How Did Pop Art Change Throughout The 80's

During the late 1950’s through the 1960’s, pop art included techniques that were different that the traditional methods of producing art and issues of ownership. Sampling became a technique that was used by artists and Andy Warhol’s artworks impacted popular music. Music sampling was a technique that was used to produce new music and the turntable was used to mix music. Over the years, technology has allowed existing sounds to be transferred from one song to the next with a sampler. In today’s music world, many famous artists including Beyonce, Ed Sheeran, Kanye West, Jay Z., Ariana Grande, Jason Derulo, and other singers use music sampling in their songs as a way and inspiration to express their creativity and expand unique forms of music.
Music sampling inspires creativity and allows the audience to hear a variety of artists, music from the past, and different versions of music. However, sampling may be viewed as a violation of copyrights and ownerships, which can be dated back to the term, ‘appropriation,’ in the cultural tradition of borrowing in African American musical traditions.
A famous pop and commercial artist, Andy Warhol, has a great impact on today’s popular music.
His works with commercial demonstrate the interconnectivity of art and music. One of Warhol’s project was using commercial items and borrowed images such as Campbell Soup Cans for his artwork (Scherman,1999). His masterpiece contained 32 paintings of different types of Campbell soup cans by printmaking and it was a big art movement. Although Warhol didn’t create the labels of the Campbell soup cans, he used the image and made it modern art by taking a different observation and focus of the cans. In addition, he claims that he changed mundane cans into a more interesting piece of
art.
The technique, music sampling, refers to taking parts, portions, or samples of sound recordings of songs and reusing them in a different song after slightly changing the rhythms, melodies, words, or tunes. It is also known as a “music collage” because artists take a part of the song, change it, and paste it into their song to create a new version and a new song. Artists are able to integrate other people’s music and create a new image (Strauss, 1997). They use previous recordings as a tool to create their new songs. The definition of art is the expression and creative activity of one’s imagination in a visual form (American English). Music sampling allows artists to create art and use other artists’ work to help them express their imagination.
The act of sampling is a compositional process because it helps expose the audience to music from previous years and allow them to rediscover the past. Along the process, the artist who created the original song, beat, or tune gets publicity and acknowledgement of their song from the past. An example of this can be seen in Kanye West and Jay Z.’s Hip Hop/R&B song produced called Otis. This song contained samples from Otis Redding’s Soul/Funk song, Try A Little Tenderness, which was produced in 1966. It begins with eighteen seconds of a slightly-modified section with the same lyrics from Try A Little Tenderness. However, people enjoyed the song, Otis, because of the sampled melodies of Redding’s song which incorporated and mixed different music genres to create a new masterpiece. Audiences who admired the song, Otis, commented that “the most impressive thing” about the song were the small parts of Redding’s Try A Little Tenderness that were sampled into this new song (Mlynar, 2011). Redding’s song was a popular song If Otis didn’t have the sampled parts of Redding’s song, then this song may not have been as popular and it may not have reached top United States and United Kingdom hits. It also helped people learn about the music from older decades.
Another example that shows music sampling an inspiration for creativity is Ed Sheeran’s song, Don’t, from 2004.
Ed Sheeran was inspired by the tunes and vocals of Lucy Pearl’s Don’t Mess With My Man and he sampled a small portion (approximately 2 lines) of Pearl’s song into his song, Don’t. Although he changed Pearl’s lyrics, “Don’t mess with my man, Don’t mess with my boy” to “Don’t f--- with my love. That heart is so cold,” lowered the octaves of Pearl’s version, slowed the speed down, and kept the same tune and beat, the sample that Sheeran took and fused into his song is recognizable in his song. It is evident that Ed Sheeran implemented many additions and changes to the sample parts and created something new in his song. Without Pearl’s sample parts, Sheeran’s song, Don’t, many not have become popular and part of the top hits in
UK. However, there is an argument that music sampling has some similar aspects of appropriation, which was a common issue in the history of African American music traditions. The definition of appropriation is taking something for one’s own use and usually without permission (American English). This complicates the controversial issue whether music sampling is an act of theft or not because it does involve borrowing and using part of another’s artists’ work. Similar to appropriation in modern society, artists who used samples in their music became popular and took the credit for their songs. This is similar to the controversial issue of singers who didn’t originate Rap or Hip Hop music and become popular and win awards after singing Rap and Hip Hop music. In many cases, audiences listen the recent songs with sampled sound recordings and fail to realize or acknowledge the original song of where the samples came from. This may be seen as appropriation because it’s similar to taking a portion of someone’s work and using it. This act can be described as stealing the credit from the original owner. Music sampling does involve borrowing and modifying pieces of songs, but there are permissions and credits granted.
Music sampling has allowed artists and singers to expand their ideas and perspectives to create new images and unique forms of music. It is a form of art and expression that allows singers and artists to get creative and experiment new things into their work. Many famous singers use it in today’s music industry and that’s what makes the songs popular and good in this generation. Even when artists sample from each other, they are able to produce different songs of different genres and elements. Music sampling is not act of theft or appropriation because artists have permission and credit previous singers. Without music sampling, many artists, singers, and songs may not have been produced in today’s popular music industry.