The Insider: Class Wars

and are working class in every sense (Background, fan base, musical style).

more than individual critics? After all, it is they who invest so much money into bland, watered down, easily marketable versions of successful commodities of yore simply because familiarity sells to the masses even if it breeds contempt in other areas. I have this argument regularly with many people who continually lambast the likes of The Horrors, The Big Pink and Wild Beasts as supposedly being "silver spoon" bands who've had it easy, yet when all's said and done these bands are on independent or subsidiary labels and while they may have had a helping hand, haven't the resources, expert marketing or financial clout pumped into them that the likes of Kasabian, The Enemy or Stereophonics have being signed to major labels. Put it this way, you could put The Enemy in the best studio with the most experimental producers in the world without any budgetary constraints and they would still end up with the same turgid abomination as 'Music For The People'. At the end of the day, class and background should never be used as an excuse for standards, and ultimately, quality. Rant over...

I take your point to a degree and I have to stress I am not criticising any artist for making the music they make. However, I am not sure that labels pump money into such bands at the expense of more 'critical' bands, A & M / Loog spent an arm and a leg on The Horrors for instance and there are plenty of examples of critical bands on majors benefiting from major cash injections. The difference between them and Stereophonics to take your example is that the latter made the money back. In essence, what I am saying is that, whilst DiS / The Fly and others should and rightly do look at cutting edge bands, the broad sheets should really be looking at the middle ground a little more and finding ways to represent a more balanced view of the whole music market. The Guardian will put Pixie Lott on their F & M cover, they will put a 'cool' band on their cover but the middle ground seems overlooked and I firmly believe that a player in that is not the music but the perception of the audience for that music and the prejudices held by writers against both the bands and, more importantly, their fans. Interesting that David R mentions Arctic Monkeys where critics were openly applauding the loss of their less 'desirable' audience members at recent shows as a good thing. For who?
as for familiarity selling, of course it does, but that does not necessarily negate its worth for me. the vast majority of music lovers in the UK don't want to be challenged every time they pick up a cd and surely their tastes are valid?

Music that's become popular this year: Such as Florence and the Machine and La Roux.
There seemed to be a sudden "backlash" of sorts towards these artists (expressed on this site's very boards) but in my opinion that's only because they were being exposed to a bigger audience, thus being heard by more people who couldn't stand the way said artists sang or looked etc.

And despite that all, I don't remember seeing one review that didn't acknowledge the credibility of these artists in terms of making credible, sell able pop music.

And Dom's right, as for artists like the Twang, they actually live up to this stereotype of "Stella swigging, football terrace-worthy" music. This isn't just something critics make up because the songs are chantable. In fact the critical consensus on the new The Twang album wasn't that it was all laddy and hooligan-y but that it was tame and underwhelming.

the working xlass does, unfortunately, still exist. Even in this day and age, we still have a class system.

Lukowski - I didn't mention NOTW Rated, or The Sun SFTW or Mirror Ticket because, whilst all worthy music publications with a more varied coverage than perhaps they are given credit for, it is the music titles and broadsheet music sections that drive the debate as far as what is 'worthy' is concerned.My issue is partly with the addition of criticism and caricaturing of the audience of these bands becoming acceptable and partly with the implicit suggestion in these titles that UK bands that have mass audiences are somehow (with of course the exceptions of Arctic Monkeys and now Kasabian) not valid because of the make up of those audiences. Ironically, give it 20 years and some of these bands will be accpetable again probably as we have seen with a host of 80's acts now back in fashion in certain critical quarters, Numan being the obvious example.

Dom - the record companies in the main spend far more money in the guitar sector on white elephants promoted by critics than the likes of Scouting For Girls as it is these bands that become the subject of bidding wars. I see no difference between the marketing on White Lies and that of Scouting For girls myself but, and here's the hit, one is much more credible than the other. SFG are mainstream marketed pap, White Lies are more 'organic' and worthy of Q and Mojo Awards. That's not to say either are more or less worthy to me, my personal taste isn't the point here but the arbitrary nature of critics responses to bands based on such things as perceived marketing or targeting of certain fans etc has a huge effect on the way our music scene is developing and the shutting out of those who feel unwanted due to their appearance / background / tastes. I am, to repeat, simply suggesting that new voices from different backgrounds and experiences that can explain the worth of these bands given their sizeable audiences would be a good thing for the music scene in general.

