First of all it would be necessary to clarify what you mean by pop music. As I recently saw in a documentary about pop music, in the way that pop means popular, it could be anything from rock to classical music (anyone can hum through Beethoven's 9th most popular movement, so that could be considered pop).
However it seems to me that you're defining pop as non-classical music. I would never consider Dead can Dance as pop though I'm not quite sure where I'd "put" it. Coincidentally, I am familiar with their music as one of their cds has a fragment of Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights on the front which aroused my curiosity, making me buy it. I totally agree with what you said:
I understood what they liked in 'Dead can Dance': a sense of suspension of time and of mystery. And I must say the music did not seem bad.
I think there are some groups that explore sonority in interesting ways and they're one of them. Just like good ethnic groups (I'm not sure if I can call them that), as
Na lua, a Spanish group that recreates traditional music from Galicia.
Now concerning what you called "pop music"…
You made an extremely good point when you mentioned the cueing of rage and despair by the music's energy and rhythm. I think it's exactly that! The slight variations in music, followed by the slight variations in the urban groups that listen to it, must vary according to some minor differences in the way those youngsters feel cued by rhythms and sound. I was never able to listen to this kind of music… double pedal (I'm not sure about the translation but I mean "pedal duplo" in the drums) makes me feel sick and sometimes scared.
As you said, it's also about getting into a state of trance, instead of getting in contact with one's deeper emotions. I was, for a long time, a fan of
The Doors (Ray Manzarek is probably the greatest enemy of organ lovers!?), having a special preference for their longer songs, like
The end and
Celebration of the lizard. Being a logical progression of smaller songs, I remember listening to the last one in an attempt to become alienated. And, contrary to what one could think, this is clearly the intention of the composer (the main difference here is that the lyrics do play a major role in the achievement of that state); there are sections where there isn't even a "three note melody": it's just a repeated note on the organ, creating that sense of estrangement.
In a live recording, Jim Morrison introduces the song like this:
«Now listen, we've got a special treat for you right now. It starts of kind of quiet so if everybody would just kinda relax, take a few deep breaths, think about your eventual end and what's gonna happen tonight and we'll try and do something good to your head.»
Some of the lyrics:
«Once I had a little game,
I liked to crawl back in my brain.
I think you know the game I mean,
I mean the game called go insane!
Now you should try this little game,
just close your eyes, forget your name.
Forget the world, forget the people
and we'll erect a different steeple.
This little game is fun to do,
just close your eyes, no way to lose!
And I'm right here I'm going to,
release control, we're breaking through!»
Overall I think it's about loosing consciouness of the self and/or getting out of one's body, either being it through unjustifiable rage or mere alienation.
Why is that? Why is there this need to forget about one's mind or body?
Well, I have no idea and can only make guesses.
One of them has to do with something you wrote (
Suffering): post-modernism has thrown the human to a nullity of being. We live in an era of easy access to everything, there's really nothing noble enough to suffer about and life is resumed to basic emotions, felt in basic, regular levels.
However, adolescence is, by its nature, a stage where you're supposed to build an identity, to produce and create, to feel and suffer, or to produce (i. e. expression of the self through art) based on suffering. If our times don't offer us true reasons in which to base our suffering, there has to be at least a synthetic replacement of that need. Considering classical music is in its majority hard to like or understand on a first level basis, deep emotions induced by pop music are the closest thing teens can get. The one guaranteed way to intensely feel something, as they don't have to crave for anything, everything being easily achieved.
I think the importance of reaching these states (mentioned above) might not only be true for rage and despair, but also for alienation, as it gives a sense of individuality (self-importance) in a somewhat culture of masses. But alienation can be a different case anyway, as it's been a common link through time and space (Jim Morrison did try to pursue the sensations American Indians produced with the use of mescaline).
As Aldous Huxley brightly put it in his
Brave new world, when he mentioned the occasional need of adrenalin treatments in order to suppress some kind of suffocating daily stability, it's all about alienated excitement!
Nonetheless, there's more to pop (when defined as non-classical) then these dark sonorities. I don't think it's always about rage, despair and self dissolution. After all, most teenagers don't belong to these darker, more aggressive or alienated urban cultures. Thelike classire are all those pop groups (U2, Robbie Williams, Pearl Jam, etc) that sing normal songs for regular, satisfied adolescents that deal with the stage's tasks without major problems or conflicts. Or, at least, regular, satisfied adolescents that don't feel the need to be cued by these songs and just listen to them as any person would read a novel.
The most they probably usually try to get out of music is a slight maximization of basic emotions or some excitement – what you'd call
entertainment.
In the overall context, the role played by lyrics seems to be a simple pointer as to what you should or shouldn't be listening to (gothics would probably consider it outrageous and sinful if "one of them" was caught listening to Shakira).
I don't want, by any means, to sound dogmatic. It's adolescents that like to be categorised as one of 'this' or 'that' group.
And then there are always those for whom lyrics do count, where music functions, through the symbiosis of lyrics and melody, as a way of living/reliving types of experiences that are meaningful for the self, or exploring one's life philosophy.
[No one except RdS will recognise him but…] I truly identify with some of Jorge Palma's lyrics which, in association with his lovely melodies, produce a way to make me relive some of my valued life experiences. It isn't, and never was, about alienation and exacerbation of extreme emotions. Though his music is quite simple, to me it would seem that it deals more with those ego emotions you mentioned.
[There are also those that enjoy classical music and alike. Usually a different breed...]
Really, it cannot really get more primitive.
I agree. It's as if only intensity, and not quality, counted.
So, really, I think this is not a very good sign of a substantive culture growing in youngsters. A totally barren mental landscape.
This is something I'm not quite sure about… There are still many
intelligent people; I'm just not sure if there are less
bright (truly intelligent and creative) people.
Though, as I stated, music appears to be a way to attain intensive sensations or alienation, there are individuals that seem to create new things, ideas and thoughts from those experiences. Maybe some do recreate the suffering of other times and build new meanings from their personal experiences.
Just like you'd recreate or understand that suffering from listening to classical music.
Concluding: People aren't always characterized by the music they listen to, but by the way they listen to it.
Sorry for being too extensive and repetitive!!!
Joana
P.S.: Do you know you could be arrested for misspelling Kurt Cobain's (or, as some say, Kurt NoBrain) name? His fans would get mad if they found out!
).
. Do you have any links to some videos of his performances? It must be funny to watch them moving...
) listening to them in my mind all the time. Even the Art of Fugue has something 'trance-like'. Of course, one needs to understand counterpoint, but having mastered it, the repetition, in different guises, of the main subject, are quite trance inducing. 
