In Chapter 9 of ‘Pop Cult’, Rupert Till’s points, while occasionally compelling, completely fall apart due to his ill-conceived choice of resources used to substantiate his positions. While these range from the trivial, such as his dependence on lyrics from song writers such as John Lennon[1] who admitted that some of his songs were written with the intention of confusing and irritating music critics (such as ‘I am the Walrus’), to the absurd when Till while discusses the divergence of formal Religious ceremonies and occasions such as Funerals and Weddings. While Till is discussing the gradual divergence between formal religious ceremonies and the occasions of weddings and funerals that-
“many of the functions traditionally served in the traditional cultures
by religions, as those traditions religious cultures have become increasing
culturally irrelevant, refusing to discard outdated traditions that have little
to do with the literature or teachings of the faith itself, but rather are
often accumulations of cultural habits that have become associated and
intertwined with the belief system itself”[2]
Till entirely misses the point, with no sense of
irony. Till states before and after this passage that the clergy’s refusal to
play ‘pop music’ is a serious reason for people performing ceremonies
elsewhere, as though the modern wedding ceremony has any resemblance to that which is metered out so delicately in
arcane religious texts. To be fair, Till also attributes some of the gradual
decline in ‘traditional’ ceremonies to a difference of faith, saying that the
decline might “be simply because they do not believe in Christianity, being an
agnostic or atheist”, as though those were the only two alternatives despite
non-Christian religions making up fully 8.7% of the English population in the
last census.
In short, while Till's assertions are not wholly
wrong, his choices of evidence and support are woefully inadequate, and so his
arguments fail before they have had a chance to convince the reader. Within his
closing statements, Till asserts that “popular music is a vital and significant
social force that we must investigate further if we are to understand how
meaning is developing in Western culture”[3],
preferring to study the art to derive how meaning arises, rather than
concentrating on what the artists themselves intend to portray. This neglect to
acknowledge that music is a reflection rather than the cause of a changing
social zeitgeist no doubt allows us to surmise that Till will be searching at
length and in vain for the meaning he seeks.
[1] Till, Rupert. Pop Cult : Religion and Popular Music. London:
Continuum International Publishing, 2010. 167-169
[2] Ibid. 169
[3] Ibid. 192.
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