There are amazing artists out there not getting heard but that's part of my point, not in the critical in club, no coverage.
I'm not suggesting that any of those bands are representative of any class, I am suggesting that the life experiences of some of those bands are alien to the critics and therefore the critics have no frame of reference for their music.
As for terrace indie boys and their 50 pissed mates, aren't they allowed to like music then?

I would say, though, that the real issue is who makes the music, as that provides the 'product' [and 'product'it is, whether good or bad] for the industry to work with. Tracking back through to the 60s, those in charge of bands were very often middle-class [Epstein is a good example], as they could [as you noted] get into the industry by interning or promoting / developing their own acts with the funds to which they had access and a working-class manager / promoter might have found more difficult to source.
There have also been many middle-class musicians, again from the 1960s on. The principle difference now is that [and as no industry-census is available and would probably be difficult to determine with any accuracy being that showbiz depends upon factual airbrushing for mystique / danger or similar perceived qualities in acts] there seem to be fewer non-middle class acts breaking through, which is because of what has happened to the market i.e. with sales down, 360 deals taking hold and more financial & creative pressure than ever on the actual musicians, one almost, it seems, has to be in the same position as a would-be industry worker intern, in order to actually make something of a band / solo project. Basically, with the music-maker dole program which Labour introduced in 1997 for a while now gone, the dole in general being tougher to get and keep getting, most people in bands have to keep up jobs in tandem. This is not entirely impossible, as shown by bands as far back as, say Black Sabbath. However, it is more difficult. Bands who have financial support from parents will have more time and energy to devote to their music, which will and does give them an edge. Hence so very many middle-class bands about, particularly in England. The fact that critics [very often,as you said, middle-class themselves] connect with such bands is little-surprising. The real issue, though, is who are the musicians, and, in sum, more and more [it seems - stress on 'seems'] of those who gain success are middle-class. That determines the music and debate surrounding same. The cost of it to music is difficult to estimate, but where an artform becomes effectively posh-ghettoised, it may become samey and less likely to surprise. After all, seeing a public-school educated girl from an artistic, comfortable family produce music that is fairly richly encultured and accomplished is no great surprise. Where is the mystique? Where is the danger?

I have to admit I didn't have time to read this article and the comments as thoroughly as perhaps I should have done, but I think it's a very interesting debate. There is certainly an element of reverse snobbery from two sources:
- Firstly from the working classes towards middle class musicians (e.g. Damon Albarn)
- Secondly from non-popular, (or pre-popular in the case of Forence...) towards popular music.
I'm not too sure whether my point is agreeing or disagreeing with (or even worse still mmissing) your point, but hey, that's my tuppeny's worth.

I keep thinking of Nicky Wire recently sneering at Ed O'Brien being from a boarding school or something (which in Wire's eyes disqualified Ed O'Brien from taking a position on downloading). It seems to be depressingly the case that snobbery works in all directions in music.

but, for me, it just touches on what has happened for years, which is music snobbery and that's not really just a class issue. I would imagine the upper classes like Stereophonics, Coldplay, Snow Patrol, James Morrison et al as well as working class people.

I'm particularly intrigued by domgourlay's posts where it's mentioned that 'genuinely cutting edge artists such as The Clash, The Jam and Siouxsie (to name but three) were major selling artists on large record labels'.
Well, no. The Jam certainly sold records, but not until after 'Sound Affects' was released; The Clash modestly so and Siouxsie never really sold a lot of records at the time.......
These bands did get the financial support of the majors then but just couldn't get the support of radio stations and tv shows outside of the one or two music shows.
You have to remember that The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, ELO and new wave fakers like The Police were the huge selling artists then and clogged up the radio playlists; The Jam didn't get playlisted for ages on Radio 1 and The Clash & Siouxsie were never playlisted at all. You had to listen to Annie Nightingale or John Peel to hear anything you liked in those days.
So it depends what you define as 'industry' - personally, I know that many major labels exist by selling shed-loads of albums by popular bands but used some/most of their profit to spend on breaking new acts............

