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Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Music and Leisure in an Era of X Factor and Digital Pirates

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The New Politics of Leisure and Pleasure

Abstract

This chapter embraces the paradox that Hoggart expressed (above) in rela tion to two prevailing twenty-first century music and leisure phenomena: Pop Idol reality TV talent programmes and digital music piracy. Certainly more is at stake in popular music than the aversion and compulsion these phenomena provoke; however, at the end of 2009, two news items about these issues caught my attention. The first was an online campaign attempt ing to thwart the apparent certainty that the Christmas Number 1 song in the UK charts would come from the winner of the immensely popular TV singing contest X Factor. The second was a series of newspaper reports on the continuing threat (or resistance) to the music industry posed by digital piracy, including one claim that 95% of music downloads are illegal (Allen, 2010). Both issues lead me to consider further the relations between music and leisure, culture and consumption, legitimacy and illegality.

It is hard to listen to a programme of pop songs … without feeling a complex mixture of attraction and repulsion. (Richard Hoggart, 1970, in Storey, 1997: 77)

With apologies to Ella Fitzgerald (1993) and Marcus Rediker (1987).

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Authors
  1. Brett Lashua
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Leeds Metropolitan University, UK

    Peter Bramham  & Stephen Wagg  & 

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© 2011 Brett Lashua

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Lashua, B. (2011). Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Music and Leisure in an Era of X Factor and Digital Pirates. In: Bramham, P., Wagg, S. (eds) The New Politics of Leisure and Pleasure. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230299979_14

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