There are many different ways to understand music history, but one that I find helpful is to talk about the orientation of an artist rather than the genre. In other words, what does an artist want to do? What is the goal of an artist?
By the 1970s, two major archetypes had emerged in the music industry. The first was the entertainer. An entertainer is someone whose primary goal is to acquire and minister to as large an audience as possible — or as large an audience as possible for them.
Another archetype emerged as well: the auteur. That’s somebody who performs and creates as an artists almost for their own benefit. They do it for the growth of their art or art in general.
Many artists use both orientations. Even still, in online music education, it’s helpful to think about the primary drive of certain artists because that’s why we have such different kinds of artists and such different kinds of audiences.
Of course, these archetypes are just a way of thinking about music, but it’s an approach that’s very helpful for people who are going into the music business to help artists. What are you helping an artist to do?
One of the reasons that David Bowie is so important is that he was one of the first — if not the first — recording artist to create an entire career out of adopting a succession of personalities, aliases and characters, such as Ziggy Stardust and Thin White Duke. David Bowie is somebody who has a huge strain of that auteur mentality. He is essentially cultivating his own world.
On the opposite side, you could think of somebody like Michael Jackson. In many ways, Michael Jackson was born for the stage. He was born into it. He started performing when he was a child.
Even though Michael Jackson is an incredible artist and auteur in himself, he called himself the King of Pop because that’s what he wanted out of his career. He wanted to have a massive, massive audience. A lot of the choices he made were oriented toward acquiring that audience.
Now, this isn’t a hard and fast delineation, but it is one of the ways that we in music education can compare different motivations. Why is Taylor Swift different from Mitski, for example? Why is Beyonce a different artist from Janelle Monae?
