Once upon a time,
apparently, songs hadn’t been about specific products or companies at all, but
about wishy-washy flim-flam like love or loss or hope or metaphysics. Instead of singing about a particular
construction company, they’d sing about imaginary watchtowers; instead of
crafting a piece promoting the benefits of using a specific insurance firm,
they’d write a song about made-up riders on a made-up storm. And, even when songs had been about actual
tangible products, like drugs or blue suede shoes, they’d been about generic
drugs or blue suede shoes, and had failed to mention which specific brands of
drugs or blue suede shoes they’d been actually referring to. It was like the past had been some fuzzy
cloud of inter-bleeding greys and browns, out of focus and impossible to really
discern. If the present was like a
display window of precisely-labelled and correctly-categorised leisuregoods,
the past had been like the same display window after a tornado. Things had been thrown together as the
musicians had seen fit, without any specific sponsorship, and no particular
direction.
Even ancient classics like
the Rolling Stones’ ‘Paint it Black With Dulux’, or John Lennon’s ‘Imagine (the
Comfort of Sorbent Toilet Tissue)’, had originally been product-free, instead
being about insubstantial abstracts like bad moods and hazy utopian
daydreamings (respectively). Back in the
day, popular musicians, despite being immensely respected at the time, had
churned out nothing but self-important odes to nothing-much-at-all, and
billions and billions of dollars had been wasted on selling the public nothing
but existential ramblings, personal points of view, and lists of things that
rhymed.
All said, it’s amazing that
anyone had listened to music at all.
Indeed, so pervasive had
this vague attitude of artistic incoherence been, that when the first
corporate-rock pioneers had begun creating their product-specific pop music in
the early 2000s, they’d been derided and belittled (according to reliable
history sites). Like Galileo being
imprisoned for declaring the world was not the centre of the universe, these
forward-thinking artists had put up with personal insults, vile slander, and
(unlike Galileo) the accusation that they’d “sold out” (which, given that their
music had been created in a self-declared culture of free-market capitalism,
had been akin to accusing a politician of running for office).
But, much like the
popularity of vatmeat over corpses, slowly corporate-rock had spread. Music publishers, desperately looking for
some way to recoup the losses they’d suffered under the digital file-sharing
revolution, had been first to jump on board: with business sponsorship,
suddenly they’d found themselves raking it in.
Music fans had loved it; now, not only could they sing along with their
favourite tunes, but they could actually hold their subject matter in their
hands. Abstract notions and pretty
verses had finally turned into solid, tangible products and services. Instead of just having posters of their idols
and wishing they could somehow connect, fans could really drink the actual
soft-drink, really wear the actual pants, really wash with the actual
moisturising and defoliating emollient and humectant cream with enzymes.
Finally, instead of just
buying into the message, the public could buy what the message was about. And they loved it.
Musicians too began to
universally realise that while there was no career in writing about wishy-washy
flim-flam, there was always money to be made in advertising. As eyes and ears had begun to open across the
world, musicians had finally understood that they had been selfish and
childish, trying to just push their own idiosyncratic barrows, when there were
larger (and more socially-shared) barrows that needed pushing up the cultural hill. Musicians no longer merely had to rely on
selling their little songs, but had themselves a whole line of merchandise
already there for the selling. And
collectively they’d understood that it hadn’t meant compromising their unique
artistic visions, either; rather, it had made their visions more concrete, more
accessible to their fans. One could
still sing about dreams, or love, or existentialist despair, but one could
drive the message home, make it really connect to their audience, if one made
it dreams about wearing a specific perfume, the love of the refreshing taste of
a specific cola, or the existentialist despair of missing out on these crazy
crazy bargains.
It had not taken long,
relatively speaking, for the entire music world to have shifted from an
irrelevant and meaningless charade of silly selfish shadow-puppets selling
themselves, to a creatively-robust economically-essential driving cultural
force. There were still, of course, the
normal dichotomies of art: mainstream musicians and alternative ones; high-brow
musicians and low-brow ones; musicians who displayed creative genius and those
who churned out dross. But the entire
game had shifted. Soon enough, if you were
a musician but didn’t have a product to write about, you weren’t really a musician,
any more than a stamp-collector without stamps is actually a philatelist.
Finally, the music business
had realised what it really had been all along – business, set to music.
Having grown up several
generations after the music industry had awakened to its untapped economic
potential, Gene had never known a world where songs had been unconnected to
real, solid, proper product. And, as
most of her friends had been fellow musicians, Gene had seen many products used
for creative inspiration. One of her
friends made extreme noise-music about a chain of body-piercing / tattooing /
body pigmentation studios. One friend
made dark droney power-ambient soundscapes for a depressive boutique clothing
franchise. Another created high-energy
distorted 8-bit slam-rave to advertise emo power-tools. One made glam-pop rapcore for a range of
bathroom cleaning products. One crafted
blackened folk-surf for a jelly-repellent wetsuit company.
But in her estimation, these
were all light-weight products, with limited creative value. After all, one emo power-tool was pretty much
the same as any other; the world didn’t care which one you used, really. There was nothing important to say about
piercings or wetsuits. But vatmeat! That was something she could really get her
teeth into (so to speak). That was
something that had revolutionary appeal – something that had literally changed
the world for the better. Sure,
situational cellular growth technologies had been pretty much ubiquitous, and,
competition-wise, the Beef Corporation had been at the top of the pile. But that hadn’t meant that there wasn’t
untapped awesomeness yet to come. Gene
knew, deep inside, that she was finally on the right path. Her music, her voice, her song-writing
skills, coupled with Royston’s PR know-how, and his company’s unparalleled
expertise in the field – what could possibly go wrong?
As she’d left the
MegaConvenience Friends Plus, lighter in hand, Gene couldn’t help but grin from
ear to ear, humming a little tune. A
tune that would, one day, turn into her biggest hit single, and reach the ears
of millions.
(Of course, she hadn’t known that at the time. But even if she had’ve, her smile couldn’t
have been wider.)
