postmodernism in music

Is postmodernism the shortcut to massive audiences?

Postmodernism a word that is thrown around to describe the style of lot’s of different items in the worlds of cinema, literature and music. In this respect it is not dissimilar from terms like “cool” or “in” as it’s meaning is gradually changed throughout it’s usage to reflect on whatever it is used to pass judgement on. Looking at the word it means after modernism “A style that represents a departure from modernism” in shorter terms it refers to the near future not to be confused with futurism which is of course looking ahead as far as a few years. Postmodernism is best used to describe what is new.

In the music industry and music video promotions in particular postmodernism is used frequently to give a sense of the strange and bizarre no one has used this to more effect than lady gaga. Lady gaga has been called a postmodern feminist and the embodiment of pop music postmodernism. This is evident in her videos particularly in the video for born this way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV1FrqwZyKw

this video uses bright colours, bizarre narrative and heavy sexualisation to create a postmodernist future theme. It could be argued that the reasons for this video and indeed gaga’s success as a whole can be attributed to her postmodernist style. It is certain that a lot of money was made through this video but is it possible that this is due to the postmodern style or the actual song and the themes running through it.

It could be argued that postmodernism is not a shortcut to audiences when other videos made in similar styles were not as well received. A good example of this would be the video for the cave by mumford and sons a video which despite being described as possessing a style of postmodernism was not as popular perhaps as anything made by lady gaga.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXPdrU_EKFs

it might be said that this proves that postmodernism whilst not a shortcut to a vast proportion of the music video audience is a shortcut to a large group within this area. The audience that would be interested in a postmodernist theme may only be a small percentage of a music video audience for lady gaga whilst they may make up a larger percentage of the caves audience by mumford and sons.