Mute Records: Artists, History, Business, Paperback

Last month, Bloomsbury Academic published Mute Records in paperback. I co-edited this book with my colleagues Zuleika Beaven and Marcus O’Dair. It was compiled in honour of Mute Records fortieth anniversary and as a tribute to Daniel Miller, the head and founder of the label, who acts as a visiting professor at our university. He is a great person. The new edition currently retails at £26.09, which, while still expensive for a paperback book, makes it more readily affordable than the hardback edition, which costs £86.40. According to the blub:

This edited collection addresses Mute's wide-ranging impact. Drawing from disciplines such as popular music studies, musicology, and fan studies, it takes a distinctive, artist-led approach, outlining the history of the label by focusing each chapter on one of its acts. The book covers key moments in the company's evolution, from the first releases by The Normal and Fad Gadget to recent work by Arca and Dirty Electronics. It shines new light on the most successful Mute artists, including Depeche Mode, Nick Cave, Erasure, Moby, and Goldfrapp, while also exploring the label's avant-garde innovators, such as Throbbing Gristle, Mark Stewart, Labaich, Ut, and Swans. Mute Records examines the business and aesthetics of independence through the lens of the label's artists.

I co-authored the introduction and contributed the chapter on Moby, which addresses his album Play and has received some notice in reviews. Writing for Punk and Post-Punk, Paul Hollins has described it as a ‘fascinating and important chapter’ that raises ‘disturbing questions of “truth”  and “illusion” though Moby’s “borrowing” and extensive re-use and re-purpose, without artistic credit, of sampled black voices of the deep South in the United States’. In her review for Popular Music, Veronica Skrimsjö states that this chapter is a ‘particular highlight’ and notes how I compare Moby’s use of samples to the tradition of blackface minstrelsy. For  Skrimsjö, ‘This notion appears quite unique, but Osborne provides a very robust and convincing argument that, should one accept it (which this reviewer does), changes the discourse surrounding ownership and sampling considerably’.

           This chapter has a long history. Although it is now looking back on Play from a distance of twenty years, I began work on it when Moby’s album was still in the charts. The first version was completed in July 2000, as an essay for an MA in Popular Culture that I was taking at the Open University. I reworked it four years later for a course on metamorphosis at the London Consortium. It was at this point that I introduced the minstrelsy theme. One of the tutors, Colin MacCabe, liked it so much that he suggested I submit it to Critical Quarterly, the journal he edits. I reworked it again and it became my first published article. Finally (for now), it seemed apt to revisit it when my colleagues suggested compiling a book about Mute Records.

           Something remains missing, nonetheless. What none of the iterations capture is that, despite questioning Moby’s practice, I do like some of the album. There is a particular song on it that has always has stopped me in my tracks. I was going through a hard time when the record was released. Moby’s ‘Why Does My Heart Feel so Bad?’ captured my mood and helped to alleviate my pain. It still gives me the chills. This is one of the recordings that samples black voices, however, and it is indicative of the complexities and emotional power of popular music. While it might be necessary and even important to highlight instances of cultural theft, we are nevertheless all complicit in appropriation. The very act of listening draws us into other worlds and, at the same time, encourages us to situate those worlds within ourselves. There can be a fine line, however, between exploitation and empathy. And that’s what Moby sets in play. 

           

Mapping Beyoncé's 'Hold Up'

When I first heard Beyoncé’s Lemonade I thought we were entering a new age of sophistication when it comes to sampling. Not only are the sampled tracks musically appropriate, they are thematically appropriate too. On this album of infidelity and heartbreak we hear excerpts of ‘Can’t Get Used to Losing You’ by Andy Williams, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' pleading ‘Maps’, and Isaac Hayes’ version of ‘Walk on By’, in which we find another protagonist who ‘can’t get over losing you’. There’s a whole lot of signifying going on.

            It would seem that the use of samples is more contingent, however. Take ‘Hold Up’, which incorporates the sample from Williams and the interpolation from ‘Maps’. This song has a complicated genesis and was not originally intended for Beyoncé. In fact, it began as nothing more than a Tweet, which was sent in 2011 by Ezra Koenig, the singer of Vampire Weekend. He paraphrased ‘Maps’, writing to his followers, ‘hold up . . . they don’t love u like i love u’.

            Three years later, Koenig was invited by the producer Diplo to contribute hooks to some loops. One of these loops featured the introduction to ‘Can’t Get Used to Losing You’. The recording was of interest to Diplo for its kitsch ska rhythm, rather than for its lyrical content. Koenig thought back to his Tweet. He introduced a new melody to his reworking of ‘Maps’. He also added a supplementary, Biblical refrain: ‘can’t you see there’s no other god above you, what a wicked way to treat the man who loves you’. Beyoncé heard this version. Koenig’s lyrics were changed to ‘no other man above you, what a wicked way to treat the girl I love you’. He has stated that ‘from there a lot of other people got involved in writing the verses, things changed, but essentially the hook stayed the same’. Even so, he was still not sure if it would make Beyoncé’s album or if he would use it instead as a Vampire Weekend song.

            It did appear on Lemonade. In the process ‘Hold Up’ was transformed. Koenig has stated, ‘The idea that those words now are contextualised by this album, by the video, by her as a performer and curator, I like it  . . . 99% of the world will always hear those words and associate it with Beyoncé now. And that makes sense . . . I wrote this hook - of course I feel some sense of ownership over what I did - but it doesn’t feel like my song, she really did bring a deeper resonance and meaning to it’. She brings new significance to the Williams sample as well. So maybe the use of those sources is not so contingent after all.

            Although Koenig now views ‘Hold Up’ as Beyoncé’s song, this is not the story told by the songwriting credits. She has had to split the royalties with 11 other writers, including Koenig and Diplo. Moreover, it has been claimed that the contemporary songwriters get minor shares in the work, while the authors of the sample and the interpolation get the majority income. From this perspective, Beyoncé is not creating a new work; she is instead giving us her version of two old ones.

            The generous shares for Mort Shuman and Doc Pomus, the writers of ‘Can’t Get Used to Losing You’, are understandable. Diplo’s loop of this recording is used for the duration of ‘Hold Up’; it is the musical bedrock of the entire track. Their credits also follow standard sampling practice: if a recording is used prominently, its songwriters will be rewarded handsomely.

            The use of ‘Maps’ is different, however. Although Beyoncé credits it as an interpolation, it is arguable that this really is the case. There is no use of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ melody or of the feel of the track. The only thing taken is the paraphrased lyrics. These were written by the band’s singer, Karen O, but due to American joint authorship rules each member of the group receives royalties for their re-use in ‘Hold Up’. But why do they receive anything at all? ‘Hold Up’ takes eight fairly commonplace words.

One reason is that their origin can be traced. Koenig’s Tweet and his openness about the genesis of ‘Hold Up’ have made it clear that the words were taken from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' song. A second is that American writers are becoming increasing litigious in this area, as the various accusations against the lyrics of Taylor Swift’s ‘Shake It Off’ attest. Ultimately, in crediting ‘Maps’, Beyoncé and her team have taken heed of the old adage that where there’s a hit there’s a writ.

There is one final quirk of copyright law. If ‘Maps’ has been called ‘They Don’t Love You Like I Love You’, the re-use of these words would probably have escaped without charge. It is not possible to copyright titles. Hence, Calvin Harris and the Disciples’ ‘How Deep is Your Love?’ does not credit the Bee Gees, and Justin Timberlake’s ‘Cry Me a River’ does not credit the Julie London song. It is also the case that ‘Hold Up’ does not credit previous songs that have used the same title. In addition, future songs called ‘Hold Up’ will not have to credit Beyoncé’s either. That’s as long as their usage is restricted to these words. If they sample Beyoncé’s recording, however, they will have to credit ‘Hold Up’ and all the other works it includes. We will end up with a recording with vast songwriting credits. Post-structuralists will be happy too. There will be multiple resonances. Listeners will variously recall Beyoncé, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Andy Williams, Mort Shuman, Doc Pomus, Ezra Koenig, Diplo and more. Bring on the endless play of signifiers!

Song to the Siren: Pop Culture & the Warning Klaxon

A great article by Robert Barry has appeared in The Quietus, titled ‘Song to the Siren: Pop Culture & the Warning Klaxon’. It concerns the use of alarms in popular and classical music, a subject that I’ve long been interested in, hence Barry references my essay ‘Alarms on Record’, which appeared in the journal Static back in 2007.

            Barry’s article is at its most interesting when contemplating the appropriation and re-appropriation of police alarms. Did ravers co-opt and disarm this sonic symbol of oppression by turning it into a joyous rush in their tracks? Or is it the case that ‘our physiologies never habituate. No matter how thoroughly our conscious minds might know that a loud siren is rushing by is not coming for us, our blood pressure still spikes, our pupils still dilate, and our hair sells still flatten and twist’, particularly as the alarms of authority are getting louder and more pin-pointed.

            I once played a whole set of records with alarms in, DJing at the Tate Gallery in London of all places, and the effect of these sirens was certainly one of increasing menace. At the start of the evening people were barely noticing the fact that there were alarms in each track, but by the end there was the ‘creeping ambiance of low-level panic’ that Barry describes. It was ‘Dominator’ by Human Resource that proved to be the turning point. Security moved in and told me that the pictures were being damaged by its maddening clangour.