Popular Music Criticism through the Lens of the Frankfurt and Birmingham Schools

As an important component of mass culture, popular music is characterized by a critical genealogy marked by both divergence and dialogue.Centered on the theory of the culture industry, the Frankfurt School reveals standardization and homogenization in the music production. It criticizes how the music erodes individual subjectivity and people’s aesthetic competence. By contrast, the Birmingham School puts forward the theory of cultural resistance. It affirms cultural practices and symbolic struggles within the music, and highlights audience agency and the role of the music in identity construction. The two schools are often simplified as forming a binary opposition. Yet the later reflections of the Birmingham School effectively complement the Frankfurt School’s critique of the culture industry. Therefore, the two theories on which the two schools respectively drew are not mutually exclusive with respect to core issues. There is room for complementarity and dialogue between them.