Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music [Hardcover]

Hugh Barker (Author), Yuval Taylor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 17, 2007

Musicians strive to “keep it real”; listeners condemn “fakes”; ... but does great music really need to be authentic?

Did Elvis sing from the heart, or was he just acting? Were the Sex Pistols more real than disco? Why do so many musicians base their approach on being authentic, and why do music buffs fall for it every time? By investigating this obsession in the last century through the stories of John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, Jimmie Rodgers, Donna Summer, Leadbelly, Neil Young, Moby, and others, Faking It rethinks what makes popular music work. Along the way, the authors discuss the segregation of music in the South, investigate the predominance of self-absorption in modern pop, reassess the rebellious ridiculousness of rockabilly and disco, and delineate how the quest for authenticity has not only made some music great and some music terrible but also shaped in a fundamental way the development of popular music in our time.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Barker and Taylor's exploration of the idea of authenticity in modern music takes them from the falsely labeled "pure" and "primitive" style of Leadbelly to the first truly "autobiographical song" (Jimmie Rodger's version of "TB Blues"), the disintegration of the Monkees and Neil Young's "Drugged-out, driven, and death soaked" album Tonight's the Night—what the authors believe to be the most "honest" rock record of all time. Strangely, the book does not include a discussion of hip-hop, a surprising omission given the attention paid to other aspects of black music and the genre's particular concern with the book's themes. By the end, Barker (a musician and songwriter) and Taylor (I Was Born a Slave) find the distinction between real and fake "[b]reaking down and becoming increasingly meaningless." It becomes clear that even seemingly obvious examples of authentic and inauthentic defy easy categorization when scrutinized. After all, is disco's well-intentioned alternate reality any less "real" than the violent, "mocking pretenses" of the Sex Pistols? Though the book's final conclusions are not revelatory, it offers an intriguing take on the development of popular music. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Searching for "authenticity" in a music intended for broad commercial success may seem an odd undertaking, but Barker and Taylor are hardly the first to try. What was more authentic, the Sex Pistols or disco? Setting aside that so asking demonstrates a misunderstanding of what Malcolm McLaren and his hirees were up to, that simple question expresses the authors' MO. Similar queries animate the discussion and help make a framework within which to consider desegregation in the American South and other historical matters. Perhaps the quintessential chapter is "Heartbreak Hotel: The Art and Artifice of Elvis Presley." Few other pop stars have so thoroughly covered the gamut from the plausible authenticity of Presley's musical roots to the obvious, saccharine artifice of the King's movies. Other chapters ponder Neil Young (a rocker given to concerns about authenticity and legitimacy, sometimes too much so), Kurt Cobain, John Lennon, Moby, and Donna Summer. With plenty of interesting and contentious assertions to stimulate even casual readers, this is a heck of an argument starter. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (February 17, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393060780
• ISBN-13: 978-0393060782
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.9 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #699,819 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very interesting book on what is real (and unreal) about "being real", February 21, 2007

By 

Craig Matteson (Saline, MI) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music (Hardcover)

This is a very interesting book for anyone who has grown up paying even a little attention to the disputes about "authenticity" in popular music over generations. I am a classical musician and while the issues are hardly the same in that world, I can understand the notions of what these folks are struggling over and arguing about.

The authors begin with Kurt Cobain singing a Leadbelly song on MTV unplugged. His manner of singing the song, his complaints about being "real" and even his suicide act as a springboard for the whole book. We learn more about Leadbelly and his promoter, John Lomax, and where they actually fit into the music world of their time versus what white people believed about their heritage. John Hurt, who was a legend as an old man among the sixties folk singers. Yet, in his youth he was not nearly as popular nor as "authentic" as the sixties idolizers would have had the public believe.

It turns out that the Black public preferred Jazz and its sophistications to the blues and rural music that Leadbelly, Hurt and others performed. Nor was it as rooted in the slave past as the traditions believed. There was a lot of cross between rural White music and the rural Black music. We also see this in Jazz. It was only later that the schism between what is authentically "Black" or "White" became a fundamental issue, and its conclusions are largely wrong.

