Satirical music

Satirical music describes music that employs satire or was described as such. It deals with themes of social, political, religious, cultural structures and provides commentary or criticism on them typically under the guise of dark humor or respective music genres. Topics include sexuality, race, culture, religion, politics, institutions, taboo subjects, morality, and the human condition.

History

Satirical route in music has been explored countless times; from premodern ballads such as the 4th-century BCE Song of Songs[nb 1][2] to classical, avant-garde, and modern popular music. Such examples are:

Classical
Satirical ballets, operas, ballads, and plays include Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (1670),[3] Il Girello (1682)[3] by Alessandro Melani, L'Europe galante (1697),[3] Poly (1729),[3] Le carnaval des revues (1860)[3] by Jacques Offenbach, La belle Hélène (1864),[3] Ariadne auf Naxos (1912),[3] third movement of Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (1897),[3] Die Dreigroschenoper (1928),[3] Neues vom Tage (1929),[4] L'amour des trois oranges (1921),[3] The Rake's Progress (1951),[3] 17th-century composer Molière,[3] and 20th-century composer György Ligeti.[3]
Satire in contemporary music
Other topics
Popular
American folk singer Bob Dylan, (1961–)[5] soul musician Gil Scott-Heron (1969–2011),[5] humorist and rock musician Frank Zappa (1955–1993),[6] surreal funk musicians George Clinton (1955–) and Parliament Funkadelic,[7] hardcore punk band Dead Kennedys (1978–)[8] grindcore band Anal Cunt (1988–2011),[9] and punk rock band The Kominas (2004–).[9]
Avant-garde
Musicians that combined satire and avant-garde include Throbbing Gristle (1975–),[10] Negativland (1979–),[11] Culturcide (1980–),[12] and the so-called Americana absurdum movement comprising monks (1964–1967), The Residents (1969–) especially their albums[13] The Residents Present the Third Reich and Roll (1976) and Commercial Album (1980), DEVO (1973–), and Talking Heads (1975–1991).[14] Another example is a digital hardcore album Alec Empire vs. Elvis Presley (1998).[15]

Satire in counterculture

Counterculture and avant-garde music scenes characterized by being "aggressive in sound, challenging in content" that spawned popular music such as hip hop and heavy metal display satirical taboo transgressions.

According to British sociologist Keith Kahn-Harris, "tongue-in-cheek attitude" and irony has been a fundamental "part of the UK extreme scene" by often adopting camp and comic elements to transgress what outsiders to the scene find "acceptable;" e.g. appropriating Holocaust imagery to advance a position pertaining to abortion or animal rights.[9] Other times, like in the case of black metal,[16] exaggerating tropes and behaviors within music cultures or society.[17] In hip-hop culture, especially gangsta rap and 1990s rappers like Missy Elliot,[5] transgressive humor of rap "revolve[s] around the established movements of gangsta realism and progressive Afrocentrism" to the point of exaggerated albeit critical self-deprecation.[5]

Vaporwave, an Internet music genre, samples corporate video work, old advertising jingles, and music of the so-called economic boom period of the 1980s like smooth jazz or contemporary R&B, and distorts them to produce a sort of repetitious slowed-down, pitch-shifted, intentionally low-fi music that was praised as a commentary on "corporate cultures of capitalism" or consumerism for its ambivalent satirical musical tone.[18] One of vaporwave albums utilizing satire is James Ferraro's album FARSIDEVIRTUAL (2011).[19]

Ambiguity of satire has contributed to popular misinterpretations of music that adopted it. For instance, Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." (1984) listed in Rolling Stone's "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" and RIAA's Songs of the Century was written as a satire yet canonized as a "patriotic rock anthem," a designation that ignores the message "how far political leaders had strayed from the values the country was founded on," criticizing the establishment with the memorable chorus.[20] As Springsteen adds, it is about the working-class man going through

[A] spiritual crisis, in which man is left lost. It's like he has nothing left to tie him into society anymore. He's isolated from the government. Isolated from his job. Isolated from his family ... to the point where nothing makes sense.[21]

Parody
Main article: Parody music
See also: Parody in popular music

Parody music in the truest sense is a type of work that seriously imitates a well-known original and simultaneously covertly satirizes the environment of which that original is a part (compare, pastiche which does not perform the latter and is conflated with "homages") while at worst is copying an original composition for a "parodic effect" only.[22]

Comedic satire
Main article: Comedy music
See also: Comedy rock and comedy hip hop

Overtly comedic strains of satire include comedy and novelty music, typically focused on broad-appeal jokes and caricatures. Both arriving with popular music in the 1940s and 1950s, comical spoofs of music genres and performers contributed to a popular mainstream strain of satire.

