1 new of 56 responses total.

Reading back, I see that, indeed, there is a tendency to exchange "best" and
"sum up" with grand abandon in this item... so to clarify, I'm talking about
the tune that is most REPRESENTATIVE of the changes in music over the course
of the century.

There would be no real way to indicate the "best" song or artistic piece of
any time period; I ignored that part of the discussion because it's silly and
pointless.

My criteria for "most representative":
-- Cultural ubiquity. In addition to "The Simpsons," obvious candidates
include The Jeopardy Theme, The National Geographic Theme, The Theme to Jaws,
Star Wars, and The Girl from Ipanema (which has become so ubiquitous that
nearly EVERYBODY knows the tune, but few people know the name) (Think
elevators).
-- Relevance to other entertainment. Multimedia became a major issue in the
20th C.; the relationship between music and other forms of entertainment has
oscillated in the past, from a time when ballets and symphonies were firmly
wedded, to a time when travelling minstrels were on the edges of
entertainment. So a trait of the 20th C. would be incorporation of music with
other forms of entertainment. Note that most of the ubiquitous tunes are TV
or movie themes; this century saw the creation of the jingle, as well, which
are terminally perky.
-- Pop-py. Popular music has always been the most common form of music, and
tastes change constantly. No single piece could characterize the musical
trends of the entire century, which shifted from jazz and swing to R&R, C&W,
and so forth, but at least The Simpsons theme captures a few of the major
highlights, and Lisa's jazz jam allows for the incorporation of just about
any popular style you'd care to come up with (except, perhaps, folk).
-- Lack of historical depth. This is where the rift between "best" and "most
representative" is most obvious. "Good" music is typically heavily laden with
historical depth, but -- as the flourishing of pop music, ever fickle, and
the meandering of classical music demonstrates -- the 20th C. didn't care much
for depth. Even at the height of industrial groups like NIN and Marilyn
Manson, recent forebears like Gary Numan and Brian Eno didn't get more than
occasional "oh yeahs" from fans... grunge was hopelessly American Bland, but
if it didn't bear the Seattle mark, it wasn't grunge -- even if it sounded
IDENTICAL to grunge, and had been released only a few years prior... Paul
Simon sang that "Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts," and
furthermore, that generation fails to see the roots. I'll admit that my own
blues collection, for instance, consists of Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Jonny
Lang, a pair of young punks with talent but no roots.

A second candidate for "most representative" comes to me from this discussion:
Kid Rock's "Cowboy." Here we have American C&W combined with rap/hip-hop in
an act that represents 20th C. Pop Music Trends at their finest: A white guy
singing black music and outselling just about any black rap artist (KR's
"Devil Without a Cause" is now 8x Platinum). Both Kid Rock and Eminem were
mentored to varying degrees by black rappers (KR boasts of "touring with Ice
Cube," while Eminem's link to Dr Dre is famous), and yet both outsell their
black predecessors (further irony comes from the fact that Detroit, known for
its sizable black community, has managed to turn out three of the best-selling
white rap groups -- ICP being the third -- and no significant black rappers;
the black musicians instead developping a musical style (techno) that was to
be usurped and identifed primarily with white Europeans, except among the fan
base).

Adding the black-by-white to the bizarre fusion of C&W to heavy metal and rap,
the instant ubiquity and equally instant amnesia of "Cowboy," its overall
milquetoast blandness, its TV tie-in (hey, the video features Gary Coleman
in a gunfight with Joe C.), the sideshow mentality of the band (so far as
having a resident midget, something even hopelessly glam Bowie, Manson, and
Monster Magnet didn't even stopp to), and the absence of historical depth (not
only is KR's retrospective arrogantly albeit humorously entitled "History of
Rock", but he re-recorded many of the tracks because he couldn't find the tape
masters!), "Cowboy" provides ample competition for "The Simpsons" as "most
representative of 20th C. music."

But hey, I like Kid Rock, and Danny Elfman for that matter. And yeah, I know
their music is crap, artistically speaking, but it's GOOD crap. 

And therein lies yet another way in which they represent the century. Lots
of good crap.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss