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The evaluation of popular music in comparative perspective: the use of high art and popular
aesthetics in American, German and Dutch popular music reviews
Introduction
Research on newspaper coverage of different art forms shows that popular music is one of the cultural
forms that has gained most in editorial space in newspapers (Janssen, 1999). Taking editorial
prominence as an indication of the status of a cultural genre, such research suggests that popular music
has increased considerably in status and artistic legitimacy. Yet preliminary results of a cross-national
comparison of editorial space indicate that the increase in newspaper attention to popular music has
not been the same in all countries (Janssen et al., 2005). Compared to Dutch and American
newspapers, German newspapers have been less inclined to incorporate popular music in their cultural
repertoire, which seems to suggest a more stable hierarchical cultural system, or at least a more
exclusive focus on traditional high art forms.
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Among questions this research has not addressed,
however, is how this growing ‘pop discourse’ differs cross-nationally in its evaluative repertoire. Do
critics vary in the way they write about popular music? Do they exhibit national repertoires of
evaluation? Our objective in this paper is to contribute to such questions.
Cross-national differences in cultural reception has been one of the most interesting
comparative research questions resulting from the application of Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital
outside France (Peterson, 2005). However, as Holt (1998, 1997) has argued, the predominant use of
quantitative methods has implied a narrow focus on ‘objectified tastes’, thereby losing sight of
Bourdieus’ emphasis on ‘embodied tastes’. Researchers have mostly been concerned with the question
of ‘what’ kind of cultural goods are liked and disliked, and less with the question ‘how’ and ‘why’
they are valued. Noteworthy exceptions are studies by Halle (1992) and Long (2003, 1986) who have
studied patterns of evaluation in the US that run counter to Bourdieu’s description of the workings of
‘legitimate taste’ in France. These studies suggest that in the US high culture is valued in an ‘informal’
way, emphasizing emotional and experiential dimensions over the intellectual aspects of the aesthetic
experience. According to Lamont (1992:120-123) these differences in evaluative repertoires between
France and the US are indicative of cross-national differences in the strength of cultural boundaries.
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