Rendering Authenticity

Joseph Pine speaks about authenticity in marketing in this TED talk. One interesting concept that he brings up is that products can be classified as Real Fakes and Fake Reals. Real Fakes are what they say they are but are not true to themselves. Fake Reals are true to themselves but are not what they say they are. The examples Pine uses are Universal City Walk as a Real Fake and Disneyland as a Fake Real.

This concept made me think about how it applies to music. Chuck Klosterman has an article in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs called Toby over Moby where he essentially argues that modern country music is so successful because it is more authentic to the general American experience than alt-country, Bob Dylan, or Moby.

At first this made me angry. I like Steve Earle and Uncle Tupelo but I don’t make $52,000 or drive a Saab. I feel like I’m having a genuine middle class American experience but I didn’t run out and get the new Dierks Bentley album. I did get the new Felice Brothers album. Am I really that out of touch? Does that make me a music snob?

The more I listened to my music the more it bugged me how right Klosterman was. As much as I love the Felice Brothers, their tunes of murder, love, and drinking reek of a bygone era. One of my favorite Old Crow Medicine Show songs, James River Blues, is a tale of outsourcing circa 1840. The narrator is a ferry boat navigator lamenting the new train bridge that has taken his job. It strikes a cord if you’ve lost your job to some virtual assistant in Bangalore, but really how much can you relate?

Modern Country, for all it’s overproduced twang, is obviously a product of our times. Brad Paisley’s song Celebrity pokes fun at reality shows like American Idol and Fear Factor while maintaining the country sound. In the parlance of Joseph Pine it is a Real Real. It is what it says it is and it is true to itself.

Alt-Country however is largely a Real Fake. It is Country Music, but the lyrics are all about the past. Obviously this doesn’t apply in every condition. Steve Earle’s Copperhead Road and John Walker’s Blues had timely themes. In fact the themes of those two were so timely when they came out that now they seem dated. Despite the Steve Earle anomaly, I think Pine’s approach to authenticity supports Klosterman’s argument about the value of Modern Country. It sells better because more people identify with it as as authentic. Alt-Country, for all it’s rousing accordion solos and down home grit, suffers from an envy for times gone by. So does that make me an elitist music snob? Ya, probably, but authentic or not, it still makes me want to dance.