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Rock and rebellion: subversive effects of Live Aid and ‘Sun City’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Neal Ullestad
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Extract

Subversion of satisfaction is the name of the game in pop rock music. The constant changes in artists and sounds perpetually subvert conventional meanings of desire and pleasure, and we ‘can't be satisfied’. Consumer mythologies of style and fashion work to condense the fulfilment of our desires into the act of buying that which is ‘new’, now. Clearly, such change seldom includes any significant disruption of the everyday acceptance of the ‘natural’ order of things. Since meaningful change is a threat to corporate control, it is the superficial change of the subversion of satisfaction – vital to increasing profits, it seems – that has been institutionalised.

Type
Research Article
Information
Popular Music , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , January 1987 , pp. 67 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

References

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