'In The City' didn't sell as well as 'Sound Affects' or 'The Scream' didn't sell as well as 'Kaleidoscope', these bands were still considered fairly high priorities at the time as far as their labels were concerned. I wouldn't go as far as to say none of them sold many records at the time however....perhaps not compared to ELO or Fleetwood Mac but certainly in comparison to the artists we're talking about today. Put it this way, how many Clash, Jam or Siouxsie records from that era failed to chart (and at a time when you had a shift a fair few units to even make the Top 40)? Exactly...

Most of the American bands that DiS types are into are from monied middle class backgrounds, invariably college educated and frequently Ivy League.

From Jawbreaker to Bright Eyes via Sonic Youth, REM, Archers of Loaf and Pavement.

Nobody cares other than the media, and try finding a a broadsheet journalist who isn't privately educated and/or Oxbridge. Good luck!

Nobody cares what a musician's parents did, just as long as the music is good. Social class is an accident of birth, nothing more nothing less. Most middle class people seem to realise this, it's high time that The Enemy and other exponents of vapid Castlecore got the message too.

I think there can be a tendency of some of the press to turn their noses up at some audiences on the basis of them being loutish or whatever. Although it is the same press who will fete others for their ‘real’ working class roots, but that inverse snobbery is borne of the same patronising view. Anyway…. I don’t think criticism of the bands you mention is primarily to do with their audience, but more that their music can be bland or unchallenging. Where the criticism relates to the audience, it is that this is those members of the public who don’t really like music, i.e. they buy a couple of albums a year as background music.

And I don’t think that is a class thing at all. While there can be tendencies for some critics (and I don’t think that is a rule) to sneer at the working class members of the audience, I think it is more a sneer at the idea of the mass, unthinking audience. And that is for both the working and middle classes. You mention bands like Coldplay or Snow Patrol, both of whom are seen as having a very middle-class fanbase to reflect the makeup of their members. And are equally criticised, perhaps just in different terms. So I don’t think this is primarily a class issue, so much as a perception that what is going to be popular with more people isn’t likely to be that good. Be honest – do you like these bands? Are they your favourite bands or those of your friends/colleagues? Probably not. But by-the-large a band that will need widespread mass appeal has to blunt enough edges to appeal to more people, and becomes less interesting for those who perhaps have a wider range of tastes.

I’d also say that the press hasn’t been as hard on the bands as you make out. The press loved Oasis to start out with as far as I recall, and Definitely Maybe got great reviews. As it should have done. Morning Glory got less great reviews, but that soon changed when it became massively popular. I also recall that bands like Sterephonics and Travis both got fairly good reviews to begin with and big coverage. But for most bands who continue for 10 plus years, the music begins to be less good and the bands become less interesting. When a band hasn’t changed much in a decade and their stories remain the same, it’s going to be hard for the press to find an interesting or worthwhile angle.

This article is all very interesting and all that, but surely it misses a massive gaping point? Which is that if a band really is popular with the general public/'troglodytes', then it doesn't matter a bit what the critics say, people are still going to buy their record regardless. You seem to think that a well-timed bad review in the OMM or similar will 'destroy' a band like The Enemy, but they still seem to be doing pretty well for themselves. U2 get regularly panned and for being popular with the masses, but that's the thing, they're STILL popular. The panning is water of a giant ducks back to them by now.
That's the dynamic of the industry, and thank fuck it is too. If every critic around lauded the stadium fillers above all else and ignored anything left-field then the net result would be that everything would sound the bloody same (even more so than it already does). which you can't possibly think is a good thing right?!

As the insider, I'd imagine you'd have a better idea than me, but are those bands popular with mass audiences really suffering as a result of their portrayal in the media? Aren't they the ones propping up the industry? The hype artists don't seem to be selling that much these days after all. It may be that I don't quite understand your argument, although while I don't believe it is a class issue, I do believe there is a strain of elitism in the press.

I would see that arguably it's the music press that stands to lose as a result of the way they do things, not necessarily the music industry. After all, if they are ignoring great chunks of their potential audience (and I'm not entirely convinced they are), then they will lose out.

Agree with you about Word, which has a curiosity and interest that most mainstream publications seem to lack.

And I'd agree that an approach will lead to a ghetto approach to music that could perhaps endanger the music that is more interesting (despite what you say, I think the more homogenous, bland bands will survive because they sell and provide safety to the industry).

