Q and The Face:Narratives of consumption in the

UK music press in the 1980s

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Abstract

This article challenges the view that the use of consumer-based vocabulary in the music press is at odds with valuing popular music qualitatively. This is placed in the context of those who have written specifically on the music press including Forde (2001), Strachan and Leonard (2003) and John Stratton (1982) as well as some of the key figures in Popular Music Studies: from Adorno (1942) and Reisman (1950) to Goodwin (1988), Grossberg (1993) and Negus (1996). The piece focuses in detail on The Face and Q during the 1980s and includes a resume of the personnel and institutions involved. However, the main focus of the article is the textual analysis of both titles and, in particular, the interpretation of this in light of Pierre Bourdieu’s work in Distinction (1979). It is argued that while education and cultural taste are integral parts in the function of the music press, it is the reflexive construction of the self that is primary in the judgements made about popular music.

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Introduction

This article looks at the role of consumerism in the British music press during the 1980s and its function in the production of meaning. It focuses specifically on the way in which consumer discourse was incorporated into vocabularies for talking about popular music during this period and the implications this might have for the understanding of the music press in a wider sense. It is argued that while the tightening and corporatization of the publishing business has become synonymous with the constriction of debate in the music press (Forde 2001; Gorman 2001), the appropriation of consumer discourse into the lexicon of popular music criticism has offered new opportunities for the objectification of heritage and the articulation of cultural taste. For the purposes of this discussion I offer textual analysis of The Face (UK style magazine which ran from 1980 to 2004) and Q magazine, both of which were launched during the period and deploy very different strategies for the deconstruction of popular music as product. The article also makes reference to NME and Smash Hits: titles whose personnel were intimately involved in the shaping of both
Q and The Face. 

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A pdf of the article can be downloaded below: