Playing by the Rules

I’m going to miss Hull. I’ve been living in this city, on and off, for the past year. It’s a good socialist town and one that does not wear its tolerant past lightly. The legacy of William Wilberforce makes a difference. From the start of August I’ll be living in London full time. More than ever, England’s capital feels as though it is the capitalist system incarnate.

            Hull, in contrast, is the sort of place where you can see someone wearing a Slavoj Žižek t-shirt and it doesn’t look like too much of a pose. This evening I was sat next to someone who bore his slogan: ‘In football we win if we obey the rules. In politics we win if we have the audacity to change the rules’.

            This is a resonant phrase to see in England this week. On Wednesday, Tony Blair warned members of the Labour party against voting for the left wing candidate Jeremy Corbyn in the forthcoming leadership elections. Doing so, he offered the dubious advice: ‘when people say, “my heart says I should be with that politics”, well get a transplant’. Blair was telling his party members not to have bleeding hearts. They should forget about safeguarding the National Health Service, the universities, the arts, union rights. Instead, they should adopt the dominant neo-liberal agenda, even if it feels utterly wrong. He was instructing them that following your conscience will not gain you power. If you want to win, you are better off mimicking the Tories. It pains me to think that Blair is more in tune with our times than Žižek is. In politics, unless there is a crisis, the winners are those who can best ride the hegemonic crest of the wave.

            Žižek is wrong about football as well. Or, at least, he needs to think more carefully about how rules work in this game. In football playing by the rules can involve breaking them. This is why there are two separate codes of conduct: the rules of the game, and the spirit of the game. It is a sport that has professional fouls and tactical transgressions. As with so many things, this can be best illustrated by the Uruguayan player, Louis Suàrez. He is surely one of the most brilliant players currently playing the game. Suàrez knows that rule breaking can reap benefits. His biting escapades are not the best example of this. Instead, think of his performance in the quarter final of the 2010 World Cup. Uruguay faced Ghana. Deep into extra time the two teams were drawing one all. The Ghanaian striker Dominic Adiyiah headed the ball towards the net with a shot that was unstoppable by any legal means. Suàrez used his hands. He broke the rules to save the ball, but he did not forfeit the game: his team were not disqualified. There were instead two lesser punishments for his misdemeanour. Suàrez was sent off and Ghana were awarded with a penalty. Asamoah Gyan failed to convert it, however. Consequently, Suàrez’s ‘cheating’ was worthwhile. Uruguay made it through to the next round.

            What can we take from all of this? Firstly, winning in politics is achieved, not by breaking the rules, but instead by hiding them. Neo-liberalism is triumphant because it is made to look like common sense. It disguises its ideological agenda. Blair's intervention this week was a rare example of the system exposing its ugly head. The rules of football, in contrast, are transparent. Disobeying them does not have the same consequences as testing positive for anabolic steroids in a 100 metres sprint. It can, instead, reap benefits.

            This is supposed to be a blog about popular music, but I’m not sure what pop can learn from either politics or football when it comes to obeying, breaking or changing the rules. What I do know, however, is that popular music would now be best served by a Suàrez-type figure. Please spare us from a Tony Blair. 

Friggin' in the Riggin' of the Charts

We can usually only see ideology when we look at a political regime that is different to our own. North Korea is back in the news again with the execution of the leader’s uncle Chang Song-thaek. Although the news is shocking and troubling, there is also always condescension in the way that North Korea is reported: look at those crazy people, blindly in thrall to their crazy leader. But we’re blind, too. The thing is, we can’t see that we’re blind. As Stuart Hall says, when we are living amongst it, ideology is ‘rendered invisible’. Nowhere is this more true than in the democratic west. We can’t see the full ideological remit of democracy because it is made to look like ‘normal common sense’.

            What is true of politics is also true of the pop charts. The Top 40 used to look like the most obvious thing on earth: the record that sold the most was number one; the record that sold the second most was number two; and so on. But now that there has been a regime change of recording formats we can see the charts have never been straightforward or fair. At present, Britain does not allow streaming figures to form part of its tally. This seems wrong. YouTube, in particular, is the most popular means for accessing music. To not tabulate its returns is to ignore what people are actually doing. In contrast, the Billboard charts in America do include YouTube figures. But this also seems wrong. Are people using YouTube because they actually like the music, or are they catching up with gossip about salacious material? Billboard first incorporated streaming figures in February 2013. The direct result, some have argued, is videos such as ‘Blurred Lines’ and ‘Wrecking Ball’.

            Just as the particularities of video streaming are being used to gain advantage today, so were the particularities of physical formats exploited in the past. We can see this more clearly now. In Britain there were for many years only a limited number of record shops from whom chart returns were compiled. As a result chart pluggers targeted these retailers with free goods and promotional materials. They also sent customers in to buy numerous copies of each release. Once the sample of shops widened, the record companies adopted new tactics. They would release multiple formats to encourage fans to buy more than one copy of each single. Then there were the tactics of release dates. Records were issued to radio long before they were available in shops. They would also be discounted in the first few weeks of release. The effect of both of these measures was to ensure that new releases would go into the charts as high as possible. Singles would also be deleted after a number of weeks, thus ensuring sales within a strict timeframe.

            With the move to digital formats these policies have disappeared or have been reduced. The multi-format release is a thing of the past; singles aren’t usually discounted when they first come out; and they aren’t issued to radio as far in advance of release as they used to be. Perhaps most importantly, they aren’t deleted any more. Any recording can reach the charts at any time of its life.

            Where this has had most effect is in the lower reaches of the UK chart. Although the top thirty is still largely the preserve of the records that have been the most hyped, the numbers below that are more of a free-for-all. One effect of the permanent availability of ‘singles’ is that, more than ever, the charts are reflective of what is going on in the world. Last week ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ was part of Britain’s Top 100. A few weeks before that, the ghost of Lou Reed was back in the charts with ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ and ‘Perfect Day’. On some occasions the higher reaches of the charts are being affected as well. On 14 April 2013 ‘Ding-Dong! The Witch is Dead’ made it to number two. This was the week after Margaret Thatcher’s death. (Thatcher, in fact, is the great exception to the ‘ideology is invisible’ thesis: she had no qualms about openly parading her philosophy and this is one of things that made her so terrifying.)

            At the moment the chart is full of old Christmas songs. There are 14 in this week’s Top 100, only one and a half of which are new records (Elvis Presley has returned from the grave to duet with Susan Boyle). There’s something hugely pleasant about this. It’s great to see Brenda Lee and Andy Williams fighting it out alongside Avicii and Rizzle Kicks. It’s particularly gratifying that it is the right Christmas songs that are doing well. Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’ is now correctly identified as a classic. ‘Fairytale of New York’ is also flying high: quarter of a century after its release it has achieved one million sales. For reasons that I can’t explain, seeing Chris Rea’s ‘Driving Home for Christmas’ back in the charts has made me feel that all is right in the world.

Gareth Stedman Jones has described this sort of repertoire as offering a ‘culture of consolation’. It’s clear, too, that the festive season underpins capitalist ideology. A mixture of sentimentality, morality and drunkenness are sent our way, along with a whole load of shopping. What does it say about me that I enjoy it more with every passing year?