Pop: Rated G for grown up

[Kooperman]

Pop: Rated G for grown up

Fri Mar 12, 6:10 AM ET

By Elysa Gardner, USA TODAY

For nearly five decades, since the birth of rock 'n' roll, it has been a given that pop music is fundamentally of, by and for young people. Record companies, radio programmers and other music media have catered to fans in their teens and early 20s, while older artists have gone to great, sometimes comical lengths to project and attract youth. (Related story: Charting the evolution of pop music)

But a funny thing happened on the way to the new millennium. In the late '90s, while the industry's attention was focused on the biggest generation of teenage pop fans since the baby boomers, older listeners were sneaking into record stores in steadily increasing numbers. In 2002 (the latest date for which figures have been compiled by the Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites)), people ages 30 and older bought 56% of the recorded music sold in this country, up nearly 14 points from a decade earlier. "There are a lot of people pursuing the over-30 consumer now, so that trend is continuing and building," says Ed Christman, a senior writer covering retail at Billboard.

What might be even more surprising are some of the artists fueling this phenomenon. Less than a month ago, the music business, beset for years by plunging sales and growing concerns about piracy, was buoyed by the biggest single week of album sales ever outside the November/December holiday season. It was the week that last year's Grammy darling, Norah Jones (news), unveiled her second CD, Feels Like Home. The album sold 1.02 million copies, the highest number for a new entry since 'N Sync (news - web sites) released Celebrity back in 2001. Home remains at No. 1, having sold 1.9 million copies since its debut Feb. 10.

Jones is only 24, but her music has appealed to a wide demographic, including many thirty-, forty- and fiftysomethings. "I've always had older people in my audience," the singer/songwriter told USA TODAY. "I listen mostly to older music myself."

Yet Jones' acoustic songs, with their folk, country and jazz nuances, aren't the kind typically relied on to attract mass audiences, even grown-up ones. Glossy ballads and familiar hits by established mainstream acts have traditionally been the bread and butter of adult-contemporary radio, with subtler and grittier fare often relegated to public and independent stations. Jones herself has credited such non-commercial outlets for giving her crucial early exposure.

Gradually, though, sleeper success stories such as Jones' are making media executives re-evaluate their notions of what defines saleable adult pop, and encouraging them to court more mature and sophisticated listeners.

"Quiet as it's kept, commercial radio has gotten a little more adventurous overall," says Sean Ross, vice president of Edison Media Research. He cites the rising profile of jazz-based chanteuse Diana Krall (news) and the relatively obscure folk and bluegrass musicians featured on the multi-platinum O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, a surprise Grammy champ the year before Jones' victory.

Such artists may not get as much airplay as Celine Dion (news), Rod Stewart (news) or other adult-contemporary stalwarts, but the momentum they have built in spite of restrictive formats and limited marketing has not gone unnoticed. "Out of the box is better for me, anyway," says Krall, whose new CD, The Girl in the Other Room, due April 27, mixes covers of Tom Waits (news), Joni Mitchell (news) and Mose Allison with original songs co-written with her new husband, Elvis Costello (news). "There's too much music to be influenced by, you know?"

The contemporary connection

Radio also has begun warming up to more progressive and offbeat pop stars whose earlier forum, an "adult alternative" format created in the '90s, fizzled. "(Adult contemporary) radio has become the new destination for artists like Annie Lennox (news), who have gotten more eclectic with time and aren't going to be heard anywhere else," says Ross.

Recent Oscar winner Lennox, whose introspective, sonically ambitious 2003 album, Bare, earned rave reviews and entered the Billboard 200 chart at No. 3, says, "The powers of media can be hugely influential. But if you can get exposure without that kind of hype, what you do will filter through on a more grass-roots level. People approach me now who have connected very deeply with what I'm doing, and that really pleases me, because it gives me a sense of purpose."

Another long-admired troubadour, Mary Chapin Carpenter (news), whose CD Between Here and Gone also arrives April 27, adds: "Not only as an artist, but as a lover and consumer of music, I want to hear things that speak to me, that I can connect with. Younger is where it's at in the entertainment world, but they shouldn't forget about us."

