Summary:
In this article, the author explores the evolving role of NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series and its impact on pop music artists. The series, originally focused on acoustic and indie acts, has now become a platform for pop artists to showcase their skills in an intimate setting. The author highlights the transformative effect of T-Pain’s Tiny Desk performance, which revealed his talent and debunked assumptions about his use of Autotune. The series now serves as a way for pop artists to demonstrate their performing prowess and authenticity. However, the author raises concerns about the potential superficiality and lack of commitment in these performances. They argue that some artists, like Post Malone and Fred Again, use the Tiny Desk format to assert their versatility without fully embracing any genre or form. The article suggests that as pop music moves further into digital sound production, the hunger for authentic performance clashes with the increasingly synthetic and abstract nature of the music. The Tiny Desk provides a space for pop stars to navigate these contradictions, while others may choose to leave them behind.
Engaging Additional Piece:
The Tiny Desk concert series has undoubtedly carved a unique niche for itself in the ever-evolving music industry. It has become a stage where large-scale pop artists can shed their elaborate productions and showcase their raw talents and artistic range. The series has proven to be a powerful tool for redefining an artist’s image and garnering attention from an audience hungry for authenticity.
But this push and pull between the desire for authenticity and the allure of digital production presents a challenge for pop artists. As their music becomes increasingly abstract and detached from the real world, finding ways to connect with audiences becomes crucial. The Tiny Desk offers a platform where artists can break free from the confines of their polished studio productions and present their music in a stripped-down, intimate setting.
However, as the author highlights, there is a risk of superficiality in these performances. Some artists may use the Tiny Desk as a marketing ploy or a shallow attempt to showcase versatility without wholeheartedly committing to any particular genre or style. This raises questions about the authenticity of these performances and whether they truly capture the essence of an artist’s artistry.
Nonetheless, the Tiny Desk series continues to captivate audiences and provide a space for artists to experiment and challenge themselves. It has become a symbol of authenticity and a way for pop stars to bridge the gap between their digitally enhanced productions and the desire for a genuine connection with their audience. Whether artists fully embrace the format or use it as a strategic move, the Tiny Desk remains a compelling stage that invites us to explore the complexities of pop music in the digital age.
In a world saturated with polished performances and carefully crafted personas, the Tiny Desk offers a refreshing alternative. It allows artists to peel back the layers and reveal the raw, unfiltered essence of their music. And as audiences, we have the opportunity to witness these artistic transformations firsthand, reminding us that at the core of every pop star is a genuine passion for music that transcends genres and trends. So whether it’s a string quartet accompanying Post Malone or a solo performance by Fred Again, the Tiny Desk continues to be a platform that challenges our expectations and invites us to listen with open minds and open hearts.
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What can someone gain with a String quartet accompanying Post Malone? In one of the megastar’s typical performances, you might find Austin Post standing alone on a big stage, shirtless, imitating the poses you might see on a rapper’s show, belting out his melodic pop with his intermittent hip gestures. -hop. Recently, though, the singer sat on the set of NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series, in a modest, knick-knack corner of a Washington office, to perform some of his songs with a larger ensemble: 12 musicians. , including four showgirls. and four string players, rearranging his hits to highlight multi-part harmonies and the shimmer of acoustic instruments. Because?
Little by little, over its 15 years of existence, the Tiny Desk series has come to house some of the biggest names in music: artists like Taylor Swift, Alicia Keys and Harry Styles. That’s something of a coup, given its roots. In its early days, Tiny Desk’s programming was geared toward exactly the kind of artists you might expect to find playing an intimate set in a mundane corner of an office, without a stage or lights or flashy videography: folk acts, singer-songwriters, crooners. indie rockers. The series has always introduced listeners to new musicians and still features performances in an impressive array of genres. But their biggest achievements, back in the late 1900s, were acts like The Swell Season or Tallest Man on Earth: musicians practiced by heading into small, quiet rooms on acoustic instruments.
The Tiny Desk series became a prime spot for artists seeking a baptism of authenticity.
Then T-Pain changed everything. When the Tallahassee star performed a Tiny Desk concert in 2014, his use of Autotune as a musical signature had led many casual listeners to assume that the pitch correction tool was masking a weak voice. Even other artists complained that he was polluting the industry. (He was depressed for years, he said, after Usher told him he had “killed music.”) T-Pain used his Tiny Desk performance to shoot down the idea that he lacked talent, sitting next to a single electric pianist and singing beautifully, with no digital frills. The video of her introduction went viral, especially among those who just learned that her use of Autotune was an artistic flair, not a crutch; it remains one of the most viewed of the hundreds of sessions Tiny Desk has produced.
