Social Inequality In Popular Music

Popular musical meaning relates to ‘the social’ in many ways and can be seen in music through things like politics, how mass production changes meaning, and class/inequality. When it comes to politics and music an example can be seen with YG’s recent song that he made “F**ck Donald Trump”, which has made a big impact with the youth like the song “Fuck the Police” that came out in the early 90’s and one can see that there is a correlation between the two. Then there was the Grunge era where many stylists started mass producing the look after the music became so popular with the youth. Then finally there is the class and inequality that can be seen throughout the years in music, an example with that can be seen with Bring Cosby and Billie Holiday.

There was a time in 1944 where these two artists recorded renditions of the song ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’, Bing’s song was on the top sellers list for a total of twenty-four weeks while Billie’s song did not appear on the top charts despite her producer saying that it was a ‘pretty big hit’. The difference between the two was there skin color and class “Bing Crosby, the white male, became supremely important through the efforts of publicity agents and his own efforts to provide the public with what they wanted — in other words, he was a commercially co-opted ‘sell-out. ’ On the other hand, Billie Holiday, the African-American female, triumphed over racism and personal adversity to reach the few listeners who were prepared to receive the unvarnished presentation of her soul”(Brackett, pg37). A reason for Bing appearing in the top charts is that he has a NBC radio show where he debuted the song. This show gave him exposure to millions of people and helped his music tremendously. The song was played for seven months on the radio show which is a big reason why he was on the best seller charts for so many weeks. Then there is Billie Holiday, her producer said that her rendition of the song was going to be a big hit however that was not the case and a reason for that could be that she doesn’t have a radio show and as much exposure like Bing had. This can be related to class and inequality, Bing is a white wealthy white male who did not struggle much in his life that also has his own radio show while Billie a African American woman struggled growing up and went through tough times to get where she is at. They both had success however Bing had a lot more help because he can be seen as someone of a higher