POP MUSIC WAS born in 1896.
And it’s called an earworm for a reason.
In 1979 a German psychiatrist named Cornelius Eckert devised the term “Ohrwürmer” or “earworm” for any music that constantly loops through your brain. Maria Konnikova of The New Yorker wrote about it in 2014, but the story I’m compelled to tell happens much, much earlier.
First, let’s narrow the definition further: What do I mean by “pop” or popular music? Well, I’d say it involves discovery and reach—how the music is discovered by and reaches as many ears as possible. So one of the interesting facets of this story is how, given the technology of any given time, that reach has changed with the technology that enabled (or even inhibited) it.
The other aspect of pop music is sales—how many ears bought this music? How would we know? Well, one data point is sheet music (back in the day) or record sales or even concert ticket sales. I’ll cover more of this in future posts, but for now introductions are in order.
Why me and why now? I love music. Even when I’m cold about it, it warms me up. When I’m warm, it cools me down. Music was at my cradle-side (my parents weren’t musical, but were big appreciators). And I hope it’ll be near my bedside when I die.
Even when it seemed I could not be further from my love of music, an odd coincidence pulls me back into its orbit. Even more, music has some great tales to tell and mysteries to unfold.
The following story really sends that home.
Framing a ‘Prize Failure’
It’s actually a story that Simon Napier-Bell, a former record producer and the author of The Business: A History of Popular Music from Sheet Music to Streaming, tells in the first chapter of his book. “No one considered music publishing,” he writes, “to be a profession from which one could get truly rich, but in 1894 something happened that raised the possible rewards to another level.”
He introduces us to an 18-year old named Charles K. Harris, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who was writing songs for traveling minstrel shows. One of his tunes got picked up by New York publisher Witmark & Son, who agreed to pay Harris one penny per copy sold. He had a publisher at last!
As Witmark & Son promoted the song, Harris thought he was on the way … that is, until his first royalty check arrived.
It was for 85 cents.
Harris was furious. His anger became so self-motivating that he framed and hung the 85-cent check on the wall and immediately launched his own publishing company. According to Napier-Bell, “Isidore Witmark, the publisher who had sent it to him, retaliated by hanging the sheet music of the song on his own office wall, telling friends he was ‘framing the song as a prize failure.’”
Harris’ motivation spilled over into his next composition, a deliberate tearjerker he titled “After the Ball.”
This is where I got curious and the story jettisoned me into the late 20th century music scene. “‘After the Ball,’” Napier-Bell writes, was “about a man who dumped his girlfriend when he saw her kiss another man. He leaves in a huff and refuses to speak to her again, then hears she’s killed herself with grief. And it turns out the man he saw her kiss was her brother.” [Italics mine.]
Here are the full lyrics for Charles K. Harris’ “After the Ball.”
Harris’ story leapt out at me since I recognized a similar story-song on ABBA’s eponymous third album, the 1975 single “Crazy World.” [Lyrics and music in the following video.]
Of course the two songs are vastly different: the love interest in “After the Ball” commits suicide, whereas in “Crazy World” the song’s protagonist leads us on his journey from “blindness” to “understanding” and no one dies in the process.
Both songs are masterful in delaying the “story reveal,” but ABBA’s song is particularly nuanced in that it’s told first-person, with all the shifts of emotion clear to the listener as the song progresses.
“Crazy World,” has internally expressed lyrics until the bridge, where it deftly presents us with a dialogue between the singer and his lover:
Baby, how could you do it?
You just told me lies
And you meet behind my back
With other guysBaby, how could you tell me
There was only me?
I was stupid to believe you
I was blind but now I see.Then you smiled and you took my hand
‘There is something,’ you said, ‘That you may not know
There’s a couple of men in my life
And one of them is my brother Joe
He’s been gone for a long, long time
But he’s back and I think he’s gonna stay
You’ll be seeing a lot of him, he’s so nice in every way.’
In Harris’ “After the Ball,” the story’s outcome is irrevocable:
Many years have gone by, I’ve never wed
True to my first love, though she is dead.
She tried to tell me, tried to explain;
I would not listen, pleading in vain.
One day a letter came from this man,
He was her brother, the letter ran.
That’s why I’m lonely, no home at all;
I broke her heart then after the ball.
ABBA have always been great scholars of popular music. After all, on the same LP as “Crazy World” they recorded the only track not written by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, a medley of the old standards “Pick a Bale of Cotton/On Top of Old Smokey/Midnight Special.”
So here’s my question: Is it possible that Ulvaeus and Andersson, in their early folk days well before meeting Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, heard “After the Ball” and subconsciously ingested the storyline for a later songwriting session?
Being the music nerd I am, it’s a fascinating thing to ponder. If anyone out there knows the answer, please chime in!
From Existential Ache to Gnawing Earworm
As Barry Walters writes in a 2015 NPR “The Record” essay, the background of ABBA’s “essential and influential melancholy” makes sense in that such an emotionally powerful lyrical narrative might appeal to them. Walters states: “Masters of the earworm, Andersson and Ulvaeus boasted considerable harmonic complexity that mixed bitter and sweet. Like Motown's classic songwriters, they excelled at juxtaposing sprightly melodies with aching lyrics.”
Using ABBA’s 1976 hit “Knowing Me, Knowing You” as an example, Walters writes that the song is a “milestone of melancholic longing”:
‘No more carefree laughter/Silence ever after,’ it opens, and gets gloomier from there as insistent Wurlitzer electric piano riffing swirls in a psychedelic haze while an orchestra of multi-tracked guitars strum, scrape, buzz and hum. ‘Knowing me, knowing you, uh-huhhhh,’ go the girls suggestively again and again, as if the existential ache of a relationship’s dead end naturally triggers residual erotic fallout.
That “existential ache” is the rocket fuel of all great pop music.
“One note” pop music, I feel, might work for a time, but doesn’t last in the long run. Think about all the “teenage tragedy songs,” “death discs” or “splatter platter” songs of the 1950s and ’60s, such as Leiber and Stoller’s “Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots,” Wayne Cochran’s “Last Kiss,” or Jan and Dean’s “Dead Man’s Curve.” Whether it’s a combination of lyrics and music, the phrasing, timing, or other element, I’m not entirely certain which of these keep the song in the public consciousness for the long haul. One thing’s for sure, this newsletter will be about music exploration; that is, we’ll investigate these matters more deeply in future posts.
Returning to Napier-Bell’s book and the story of Charles K. Harris, the author concludes that Harris did everything in his power to promote “After the Ball” from using payola (common at the time) to having it sung to bandleader John Philip Sousa, who liked it so much he had it played “once an hour at the 1893 Chicago World Fair where he and his band were in residence.” Napier-Bell underscores the popularity of the song when he writes [italics mine]:
Over twenty-seven million people attended the fair, equivalent to half the population of the USA, and by the end of the year the sheet music had sold over two million copies, an unheard of amount.
Now that’s an earworm.
And a far cry from that 85-cent check on the wall, no?
References:
“Anatomy of an Earworm” by Maria Konnikova (The New Yorker, 2014)
“After the Ball by Charles K. Harris” by Musicology for Everyone (WordPress)
“ABBA’s Essential, Influential Melancholy” by Barry Walters (NPR’s The Record, May 2015)
Thanks to S.W. Lauden, Kevin Alexander, Chris Dalla Riva, and Thea Wood for their editorial assistance.