The Tiny Desk series became a prime spot for artists seeking a baptism of authenticity. The series built its audience organically, garnering higher bookings and finding frequent viral hits. Whether you’re looking to discover young folk, rock or jazz acts, or rediscover marginalized innovators, their non-pop shows remain a valuable and carefully timed resource. But for pop artists, it has become a tool with a very specific use: demonstrating skills in the room. It inherits this role from a long line of similar series, most notably MTV’s “Unplugged,” a pioneer in the field of forcing musicians to dedicate a set to signaling their allegiance to the values of ensemble performance. It is not necessary to play acoustic instruments in the Tiny Desk, but musicians often choose to do so. (Post Malone, for example, used the string quartet to replace all the lovely beeps and synth glitches on his recordings—it’s a common Tiny Desk move to make digital production flourish acoustically.) The audio and video are engineered in-house at NPR, an act of submission that is rare in a world where stars seek to control every part of their image. And, in the case of big acts, the old air of intimacy of coffeehouses has been strangely abandoned, replaced by a new kind of excess tailored to the constraints of the format. Post Malone’s Tiny Desk ensemble rivaled the number of musicians on their national tour.
An appearance on Tiny Desk doesn’t just underscore musical ability: there’s star quality, too. Listeners already knew that Usher, for example, could sing. But he could still capitalize on T-Pain’s precedent. Last year he used a Tiny Desk set to remind people that he is a charismatic performer even without the benefit of a lavish stage production: effective publicity for the second leg of his Las Vegas residency shows. The purpose of a Tiny Desk appearance in a pop marketing campaign is now to assert the artist’s performing prowess, an opportunity that has been seized upon by the likes of Lizzo and Anderson .Paak, whose chops are key parts of his stardom.
Often the goal of presenting songs in this format doesn’t seem financial or artistic, or even purely a matter of marketing; at times it seems almost ideological. Post Malone doesn’t exactly need the exposure that Tiny Desk offers. He surely has the resources to put together his own acoustic performance videos. But Tiny Desk offers the perfect place to introduce yourself as a renegade that transcends genre. The resulting performance feels less like a musical idea and more like a statement about his personality: an argument that he’s not “just” a hip-hop artist, that his hit song “I Fall Apart” can also be a stadium hit and a cello. – ornate chamber music.
There are dangers in this hybridization. Stripped of the artificial charm he can summon in a recording studio or the collective euphoria he can rely on in an arena, Post Malone’s Tiny Desk version reveals his songs all too clearly for what they are. The packaging insists that he’s capable of transcending genre, but his joyful transit through rap, pop, and ballad shows no commitment to any of these forms beyond ensuring his availability. The meanings of it are empty; his signifiers pile up in a thing without a center. It seems like the whole set didn’t think much of doing it right, just making it clear that Post Malone could do it.
Post isn’t the only artist whose Tiny Desk performance revealed a certain superficiality. Take the British electronic musician and producer Fred Again. It’s hard to imagine many of their dance music ancestors capitulating to the notion that an “authentic” live performance is the way to justify their work. But Fred Gibson steered his music into a Tiny Desk funnel, playing solo in front of a piano amid a nest of samplers and synths. His dancefloor-crying anthems felt, minus the dancefloor, like a cloying, exhausting solicitation for approval, more interested in asserting that Gibson is a songwriter and performer than doing justice to the genre he currently dominates.
Every year more and more pop music moves into the disembodied world of digital sound production, moving further into the synthetic, the abstract: sounds that aren’t rooted in or attempting to mimic anything in the real world. At the same time, the public seems to be hungry for a certain kind of authentic theater and the artists are hungry to represent it. It’s increasingly tempting for musicians to cover up their eccentricities and creative forays into studio sounds with lavish performances in the corner of the office, settings that become increasingly incongruous and bizarre. The Tiny Desk is the place pop stars can go to reconcile all the luscious contradictions of being a musician in 2023. For some, a better option is to leave them alone.
Opening Illustration: Original NPR Photos
Adlan Jackson is a writer from Kingston, Jamaica who covers music in New York. He runs the Critical Party Studies blog.
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