I agree also on the point about class within society, and there is definitely a terrible approach to the working classes in this country. And that is reflected by some members of the press, although I still don't think that this is the reason why 'ordinary' audiences or bands are criticised, since I think that cuts across all classes. I think sneering at the rowdy working class audience members is no different to sneering at public school boys in bands, and both attacks are equally prevelent in the music press.

If I were going to have some attempt at pop-psychoanalysis, I'd say that part of the reason why there is such disdain comes to the different things people get out of music. I'm not sure of the right way to say it, but a lot of people who go the gigs of the bands you refer to enjoy a quasi communal experience, that football match thing. And I think that those who favour the more obscure music aren't really looking for that and don't appreciate it. They want to it to feel exclusive, not shared. So the disdain for those bands and those audiences could partly be a reaction to the dislike of *what* those bands offer.

article, passionately felt, but it might be useful to introduce some nuance into our understandings of working class musical culture. There are clearly interesting ways for bands to articulate working class experience; the fall, morrissey, the poetry of mike skinner through john cooper clarke, the arctic monkey's first album.... And appalling ones; oasis, hard fi, twang. What the latter group share is the inability to sort through what they're representing, dumb or cynical ploys of authenticity, dubious symbolic politics, allied with a general lack of musical intelligence.

While it is undeniably true that the musical writing classes are increasingly predominantly middle class, and this is a serious issue, music critical values of a progressive and inclusive nature are everywhere to be found; Hatherly, Reynolds, Kpunk, are just a few that spring to mind, all well-schooled in the politics of good writing.

In a way this debate mirrors the one the nation may just be about to have with the BNP. Who represents the white working classes? Those for whom bourgeouisification and the decomposition of class didn't equal cultural opportunity, who got pushed into an access-free unrepresented corner. In here there are war discourses, sexism, British pride and melancholy, terrace-culture in the worst sense, all one step away from racism - and these are always soft-propped up by lad rock.

We are frickin' crying out for an intelligent voice to sing out about this, because Kasabian dressing up as soldiers and lifting wilfred owen lines, or Dappy dressing up as a moon-chav, aren;t really going to be enough.

On the whole chav thing, when it happened I was surprised at the virulence, it struck me as people saying 'fuck the white working classes they are beneath contempt', much harder rhetoric and sentiment than aorund the 'townie' tag which preceded it. But if we are to take racism in this country seriously we need not only look at the nature of policy and the nature of british insitutions, but at the social group which might be about to politically embody it. And to avoid us just sort of constructing the underclass as a dry 'object of political concern' like some insipid guardianista coven, we need some decent music to make us feel from the inside what is going on. I think that's music's contribution to class, and it's the job of the critical establishment to spot that when it happens, not to promote hard-fi's next album in the name of inclusiveness.

Look I can be interesting and constructive too!!

I'm linking the social background of the critics to the way they respond to music that is liked by the masses. I'm in no way saying that a working class fan likes Stereophonics over Sonic Youth or vice versa. But I maintain that it is hard if not impossible to understand the motivation behind 'A Thousand Trees' and songs like it if you have no conception of the culture, desires, fears, wants and hopes of the working class in post industrial towns and cities the length and breadth of Britain. As with music hall at the turn of the century, anyone outside the culture will inevitably have a skewed perception of the form as they have no idea where the motivations for the expression originate. In that case it was grubby entertainment for the masses (probably Edwardian thick necked blokes throwing beer) until it got reimagined (and many would argue sanitised) by the middle classes and the elite early in the 1900s.

Whatis patronising is the kind of comments you see day in day out about 'thick necked blokes' (today's Guardian review of Kasabian) hurling beer etc etc. That's patronising, assuming that certain social groups behave en masse and come from a certain background and behave in a certain way. See the general media and 'hoodies' equalling hooligans.

Once again, this article is about THE CRITICS and THE INDUSTRY not THE FANS.

in MOJO this year alex calls their backgrounds 'not working class, not middle' both his mum and dad were teachers and they lived in reasonably nice parts of sheffield. it's like that guy from the verve, he lived in a nice bit of billinge or same and yet everyone thinks he was a wigan hod-carrier.

i think sometimes people get confused between 'coming from a working class background' and 'coming from somewhere in the north'.