Stan Freberg's satirical contribution was "Green Chri$tma$" (1959) which targeted and offended[23] advertisers but he was not against advertising and personally created an effective Coca-Cola campaign himself.[24] Popular satirical comedian Weird Al Yankovic contributed[25] with "Frank's 2000 TV" (1992)—song about a love/hate relationship with pop culture and technology and "Young, Dumb & Ugly" (1993)—song about snotty outlaw posturing. California punk band The Offspring expressed a humorous satire style in "Come Out and Play" (1994)—song about teenage gang violence and "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)" (1998)—song about 1990s poor youth posturing adopted by an upper-class young suburbanite.[26]

On the other hand, Tom Lehrer is known for his style of comic morbid juxtapositions and satirical culture criticisms,[27] e.g. "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" pairs inoffensive melody with Charles Addams-esque lyrics:

We'll murder them all, amid laughter and merriment
Except for the few we take home to experiment

Meanwhile, "My Home Town" catalogues prostitution, pornography, murder, arson among common people using a nostalgic tone. Lehrer's humorous music with social and political satire overtones attracted censorship and negative press which he reprinted on the sleeve of his albums.[27] By word-of-mouth reputation he sold 370,000 copies by the end of the 1950s and developed a following in Australia, Denmark, and England.[27] Lehrer contributed with "The Folk Song Army," "National Brotherhood Week," "I Wanna Go Back to Dixie," "So Long, Mom (I'm Off to Drop the Bomb," and "We Will All Go Together When We Go" which examine society and the failings of both left- and right-wing.[27]

Randy Newman, an Americana-themed humorist,[28] fused old time-style music with sardonic off-color lyrics and has contributed[29] to satire with 12 Songs (1970), Sail Away (1972), and Good Old Boys (1974). Newman's song "Rednecks" (1974), banned in Boston, Massachusetts and its airplay restricted for containing the word 'nigger',[30] starts as a stereotypical depiction of "racist rednecks" from the South and ends up illustrating less overt racism in the Northern United States:

Now your northern nigger's a Negro
You see he's got his dignity
Down here we're too ignorant to realize
That the North has set the nigger free
Yes he's free to be put in a cage
In Harlem in New York City
And he's free to be put in a cage in the South-Side of Chicago
And the West-Side
And he's free to be put in a cage in Hough in Cleveland
And he's free to be put in a cage in East St. Louis
And he's free to be put in a cage in Fillmore in San Francisco
And he's free to be put in a cage in Roxbury in Boston
They're gatherin' 'em up from miles around
Keepin' the niggers down"[31]

Notes
  1. The Shephard Hypothesis posits that "true love" of the unknown girl for the unnamed shepherd is greater that it resisted the emperor of lands, Solomon.[1]

