1. Sub Claim 1: Pop is more about experience than listening
1.1. Evidence: "They'll tell about the excitement,the thrill, the person or people on the stage, his or her sex appeal,how it felt to be there, in the presence of greatness, part of a crowd, asense of connection to the star or to the audience. They'll recounthow they danced and screamed. They might talk about the loudnessand the light show" (Noe 168)
1.1.1. Noe talks about how when you go to a concert, you don't remember what songs were played, you remember the experience of being there.
1.2. Air guitar is the most pop thing
1.2.1. Evidence: "When we play air guitar, we don't ape the music, we ape the player. We identify with the player, and with the playing-with the display rather than the production. Pop music is always about the player" (Noe 173)
1.2.1.1. Air guitar is the most pop thing because it allows us to impersonate the artist. It allows us to experiecnce a fraction of what the artist does when they're on stage.
2. Sub Claim 3: Pop depends on Style and performance, it changes over time
2.1. Pop is time / place specific
2.1.1. Evidence: "Pop music, even the best and most enduring, dates itself, not just in the sense that you can read off its date, but in the sense that pop music directly engages sounds, looks, attitudes that are specific to a time and place." (Noe 173)
2.1.1.1. Pop is specific to a time and a place, pop music has changed over many generations in America, with artists like David Bowie looking kind of ridiculous nowadays, but back then he was a pop icon.
2.1.2. Evidence: " At some point, though, our fluency with this progression of styles breaks down. Maybe you can recognize 1980s style, or '70s, or '60s, and even the '50s. But at some point, unless you are an expert, everything blurs into “old-fashioned." For a child there is no way of telling apart Shakespearean dress from that of the eighteenth century. They both just look old" (Noe 177)
2.1.2.1. Noe here talks about how style fades over time, showing that the style of pop stars is also fragile. Pop depends on the time in which you grew up, so artists like David Bowie look ridiculous to some of us today, but during the time he looks like your average pop star.
2.1.3. Pop is Nostalgic
2.1.3.1. Evidence: "Hearing a pop tune can take you back to a summer, or an evening, or an emotional state. Hearing a Beethoven piano sonata doesn't have that kind of effect, or if it does, that is incidental to the music's significance" (Noe 173)
2.1.3.1.1. Pop connects us. Pop takes us back to certain times of our life, like sitting in the car with your friends during that one summer. It's able to take you back to a moment in time.
3. Sub Claim 4: The music is more about the artist than the music itself
3.1. The music is a way of getting your attention to the artist
3.1.1. Evidence: "Pop music isn’t directed to music. The artist himself stands large and demands that you pay attention to him. The music is, at most, a way of directing your attention to him; he captures your attention and your fascination. His music is like his words. You look through the music to the person, or to an artistic model of the person." (Noe 172)
3.1.1.1. The artist getting your attention through the music their playing allows you to focus on what they're doing on stage rather than listening to the music.
3.1.2. Evidence: "Pop stars are sex symbols, and when we love them, we want in some sense to be like them, or at least to be with them, to have them, to belong to their tribe." (Noe 173)
3.1.2.1. Pop stars make themselves be symbols in order that they may get your attention, making pop music a performance art.
3.2. Pop is based on personality
3.2.1. Evidence: "Pop music is the art of exhibition. It is demonstration. It is music, sure, but really it is spectacle, something for you to take in with your eyes." (Noe 171)
3.2.1.1. Personality is the basis of pop, making it more of a performance art than about the music itself.
3.2.2. Evidence: "And that is the essence of pop music. You don't need virtuosity to be a pop musician. What you need is personality" (Noe 171)
3.2.2.1. You need to have peronality to be a pop star, without that, you lose the essense of pop itself, so personality matters.
3.2.3. Counter Claim: Some Pop can be about music, or in an in betweeen place
3.2.3.1. Evidence: When Sinead O’Connor sings 'Nothing Compares 2 U,' it is possible to forget that she is covering Prince; the same is true when Generation X sings John Lennon." (Noe 175)
3.2.3.1.1. Here, Noe concedes that some covers become independent artistic expressions rather than mere comments on the original artist’s persona. This suggests that musicality, not just personality, plays a role.
3.2.3.2. Evidence: "Radiohead is transparent. Indeed, it is a striking fact about Radiohead that they occupy asort of in between place, a position in the world of pop while at thesame time consistently concealing themselves behind their music,creating music: that commands attention and fascination as music" (Noe 175)
3.2.3.2.1. Radiohead's music sits in an in between place of having their music be about them and about music.
3.2.3.3. Evidence: "It is preposterous to say that the musical qualities of Bowie’s 'Space Oddity,' George Harrison’s 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps,' and Otis Redding’s 'Try a Little Tenderness' are not a crucial part of what we love when we love these songs!" (Noe 180)
3.2.3.3.1. Although their style's are all very unique and their fashion speaks for their music, their music still plays a very critical role in the way that they express their art.
3.3. Pink Cadilliac avoids discussing Hank Williams' pop careeer
3.3.1. Evidence: "Melody, harmony, timbre, lyrics, in-novation in the expression of musical ideas-all this goes unmen-tioned. The focus is the life of Hank Williams, or a kind of fantasy of that life. Drugs, sex, depression, life on the road" (Noe 168)
3.3.1.1. Hank Williams is the Father of country and western music, and the fact that you can write a 200+ page book without once mentioning his pop career shows that pop is more than just music.