ABSTRACT

There is a lot of difference between straight singing and crooning. The latter is an art of its own. Crooning was a style of singing made possible by the development of the electrical microphone—vocalists could now be heard singing softly — and the source of a new sort of male pop star. Technology determines how the competition for a voice is organized but does not determine who will be heard or how what is heard is interpreted. Progressive rock set a problem for the received ideas of authenticity: the rock'n'roll ideals of spontaneity and effort were faced by new emphases on sensitivity, care and control. The music industry is essentially conservative, and uses new instruments to do old things more efficiently or cheaply rather than to do new things. It is because musicians have been able to use machines for their own ends that the mechanization of popular music has not been a simple story of capitalist take-over.