References
  1. Mariottini, Claude F. (2013). Rereading the Biblical Text: Searching for Meaning and Understanding. Wipf and Stock. ISBN 978-1620328279., p. 109.
  2. Réville, Albert (1873). The Song of Songs: Commonly Called the Song of Solomon, Or, the Canticle. From the French of Albert Réville, Williams and Norgate (1873) from the University of Michigan, p. 63. Quote: "It has been maintained that the Canticle was a satire directed by the popular malice of the North against the person of Solomon, that it was the expression of the sentiments of aversion against the dynasty of David, of which the tribes of the North gave prompt proof after the death of his son."
  3. Jon Paxman (13 October 2014). A Chronology Of Western Classical Music 1600-2000. Omnibus Press. pp. 517–610. ISBN 978-1-78323-121-8.
  4. Paxman 2014, p. 517.
  5. Ellis, Iain (2008). Rebels Wit Attitude: Subversive Rock Humorists. Soft Skull Press. p. 249 ("Urban R(h)apsodies")/p. 88 (Bob Dylan). ISBN 978-1-59376-206-3.
  6. Slaven, Neil (2009). Electric Don Quixote: The Definitive Story Of Frank Zappa, Omnibus Press, ISBN 9780857120434. Quote: "Frank Zappa's often brilliant combination of irreverent humour and 'serious' music has and will continue to baffle many [...] Why does somebody who has the gift of satire and comedy waste his time composing orchestral pieces?"
  7. Rabaka, Reiland (2013). The Hip Hop Movement : From R&B and the Civil Rights Movement to Rap and the Hip Hop Generation. Lexington Books. p. 255. ISBN 9780739182437.
  8. Smith GD, Dines M, Parkinson T (2017). Punk Pedagogies: Music, Culture and Learning, Routledge, p. 193, ISBN 9781351995801.
  9. Tsitsos, William (November 17, 2015). "18 - Hitler, the Holocaust, and Heavy Metal Music: Holocaust Memory and Representation in the Heavy Metal Subculture, 1980-Present". In Horsfall, Sara Towe; Meij, Jan-Martijn; Probstfield, Meghan D. (eds.). Music Sociology: Examining the Role of Music in Social Life. Routledge. p. 247. ISBN 978-1317255840. Retrieved April 16, 2019.
  10. Stubbs, David (2009). Fear of Music: Why People Get Rothko But Don't Get Stockhausen. John Hunt Publishing. p. 87. ISBN 978-1-84694-179-5.
  11. Zimmermann, Patricia R. (2019) Documentary Across Platforms: Reverse Engineering Media, Place, and Politics, Indiana University, ISBN 9780253043504. Quote: "A hybrid between an artists' collective, a punk rock band, and a satirical performance art team, Negativeland's subversive antics have helped to define interventionist art in the last two decades. They coined the term "culture jammer" in 1984."
  12. Lynskey, Dorian (2011). 33 Revolutions Per Minute, Faber & Faber, p. 1806, ISBN 9780571277209.
  13. Sarig, Roni (1998). The Secret History of Rock: The Most Influential Bands You've Never Heard, Billboard Books, p. 72, ISBN 9780823076697.
  14. Carr, Paul (editor), 2013, Frank Zappa and the And, p. 100, ISBN 9781409433378.
  15. "CMJ New Music Report". CMJ New Music Report (643): 10. Nov 15, 1999.
  16. K. Kahn-Harris, Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge (Berg Publishers, 2007), p. 148, ISBN 1-84520-399-2
  17. Powell, Gary Botts (2013). "Heavy Metal Humor: Reconsidering Carnival in Heavy Metal Culture." Master's thesis, Texas A & M University.
  18. Tofalvy T, Barna E (2020). Popular Music, Technology, and the Changing Media Ecosystem: From Cassettes to Stream, Springer Nature, p. 187, ISBN 9783030446598.
  19. Cook N, Ingalls M.M., Trippett D (2017), The Cambridge Companion to Music in Digital Culture, Cambridge University Press, p. 120, ISBN 9781107161788.
  20. Caroline Madden, Caroline (2020). Springsteen as Soundtrack: The Sound of the Boss in Film and Television, McFarland, p. 50, ISBN 9781476672854.
  21. Cowie, Jefferson R; Boehm, Lauren (2006). "Dead Man's Town: 'Born in the U.S.A.,' Social History, and Working-Class Identity". American Quarterly. 58 (2): 353–378. doi:10.1353/aq.2006.0040. S2CID 143532492. Project MUSE 199136.
  22. Schwabach, Aaron (2013). Fan Fiction and Copyright: Outsider Works and Intellectual Property Protection, Ashgate Publishin, p. 73, ISBN 9781409497639.
  23. Hollis, Tim (2010). Christmas Wishes: A Catalog of Vintage Holiday Treats & Treasures, Stackpole Books, p. 168, ISBN 9780811742184.
  24. Freberg, Stan (1988). It Only Hurts When I Laugh. Times Books. p. 198. ISBN 0812912977.
  25. Rabin, Nathan; Yankovic, Alfred M. (September 25, 2012). Weird Al: The Book. Abrams Image. ISBN 9781419704352., p. 127.
  26. Winwood, Ian (November 20, 2018). Smash!: Green Day, The Offspring, Bad Religion, NOFX, and the '90s Punk Explosion. Hachette Books. ISBN 9780306902734 – via Google Books., p. 280.
  27. Kayorie, James Stephen Merritt (2019). "Introduction". In Baumgartner, Jody C. (ed.). American Political Humor: Masters of Satire and Their Impact on U.S. Policy and Culture. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. pp. 240–250. ISBN 9781440854866.
  28. Moon, Tom (2004). Brackett, Nathan; Hoard, Christian (eds.). The New Rolling Stone Album Guide. London: Fireside. pp. 581. ISBN 0-7432-0169-8.
  29. Volbrecht, Terry (1991). Songsources: Using Popular Music in the Teaching of English. Buchu Books, p. 169, ISBN 9780620135634.
  30. Courrier, Kevin (2005). Randy Newman's American Dreams, ECW Press, pp. 153-155, ISBN 9781550226904.
  31. Black and White Masculinity in the American South, 1800-2000 (edited by Lydia Plath, Sergio Lussana, 2009), Cambridge Scholars Publishing, p. 194, ISBN 9781443815338.

Works cited
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