Ross observes that new media has presented older and more independent-minded artists opportunities outside radio. "There are certainly more places to hear new music," he says. "There are online services like AOL First Listen and Launch, online recommendations at Amazon.com and like portals, and satellite radio. And they're not all just for teenagers."

In fact, though Jones says that "some people have said the only reason I'm doing so well is that adults don't know how to download," the evidence contradicts that theory. The first single from Home, Sunrise, set a one-day record at iTunes and opened at No. 2 on Soundscan's Digital Tracks chart, right behind Outkast's massive hit Hey Ya.

"The point is not that the people listening to this music are technically unsophisticated, so they're stuck buying CDs," says Alan Light, editor of Tracks, a new magazine geared toward adult music fans that interviewed Jones for its current cover story. "I think labels have been too slow to attempt to speak to this audience, in part because it's harder to reach. There isn't a shortcut to get in front of them, the way you can break a pop act through top 40 radio and MTV. It's an audience that isn't served by the music media, so it has to be cultivated from different directions."

Industry wake-up call

Bruce Lundvall, head of Blue Note Records, Jones' label, agrees that his ailing industry has failed to tap into a potentially rich adult market. "It's very clear to me that there's an audience out there that has been ignored," says Lundvall, whose roster also includes such lauded jazz, rock and R&B veterans as Cassandra Wilson (news), Wynton Marsalis, Van Morrison (news) and Al Green (news). "But things are changing. I have a feeling that Norah has been a catalyst, a sort of wake-up call."

Noted producer T Bone Burnett, whose recent credits include the O Brother and Cold Mountain soundtracks, isn't surprised that Jones' music has resonated so powerfully.

"For several years, I've been delving back into the music of the last couple of centuries, and you realize that it all comes from the same place, really," he says. "The more technological we become, the more we need to be in touch with who we are and where we come from.

"So someone like Norah is very attractive to people, because she's a girl who sits at a piano and plays and sings with other musicians. She's not groomed and labored over and pitch-corrected."

Dido, another young singer/songwriter who has won over critics and commercial audiences with spare, graceful pop (most recently on last year's Rent), says, "I think we don't give people enough credit. They're force-fed music that's formulaic and doesn't really move them. And essentially, I think people want to be moved."

Like Jones, Dido has been both criticized and praised for the relatively subdued quality of her recordings, despite the latter's techno-savvy arrangements. "If I get called 'dinner party music' one more time ... But whenever people call it that, my answer is simply, 'Turn it up.' Because what I do is different, just like what Norah does. It's not meant to just be put on in the background."

If the radio suits who ignored Jones at first continue to shun artists whom they consider too subtle or quirky, it will be to their detriment, says critically acclaimed singer/songwriter Sam Phillips (news), an adult alternative favorite.

"It just seems that radio is not at the forefront of new music anymore," says Phillips, whose new album, A Boot and a Shoe, is due April 27.

Phillips' early hero Randy Newman (news) concurs. "Radio can still sell singles, and to some degree albums, but it's not making careers," he says. Both Newman and Phillips are currently signed to Nonesuch Records, a label that, like Blue Note, has built a reputation for nurturing respected career artists - among them Emmylou Harris (news), Joni Mitchell and David Byrne (news) - as some other labels have suffered for their pursuit of instant pop stars.

"There has been a complete meltdown of the music business, and it can look horrible in ways," says Phillips. "But I think it can end up being for the best, because it's making people look at things. A lot of marketing and advertising experts are having to scratch their heads and say, 'Well, maybe we don't really know what's popular. It's not as scientific as we thought.' Things need to be torn down in order to be built back up again."

Adds Burnett, Phillips' longtime producer, "Artists are excited because the industry has less control than it did, so there's more freedom to try different things. There was a time when if you made a record, it had to be a certain length, to fit into a certain slot, to sound a certain way. Everything was dictated; it was sanctioned art. Now anything can happen, and it will. Anything that can go right just might."

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