We get to compare the truly personal music of Jimmie Rodgers and his "T.B. Blues" against other music of its time and the tradition of autobiographical music. It is not as deep, rich, or lengthy tradition as one might expect. There is a lot of "character" biography, but not deeply personal stuff such as Rodgers singing about the tuberculosis that was killing him.

The authors later show us Elvis and how he created his persona and what traditions that flowed out of along with what Elvis actually invented. The problem is that what he created has become so much a part of what followed that it seems part of the genre now, but it was radical when Elvis created it. Or so the authors state.

We then get a wonderful chapter comparing The Beatles and The Monkees. It isn't quite as cut and dry issue of what is "authentic" versus "fake" as you might first think before you read the book. There is no question that The Beatles changed everything, but there is a lot of artifice that went into their music, too.

There is also woven into this the pop music of the Don Kirshner types and his role in The Monkees and what he did afterwards in creating The Archies and the lasting pop hit "Sugar Sugar".

Then comes a look at Neil Young and his travels through various stages of the search for Authenticity (the capital "A" is needed to describe what he was after). The Disco world and Donna Summer is next, the Punk Rock world, the faux reality of Ry Cooder's "Buena Vista Social Club" and world music. The book ties up with a look at Moby and then Nick Cave's "Mercy Seat" and the even more "real" cover by Johnny Cash.

One of the things that I find odd about the idea of "authenticity" in the making of a song is that these artists go around the world performing these pieces for decades. It is not possible that every performance of the work is equally "authentic" or even retains anything "real" about it after the thousandth time they perform it. The authors do mention Keith Jarrett who actually does make up new music on the spot for that night's performance. Now THAT is authentic. Of course, I find that a lot of his ruminations are just as boring as most of real life. Sure, there are moments of great brilliance, but art is working that up into a work and sharing that rather than all the scutwork that goes into the hard work of composing or writing or painting or sculpture.

I liked this book a lot and agree with the authors that listeners need to play more with the realities and the ideas of authenticity. We need to keep our ears and minds open to actually perceive what is going on rather than quickly accepting or dismissing musical works and musicians because of who we think they are (there is a lot of artifice in the creation of these persona's, too).

Of course, in the classical world, there is some of this, too. What is "real" classical, and what is out of bounds. And that discussion is not appropriate to this review. However, the idea that the piece is a role for the artist to perform rather than something "autobiographical" is rather well established.

One of the things beginning listeners to classical music get trapped in is hearing autobiography in the works of the masters. It is not that it is never there, but that it is rarely there as much as they suppose it is. The key is, does it move us? Is it great music? Does it speak to us about our lives and the human condition? It can also be for simple delectation. Not everything has to be dripping in angst and death. Real life has enough of that. Art should have something more, don't you think?

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Case-studies of artists and music industry professionals, February 2, 2010

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Anthony Kyle Zwarich "Motion and Still Graphi... (Edmonton, AB, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music (Hardcover)

If you can sustain your interest through the first few chapters, the book succeeds at presenting equal arguments for and against the title "authenticity" in music. The authors avoid "name-dropping" in favor of "situation-dropping," explaining in length the pretexts that surround some of the biggest artists in music. I felt that they managed to present the paradoxical subject with a good personal distance; there were only small portions that were editorialized.

This isn't a guidebook on how to "be real," nor a Rolling Stone-esque exposé on (Your Favorite Artist), but serves more like a history of American music with an industry-related context. It explains personal and professional strategies that swayed particular musicians and bands into fakery or reality, and explores those notions carefully.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Among the best books about music I've read, April 30, 2007

By 

Eric Firth "eric james firth" (Brooklyn, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music (Hardcover)

Most books about music are narrative and follow the thread of a band or music movements arc. Either that or you follow a critics taste. That is fine, however those method doesn't end up telling you much but opinions and facts. They can be entertaining but they don't enlighten. This is a rare book about music that does. It helps you see your own taste differently. It helps show you how your opinions that you have about acts or subjects weren't created in a vacuum. It changes the way you feel about the way you feel about music, which is an amazing accomplishment.
My only hope is that they make good on the idea of an exploration of authenticity in hip hop.