I have a soft spot for phony records — what I like to call “false rock.” I’ve thrown this term around for a few years without ever defining it. Wimpily, I usually fell back on the “I know it when I hear it” excuse whenever anyone has asked me what exactly I meant by “false rock.” For instance, Ryan Adams’ Rock’N’Roll is a false rock record. R.E.M.’s Monster, too. And U2’s Zooropa. T. Rex’s Electric Warrior might be as well.
Before anyone gets in a huff, please note that I desperately love these records. They’re some of my very favorite records. They’re near perfect. They contain an entire WORLD within them, or rather they contain an entire set where you might film a movie about a totally artificial and fantastic world populated by robots and laser mice and witty holograms. What I’d say these albums have in common is their obvious, intentional bigness. Also, they’re not “serious” records in terms being overly concerned with songcraft per se. These records have some very good songs on them, but they don’t strike me as fussy, over-considered songs. Rather these “false rock” records strike me as inspired elaborations on a conceptualized sound. They seem like pop art experiments in a way, attempts to make something both shockingly individual and fully commercial. Just consider the boldness of the titles and the album covers. They’re very direct. Iconic almost. Like a cereal box or pop can.
In many ways the flatness, the brightness of the music and packaging of these “false rock” albums seems Warholian to me. It’s overtly Pop stuff. Maybe this is what seems phony or “false” to me, this emphasis on surface and boldness and stylized commerciality.
As sounds, as packages, these big fake albums are big on allusion. On Monster, Stipe throws around references to Dan Rather and Kurt Cobain and finally offers to “be your Iggy Pop” over sound beds obviously cribbed from glam rock and grunge. The title track from Zooropa is lousy with pilfered ad slogans and sounds from Bowie and Eno’s Berlin period. Adams’ Rock’N’Roll is the sound of a once-upon-a-time enfant terrible mimicking the sounds of retro/revivalist bands whose best ideas belong to decades long past. And nevermind that Adams gives a number of his smartipance tracks the same title as established rock classics/hits.
And Electric Warrior – this record could very well be the source of “false rock” with its rockabilly-meets-American-Top-40-meets-Dylanesque-wordplay-meets-psychedelia choogle. It’s a record that is so very much EVERYTHING that it winds up as no one thing in particular. Electric Warrior is a clever album. It challenges you to a game of spot the influences. And it’s a certainly bit camp. I suppose that campiness is something all proper “false rock” albums share. Perhaps “false rock” is merely my own way of talking about records that employ the glam rock techniques established by Electric Warrior (i.e., self-awareness, campiness, lyrical and musical allusiveness, knowing post-modern simplicity/minimalism, etc.) outside of the narrow time and place of glittermania and T.Rextasy as going concerns.
Why all this dilly-dallying? What do these boring old rock records have to do with the Kanye West’s 808s & Heartbreak and its well-known, oft-reported back-story? Well, I suppose I’m trying to work through my little “false rock” concept because 808s & Heartbreak is, by my reckoning, a “false rock” album much more than it is a forlorn break-up record or a soul-bearing “fucked-up superstar” record. It’s a stylized, Pop Art version of a bleak, sad record. I’m not saying that West wasn’t feeling bad when he made it, but his sad robot music doesn’t have the real emotional fire and sonic raggedness of Joy Division’s Closer or Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band or Nirvana’s In Utero or Neil Young’s Tonight’s the Night. Nor does this record have the clarity and bitterness of my very favorite break-up record Blood on the Tracks. West, by my ears, just doesn’t sound at the end of his rope on 808s. He’s simply wearing an expertly-crafted designer mope mask.
One of the reasons why I find Kanye West compelling as a pop star is because he seems to be consciously angling for the role of hip hop’s Elvis Costello – the smart, winking artist with a firm grasp of pop history and a willingness to toy with convention. I like glam and punk because they’re forms based on breaking the fourth wall. And I like West because he’s willing to break mainstream hip hop’s pretentious, cred-obsessed fourth wall.
808s finds West intensifying his expressions of ambivalence towards to the conventions of hip hop boasting and materialism – an ambivalence that has always been part of his shtick. E.g. from “Welcome to Heartbreak”: “My friend shows me pictures of his kids/And all I could show him was pictures of my cribs.” Under the usual circumstances of a “typical” Kanye West offering, I’d consider this admission as just another snippet tucked in amongst the party songs and the wild hyperbole as a way to reinforce his image as a self-aware, conflicted artist. But within the context of 808s & Heartbreak’s complete image/sonic overhaul, I find it interesting that the one previously-established element of West’s persona that carries over into this new construction is his vision of himself as isolated superstar, as Midas imprisoned in/by his golden kingdom.
I suppose what put my on the scent of 808s & Heartbreak as a “false rock” record was its being an album-length exercise in image overhaul. Like the previously mentioned albums, 808s finds an established artist remaking himself by picking out new influences and then packaging his new identity for ready consumption. It’s not enough for West to dabble in vintage synths and Daft Punk samples. He has to doll himself up in a little grey New Wave suit and retro glasses.
He’s playing the Sad Black Prince to Bowie’s alienated Thin White Duke. If the dance-inflected mope, wavering vocals, and vaguely post-punk feel of tracks like “Say You Will” and “Love Lockdown” weren’t enough to suggest New Order, West makes his Factory Records influence apparent with an album cover that could comfortably sit on the shelf next to Power, Corruption, and Lies.
808s & Heartbreak
Power, Corruption, and Lies
In short, this album that is being billed as intensely personal and “private” is actually a bit of studied simplicity and artificial sound meant to reimagine the public West as a pop star who has been transformed by personal loss and emotional darkness. It’s a neat trick – making yourself sound cold to appear warmer for having done so. After the first five bleak cuts on 808s, the poppy respite of “Paranoid” and the soaring phony strings and fake-Springsteen xylophone on “Robocop” are wholly refreshing.
By claiming emotional turmoil, West is able to jump genres and become a new pop star unfettered by the expectations of hip hop success/convention. He’s making a bid for art rock cred by making an art rock record that pushes all the right buttons (i.e., the right influences, thematic cohesiveness, personal pain fueling the creative process). If you have any understanding of pop culture, you can see what he’s up to. Still, it’s fun to hear. Perhaps I’m perverse, but I think I enjoy 808s & Heartbreak more for being able to see how it’s put together. I think that’s part of the kick I get out of these “false rock” records – they’re obvious and honest in their obviousness. You can see the artists at work, as they creating a commercial collage without the usual pretense of art being some kind of personal accident born of mysterious specialness.
