In the article Adorno first divides music into two parts, Popular music and serious music. Popular music for Adorno is a commodity within popular culture, he believes it to be standardized in a way in which all ‘pop’ songs are essentially the same. They are restricted to rules and have certain limitations, this leading him to believe that whatever song is listened to the experience of doing so is a familiar one, therefore nothing new is gained from listening to one pop song to another. This reasoning leads popular music to be pre-digested, in the sense that if you have heard one you’ve heard it all, there is nothing more to gain or experience.
This standardization is what Adorno refers to as being Pseudo- individualization, covering up everything in popular culture as being this society where everyone has a choice or freedom to like what they want and have what they like when really its all the same kind of stuff, you’ve seen/had/heard it all before.
Adorno goes on in the article to state that any song can become successful from endless repetition or ‘plugging’, as once it is recognized by a listener it has become accepted and therefore a popular song. The article then leads on to divide popular music into two categories of listener, the rhythmically obedient type and the emotional type. Both essentially leading, in Adorno’s opinion, to the fact that neither shall have any part in happiness. Lovely.
