It's impossible to take away popular music from social conditions and cultural theory. One of the earliest academic writers to consider the importance of popular music was T W Adorno; he refused to draw distinction between high and popular cultures, describing them as "torn halves of integral freedom, to which they do not add up". *

Writing from the nineteen forties though to the seventies, he was a member of the Frankfurt School of Marxist analysis, and with Gramsci, Althusser, Benjamin, Lukacs, Bloch and others he is often referred to as a Western Marxist. These groups have been influential in developing Marxist ideas to reflect and critique a world increasingly moulded be modern consumer capitalism - but, it must be said, often in terms that suggest that the entire planet is a homogeneous whole, and which tend to privilege understandings about the most developed societies at the expense of marginalizing or ignoring the experiences of others. Adorno moved to the USA in the late thirties to escape the Nazis, he brought a very European frame of reference to his writings and his

In 1941 he wrote that music was social cement, pop music was received by the masses used to fill their minds to stop them thinking about higher things. In fact in this day and age we still think that higher music is better, this is a social implant that we still believe in. Popular music is till used as a social cement it's a common language or group identity, it fills your mind and stops you form thinking about anything else, one can say we are all victims of social implant.

This proves that in some people's opinion that Adorno could have been wrong in his theories of standardization, pseudo-individualisation, and social cement, in which he classed all types of music without any exceptions. However, on hindsight Adorno has been proved right by the thousands of songs that have been written using the exact same chord structure and song form, thus proving he was correct in some ways. We could not start to think clearly about popular music without first having to read and understand this article, whether one agrees or disagrees this was the first article to ever question the social implants the public had been believing for years.

However with regards to the article that Adorno one could say that you either agreed or disagreed with Adorno, one could say that it tied a link between political economy and culture, thus meaning that the article Adorno wrote was not just about music it was about the effect that politics had on people and how the music reflected the class system. Adorno when writing this did not look at rock and roll, these types of songs did not challenge political or cultural theories they were really only anti-parental. So one could question how this would stand with regards to Adorno's statements. However, one could say that maybe these views and criticisms were relevant around the time that it was written but when comparing them to today's music it would be completely disregarded, this is because of the amount of music of differing styles that is around today. Also songs about revolution and drafting are questionable as these songs were not about social cement, also as more people were getting a university education they didn't think they were being controlled by the government, they wanted their own point of view and own opinions i.e. the protest movement when popular songs became anti capitalist.

Some common words found in the essay are:
Robert Waltzer, Richard Middleton, Communist Manifesto, Pan Alley, Popular Music', Western Marxist, popular music, , social cement, Trade Unions, Simon Firth, Marx German, popular music', music social, 'on popular, 'on popular music', popular music wrote, wrote music, political economy, adorno wrote, wrote article, music adorno,
Approximate Word count = 1581
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)