms is never all about the music, nor has it ever been. It was always inexorably linked with visual imagery , but there’s no doubt the relationship was supercharged by rock’n’roll’s arrival.
Some of the most intriguing photos shown here are fascinating because they seem to tell a very different story from the accepted narrative about an artist. The well-worn line about the Stooges is that they were a band ignored, reviled or dismissed in the late 60s and early 70s, who had to wait for the arrival of punk for recognition, but Tom Copi’s shot of Iggy Pop being hoisted aloft by adoring fans in 1970 captures a moment of.
When it launched in 1981 as a 24-hour music video channel, MTV hit a snag: there weren’t enough videos to play. By 1983 it was taking its chances on relatively unknown British bands, including Eurythmics, AKA Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox, whose singlebecame an instant MTV classic. Part of its appeal was Lennox’s cropped hair and suit , creating a moment of beguiling androgyny.
Onstage in London in March 2003, nine days before the US-led invasion of Iraq, Natalie Maines of the Chicks gave a frustrated anti-war speech detailing her shame at being from the same state as then president George W Bush. Her words travelled and the band’s career – 2002’s Home album had sold 6m copies in America alone – imploded. Country radio stations blacklisted them, they received death threats and, in Louisiana, protesters used a tractor to destroy their CDs.
Tupac Shakur was photographed by David LaChapelle just months before his – to this day unsolved – murder by drive-by shooting in Las Vegas in September 1996. The 25-year-old rapper had recently been released from prison , which gave LaChapelle the idea for a photoshoot with the theme of “becoming clean”. A shirtless Shakur covered in soap bubbles is among the best known of the photographer’s high-concept, high-gloss celebrity portraits..
Elvis Presley was just starting to make a name for himself when a spot on The Milton Berle Show, on 5 June 1956, shot him to rock’n’roll notoriety and earned him the epithet “Elvis the Pelvis”. For the first time on television, the 21-year-old set aside his guitar to show off his dance moves in a performance of his latest single, Hound Dog. The fangirls went wild, but the conservative press slammed his “appalling lack of musicality” and “animalism”.
Pop Music Visual Imagery Rock 'N' Roll Country Music Jazz
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