(BLOG SERIES) Rebel Music - We Sing, Therefore We Are [Part 4.3]: They call me "Idol"

I think it’s good to start this section of the essay recalling the biblical story of Salome dancing before King Herod, recorded in Mark 6:21-29. Salome impressed Herod so much that Herod promised Salome to give her everything he has, even if its one-half of his kingdom (v. 23)! In the end, Salome, with the aid of her mother, asked for the head of John the Baptist. Herod, then, gave order to cut the Baptist’s head off. This is all because he was entertained by a dance.

K-Pop boy band BTS

It is important to keep in mind this story as we progress in this section, because the situation where Herod was in that story is exactly were the modern Pop fan is. Living in an irreligious world despite the fact that he himself desires the divine, the Pop fan looks for an idol, a “religious figure”, that he finds in the personality of the pop star, an idol on which he’s willing to give everything, like a temple priest willing to sacrifice to his god.

Every time the singer releases a new song, the fans would excitingly listen to it, as if they have received a new divine revelation. “Stream the new song! Stream the new song!” says the fan, as if an apostle, repeatedly exclaiming “repent and believe in the gospel”. The pop star is now the new Christ. Or should we say, the anti-Christ. The fan is now the new appointed prophet. When the pop star has no new song yet, the fans eagerly await, as if anticipating the resurrection of the dead.

That’s why the performer (or performers, if they are a group) knows his responsibility to remain youthful and sexually attractive before the eyes of the world, just like Salome, so that he may properly seduce the audience and trap them in his charm. The face and body of the pop star is then required to remain young, as if mimicking the un-aging eternity of God. “The modern pop star does not grow up. He grows sideways, like Mick Jagger or Michael Jackson, becoming waxy and encrusted, as though covered by a much-repainted mask.”[i]

The pop star has a totemic status among his admirers[ii]. This explains why many of singers today, especially the groups or bands, do not use their real names most of the time: Madonna, BTS (방탄소년단, Romanized as Bangtan Sonyeondan, also known as Bangtan Boys), Nirvana, Sting, and many more. With their names, they seem to communicate not only who they are, but the concepts they want to signify, just like tribal symbolisms.

Now, it is useful to analyze and expand on a connected truth about modern pop stars: their connection with and relationship to the fan and the fanbase as a whole. Once again, the relationship is totemic, or quasi-religious. The fanbase, in fact, has a name (I heard that if you are a Lady Gaga fan, you are a “Little Monster”; seems right to me). It’s as if the fanbase offers a membership. And together with this membership comes other things necessary: the t-shirts, the chanting and the light sticks (leave now, K-pop fan; it’s going to be brutal). It’s a cult, basically. You develop a connection with the star if you are a fan, and it’s a divine connection. When your idol is insulted or bashed by a hater, you are the one being insulted or bashed. And this is even backed up by a well-known sociological study[iii]. Check it out yourselves.

The pop star is so existentially gigantic, so big, that it is so unthinkable for him to die. And when the unthinkable happens, the cult trembles at its core. Its like entering a good Friday, where their anointed one, who was once the most powerful man in the whole universe, seems helpless. When Kurt Cobain committed suicide, many of his fans entered into a state of emotional crisis. Not a few committed suicides themselves. The pop star’s death is a sure recipe for social/emotional disaster.

Compare the modern Pop star to musicians of the past. A guy like Louis Armstrong (this is, in fact, a musician who died not too long ago; our culture has declined so much ever since) was loved because of his music. But the “Beliebers” (an interesting name for a fanbase, because it is indeed a very religious term, just altered a bit) love Justin Bieber’s music because of Justin Bieber’s sake. This is all because of the status that Bieber has assumed in the world of music: he is an icon, and by “icon”, I mean something analogous to what the Eastern Christians venerate in their churches.

There’s this famous line said by BLACKPINK: Blackpink is the revolution! That is indeed true, for they remind me of the stories of the communist student revolutionaries that caused civil unrest in France in the year 1968. The only difference is that they, together with their fellow performers, don’t do it on the streets, they do it on the stage.

The divinization of pop stars reached its peak and is solidified by the music videos. Through the music video, the star’s image is even more beautified, like when sculptors would make statues in honor of saints. Now, the message, the personhood, of the star is not just heard through his voice, but is now delivered through the TV or computer screens. But with this development also comes the final nail in the coffin of modern music. With music videos, the music truly became mere background sound. The focus is now in the pop star and in the pop star alone, with his song a mere servant to the sovereign king, which is himself. The divinization of the singer comes the degradation of sound. Modernism, remember, is the religion of man wanting to become god. Here is the pop star, through the tool of the music video, enjoying such a status among his people, the fanbase.

As ego, though the practice of relativism, became the beating heart of modernism, so too did the singer, no longer the music, become the beating heart of pop.

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[i] Ibid.

[ii] A totem is a tribal/religious symbol that serves as a “marker” for the identity of a family, a clan, or a tribe

[iii] Simon Frith (1987), Towards an Aesthetic of Popular Music, published in Richard Leppert and Susan McClary, eds., Music and Society: The Politics of Composition, Performance and Reception