Musical And Lyrical Sophistication In Jazz And Other Genres

This scatter graph (directly below) shows the results of an All About Jazz Readers' Poll that was conducted during portions of 2021. There were almost 400 participants who rated these genres on their "musical and lyrical sophistication" on a 10 point scale. No instructions were given on the definition of "sophistication"—the participants were free to use their own criteria. However, with a jazz audience, "sophistication" is likely viewed as meaning higher levels of complexity in harmony, rhythm, and melody, and of course, more expressive and virtuosic improvisation.



What does the graph show? It shows AAJ readers' perception of the sophistication of these different genres, which is, of course, a subjective assessment. This is viewed through the lens of a niche demographic that is dedicated to jazz, thus it is not surprising to see jazz at the highest point in each category.



In this graph, the data is assembled by combining the musical and lyrical ratings and ordering the genres from lowest to highest.



The graph shows that there is a "sweet spot" in the middle which is where mass popularity is found. This is not to say that groups outside of the "hit zone" have not had commercial success—a punk(ish) rock band like The Clash can have a hit tune like "Rock the Casbah," but it will likely be one that conforms, more or less, to the pop music aesthetic while bringing in some elements of the punk rock aesthetic.

Case in Point: Genesis' Exodus

An interesting example of this is the prog/pop band Genesis. In their early years, with Peter Gabriel as the lead singer, they hardly made a dent in the charts—"I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)," from their recording Selling England by the Pound (Charisma, 1973) reached #21 in the UK charts. Given the lack of any real "hit single" support, the last five of the albums with Gabriel performed surprisingly well:

• 1971: Nursery Crime, #39 (UK charts)
• 1972: Foxtrot, #12 (UK), #45 (Germany)
• 1973: Genesis Live, #9 (UK), #105 (US)
• 1974: Selling England by the Pound was likely bolstered by the aforementioned solitary single, and performed the best of the five, hitting #3 in the UK and #45 in Germany. This album also landed them a spot in the top 100 in the US charts for the first time, coming in at #70.
• 1974: The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, #10 (UK), #80 (Germany), #41 (US)

This inverts the pop music paradigm that relies so heavily on the promotion of singles. The progressive rock audience is willing to purchase the entire album without the need of a hit single as the hook—this audience embraces the complex harmony, irregular meters, longer forms, and longer narratives, that are defining features of the progressive rock aesthetic.

As soon as Gabriel left the band and Collins took over as lead singer, the group established itself as a pop music machine, with two songs—"Invisible Touch" and "Throwing It All Away"—that reached #1, and eight others in the top ten. Those seven albums with Collins, starting with Wind and Wuthering (1976) and ending with We Can't Dance (1991), performed much better than the Gabriel era albums—several reached #1 in the UK charts, and many were in the top five in the US and other European countries. (The fact that they were active, relevant, and at the top of the charts for 15 years is simply astonishing in the pop music genre, where the generational turnover tends to discard its stars in favor of the new flavor every 3-4 years.)

In the case of Genesis, they were able to crossover into the "hit zone" while they were primarily a progressive rock band, but in the Collins era, they left their progressive rock aesthetic behind, embraced the pop music aesthetic (albeit with some remaining vestiges of prog occasionally smuggled in) and were thus able to thrive spectacularly as a pop music band. Of course, this does not include Collins' and Gabriel's solo recordings that enjoyed so much success in the 1980s—in particular, Collins solo work dominated the pop music charts, with seven singles reaching #1, and six others in the top 10 in the US.

Genres have boundaries, and while those boundaries can be crossed, they cannot be consistently or continually crossed without inexorably altering the identity of the group in question, which is what is clearly seen in Genesis' career trajectory.

Bridging the Pop/Art Music Chasm: A Psychological View of the Genres

This survey suggests that when the music becomes too complex, it no longer functions well as popular music, and the converse is also true—when it gets too simple, it loses its ability to capture and hold the attention of a mass audience. (I have run the same survey in my classes and with other groups, and the results are similar in one aspect —the "hit zone" is very consistent.)

But why is that the case? It's easy to say that "genres have boundaries" but that doesn't explain what it is about the genres that require those boundaries. As an example, why wouldn't a John Coltrane solo "fit" in the middle of an Adele song? The answer to that question is the key to understanding the unique, meaningful roles that popular music and, for lack of a better term, art music play.

Pop music is primarily a delivery device for an attitude or posture (often rebellious or oppositional) that the listener wishes to reflect or project. In this task, pop music succeeds marvelously, which is what makes it popular. In order to function in this fashion, it must not venture too far into the musical territory occupied by jazz and classical music. If it does, the more sophisticated musical elements take center stage and demand attention, pulling the listener out of the reverie of self-actualization and into the world of musical discourse, detracting from pop music's purpose. 

Thus, pop music glorifies and valorizes the listener, providing a soundtrack that reflects the listener's desires for self-empowerment and identity. As such, the real "star" of the show is not the music or the band at all—the star of the show is the listener, and the music simply can't be allowed to "steal the show." In jazz and classical music, the listener enters the narrative created by the music and follows that narrative; in pop music, the music is chosen by the listener to reflect the listener's desired narrative, and thus the music is essentially an egoistic support that changes over time as the listener changes and "grows out" of a certain band that was once beloved. This phenomenon is rare in a classical or jazz listener—one does not generally "grow out" of Duke Ellington or Johannes Brahms.

This is not suggest that everything has to always be complex—simplicity can be very sophisticated. For example, in Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, a perennial favorite of jazz musicians and jazz fans, we find harmony that is less complicated than that found in the hard bop of that era, but it is handled with exquisite sophistication in a group improvisation setting. However, "simplicity" can also be mundane—AAJ readers clearly found EDM to be uninteresting.

These kinds of polls are also difficult because they must necessarily exclude the outliers in each genre that are the exception to the rule. Thus, an admittedly flawed tool, but one that does provide a view into the perceptions of jazz listeners, who are a musically informed group. As such, AAJ readers' perceptions of the genres, given their aesthetic values, do provide a reasonable assessment of the different genres from that vantage point.

Special thanks to the All About Jazz readers who took time to participate in this poll!

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