I really shouldn’t be telling you about this, but I was tasked at work recently with picking tracks for a ‘corporate CD’ that my company’s parent company is putting together. “Pick five tracks that represent your company’s values” is the brief. Ho ho, “Money Money Money” and go from there, eh? Except, in the manner of one of those Channel 4 Top 50 polls, a ‘music consultant’ had been hired by someone, somewhere to come up with an approved list of 42 songs for us to pick from.
The results showed the wit, intelligence and attention to detail that the corporate world has become justly famous for. “Liberty X – Ain’t Nobody Better Than You”, to represent ‘excellence and uniqueness’. Well, OK, except the name of the track is “Being Nobody”, which suggests uniqueness somewhat less. Coldplay’s epic-neurotic “Clocks” has what to do with ‘dedication’ exactly? I mean, dedication in a positive way?
And there was one genuine black chuckle to be had as the Rolling Stones turned up in the ‘connecting people’ section – with “Sympathy For The Devil” (hopefully renamed “Pleased To Meet You”!!). Other selections strongly indicated that the music consultants had just thought “fuck it” and put on tracks they liked – Sigur Ros? Bloc Party? It beats “Simply The Best” I guess (though avoiding cliche wasn’t part of the brief – “We Will Rock You” shows up).
The sad fact is that pop music and the business world gel poorly, because pop wriggles out of any obligation to instruct or inspire you might put on it. Put any song in a presentation or giveaway CD and both song and occasion are instantly belittled, mocking one another. “Selling out” isn’t in it – pop simply isn’t fit for purpose. A man I worked with a couple of years ago had a dreadful habit of stuffing his presentations with achingly respectable Mojo rock (Automatic-era REM and suchlike) – from the second each track began it might as well have been Tina Turner.
The current generation of bosses – men and (occasionally) women in their mid-late 40s and up – are devoted children of the rock era: I have worked now for two men whose favourite band ever was The Clash. It’s not that business people don’t understand pop music, it’s not that pop isn’t wholeheartedly a business, it’s that the two have established completely separate cultures and modes of performance, and efforts to marry them – at least on the business side – seem to me almost invariably lame.