ABSTRACT
Either way, it seems, the songs themselves have become less important as conveyors of meaning than have the visual images that accompany and sell them. Grossberg even goes so far as to say that ‘in a paradoxical sense, music video has freed the music from the image’, and uses Madonna as exemplification of this contention:
For example, one likes Madonna-whose music always sounds the same, but whose images are constantly changing-if one believes that she does not take her images too seriously. (326)
What does this mean? Out of context, one might assume that Grossberg is appealing to the old rock aesthetic, which regards images as illusory and equates ‘liking’ a star or group with liking their music. But Grossberg must be aware that the phrase ‘the music always sounds the same’ resonates with parental and class opposition to rock and pop music, and it seems that for him too, the music has become at best incidental. Grossberg’s ‘rock’n’roll fan’ in the era of MTV is for ever appropriating, celebrating and deconstructing images, styles, poses-the emphasis all the time on the visual, and the cross-references to film and to TV serials not to music.
