What's wrong with pop music?

What Is Ailing Pop Music? Depends Whom You Ask – by KELEFA SANNEH

Maybe you’ve seen the trailer. A guy in a cheap suit jacket, brandishing a big microphone, approaches some unsuspecting young women after a concert. He is making a documentary, allegedly. His manner is naïve, but the questions he asks are plainly insulting. Still, the women are kind enough to play along. He says something weird about bra-burning. They respond politely. Nice.

But this isn’t that fake documentary “Borat.” It’s a real documentary, or at any rate an earnest one: “Before the Music Dies.” The interviewer, eager to make a point about the idiocy of popular music, has found these enthusiastic young women outside an Ashlee Simpson concert. He asks them if they are familiar with Bob Dylan . (At least a few of them aren’t.) He explains Mr. Dylan’s appeal, or tries to: “He used to inspire people to, like, drive to Washington and burn their bras.” Apparently Ms. Simpson has no such incendiary effect. Case closed.

“Before the Music Dies” is the work of a couple of concerned music fans, Andrew Shapter and Joel Rasmussen, who set out to document the decline of “raw, undeniable talent,” as Mr. Shapter puts it, “the kind that doesn’t seem to be around as much in these days of instant pop stars.” The satellite radio network XM is broadcasting the film as an audio documentary. (For more information, visit beforethemusicdies.com .) And the film is touring the country in do-it-yourself style; it is being shown in clubs, at colleges, and in private homes; tomorrow night a guy named Ryan in Minneapolis is inviting people over to watch it.

This is a passionate film, but not a very convincing one. Doyle Bramhall II, a blues-rock guitarist and singer, talks about his frustrating years in the music industry. Unnamed fans wonder why radio isn’t as good as it used to be. Insiders and critics (including Jon Pareles, of The New York Times) talk about how the musical marketplace has changed over the last few decades.

Trying to corral these differing opinions, the voice-of-God narrator asks, “As the torchbearers of America’s rich musical heritage fight for survival amidst the wreckage of what was once the record industry, what does the future hold?” (Objection! Leading the witness!)

You’ve heard this story before, maybe from an overserved guy at a party who’s eager to explain why they don’t make ’em — blues musicians? sitcoms? stained glass windows? parties? — like they used to.

For as long as there has been a music industry, there have been music lovers criticizing it. What’s new is that, as CD sales continue to decline, slowly but steadily, the insiders’ critique has come to resemble the outsiders’ critique. Bob Lefsetz, the longtime music-industry gadfly, publishes a splenetic e-mail newsletter (archived online at lefsetz.com ) that is, if anything, even angrier than the film; one typical recent riff began, “This business is so rotten, it’s unbelievable.” (Full disclosure: You’re reading a writer whom Mr. Lefsetz seems to like.) Even Alain Levy, the head of EMI Music, recently announced, “The CD as it is right now is dead,” adding, “We have to be much more innovative in the way we sell physical content.”

This is what’s truly odd about the current music-industry slump: it has created an unexpected consensus among people who usually disagree. From do-it-yourself pioneers like Jenny Toomey (an indie rocker and activist who is interviewed in the film) to former executives; from unsigned hopefuls to arena-filling stars like Dave Matthews (who is also interviewed), everyone thinks something is wrong with the music industry. And so long as the discussion doesn’t go much further than that, it seems as if all these people agree.

Look closer, though, and you’ll see that this story isn’t quite so simple. Take Mr. Bramhall, the guitarist and singer: he was actually signed twice, by Geffen and then by RCA. If you love his music, you may wonder why major labels couldn’t make him a success; if you don’t, you may wonder why on earth major labels kept signing him.

Bonnie Raitt hints at some of these complexities when she reminisces about the good old days at Warner Brothers in the 1970s. She says, “Their big sellers, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath, would pay for Ry Cooder and Randy Newman and me and Little Feat.” That sounds like a great system, unless of course you’re a member of Deep Purple or Black Sabbath, in which case it might be time to negotiate a better contract.

Unlike some of the more sentimental commentators in the film, Mr. Lefsetz is obsessed with numbers: Nielsen SoundScan sales figures, PollStar concert statistics and the like. And because his is an industry perspective (albeit a dissident one), he respects just about any act that really sells records.

Lots of the folks in “Before the Music Dies” might think the hugely popular Canadian neogrunge band Nickelback is a sign of all that’s wrong with the world. But when the most recent Nickelback album hit 3.7 million copies sold in America, Mr. Lefsetz could scarcely contain his glee, writing: “Could it be that Nickelback is now the leader because they’re the only one with any values? And the rest of the acts are sold-out whores purveying music that has the fading taste and longevity of bubble gum?” Hmm. Don’t answer that question. Or rather, don’t try to answer it without addressing the simple but slippery issue of taste. We can argue all day about bubble gum and CD sales and microformatted radio and major-label artist development. But none of that makes much sense unless we’re also willing to discuss what music we like, and why. (For the record Nickelback’s current hit, “Far Away,” is a first-rate power ballad.)

“Before the Music Dies” is incoherent because it doesn’t examine its own taste. The filmmakers advance a particular musical vision — a world full of bluesy guitarists, rootsy jam bands, old-fashioned soul singers and quirky fusionists — while pretending they’re merely diagnosing the music industry.

It’s clear that something is happening. The CD is certainly dying (though it’s not dead yet), and the power of major labels and big radio stations is clearly under siege. But how you feel about all this probably depends on whether you have a vested interest in the current system, and on what kind of music you like. It’s nice to imagine we’re all in this together. But we ain’t.