In 2008 I attended a seminar at the Lemmensinstituut in Leuven with Jeroen D'hoe on The Great American Songbook. Since my youth I have been in love with those songs from all those musicals, whether or not in those many beautiful jazz versions of them. Since then, one of my ears listens to jazz and pop, the other to classical music. Now this "classical" composer, who D'hoe certainly is, has written a book about pop. And what a book. Original as always, he presented it in a special way, with a real show in the Leuven city theatre. There you could admire him the way I did in his lessons: always witty and clear, thoughtful but also with fluent flair, at the piano and flanked by young pop artists who gave voice to his talk show (a "TED-talk" really).
The whole book breathes that same atmosphere. Structured from beginning to end, academic and frivolous. It is overwhelming in terms of research, with text analyses ("verse", "bridge", "chorus"…) and musical analyses (chords, composition techniques, the "AABA" structure, sampling....). Not really a history of pop music, no, he does it more originally. How that music came about should become clear from his story about De Masters of Pop. 10 iconische popalbums die de wereld veranderden. And there are more than just "earworms" whose "hook" will never let you go.
But don't be mistaken: this is not just a book for musicologists. Throughout the entire book, even with special layouts highlighted, D'hoe places all this in the evolving social context. That is so valuable about this work. An eye-opener for anyone who didn't know that every generation has had, has and will have its pop music. That the book is abundantly illustrated goes without saying. And if you want to know more, you can browse through the many pages of footnotes and the bibliography. Students should have more such professors, academics who also stand in their world. You hear the author teaching and it reads like a documentary.
He finds the foundations of that music in the Broadway musicals as they were made in the New York music publishing houses of Tin Pan Alley and in black blues. The first is contained in the innovative prototype of the American musical Show Boat, the second case study becomes the album of the blues legend Muddy Waters. You are almost shocked by the amount of knowledge D'hoe brings to light here about the pillars that pop music rests on. And this continues with the next sections. About Rock 'n' roll, for example, that fifty-fifty mix of white (country) and black (rhythm & blues) music genres. Two subsequent albums of none other than those two pop pioneers Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry, both breakers of racial barriers, D'hoe writes. Moreover, the vibrant music on those two albums also meant a Copernican revolution socially and culturally: with that rebellious rock 'n' roll, teenagers and adolescents revolted in the fifties against existing gender roles, sexual norms and the race relations of the established order. "For the first time they belonged and mattered," D'hoe writes, and the music industry realized this before their parents did.
A next groundbreaking pop album? One by The Beatles. And what one! Tired of the exhausting worldwide concert tours, the foursome preferred to go back into the recording studio and came out with a truly innovative album. A "kaleidoscope of sounds and genres" is what D'hoe calls their Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It became a miraculous success. "Never heard before" is a valid explanation for this success, it was and sounded different. How? The author tells you with information, anecdotes and analyses from the many sources he researched to clarify that. He sketches in detail how each song of that album came about. He seems to be sitting in the recording studio himself and mixing. But you also immediately enjoy the musical tinkering and the crazy fun that the fab four had there on the spot.
Of course, when profiling the many pop singer-songwriters or writer-performers, he could not avoid Bob Dylan. It is extremely fascinating to read how a young folkie like Dylan became a Nobel Prize winner in literature and served as a model for those countless other singer-songwriters of his time. He far surpassed his own idols and predecessors such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, whom he had studied thoroughly. Time and again you also read that abundance of knowledge, with continuous clarifying musicological analyses, both compositional, production-technical and textual. And what makes the book so fascinating as well, always embedded in that special Zeitgeist.
Another artistic milestone finds its place as an iconic album. It is Trio, by the country trio Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris and Dolly Parton. It meant a total reappraisal of traditional country music and D'hoe describes in detail why, with stories about its origins, sequels and impact. A seventh album that is very close to D'hoe's heart is Graceland by Paul Simon. After his last folk-rock album with Art Garfunkel, the introspective Simon sought new and more diverse musical styles, exploring international genres which also brought him to strongly rhythmic South African dance music. And especially to a reversed "songwriting process": first a rhythmic base track, only then a melody. Two things make this album so important for the development of Western pop music: it popularized world music and used new composition and production techniques.
In a final section, D'hoe first sketches the evolution (from 1850 to 1950) of what was long known as "negro spirituals" to gospel songs with vocal harmony groups (Golden Gate Quartet...) and then follows the entire transition "from the church to the dance floor" as he aptly puts it. With soul, rhythm and blues or R&B, disco, funk, house and ultimately hip-hop.
Also beautiful are the analyses around the iconic song Respect from an album by Aretha Franklin. And then about the House dance music from Chicago, the explosion of disco from New York, the Motown hit factory from Detroit ending in a real revelation, the gender norm-shifting rap of Lauryn Hill: "Guys....you better watch out" / Girls, ...you better watch out" from her immense hit Doo Wop (That Thing). D'hoe calls some of the musical discoveries of his icons brilliant, but you can certainly also call his discovery to document it all so skillfully no less than brilliant.
Of course you can question and dispute all those choices (I only came across ABBA once, Michael Jackson just once too...) but there is a vision expressed in this work that commands admiration. And especially, it is based on a tremendous knowledge of the subject. It is written with a seriousness that for a long time was the exclusive prerogative of writing about "classical" music. But pop music desperately needed a narrative that also elevates it to a fully-fledged genre, to the level of art music. Rightfully, his pop music course at KU Leuven has since been incorporated into the master thesis Cultural Studies.