Critical Sociology and Cultural

Domination: An Examination of T.W.

Adorno’s Critique of Popular Music

By
Tim Novak

Foundations in the Sociology of Culture

New School for Social Research

May 18, 2005

Introduction
For several decades now, it has been taken as received wisdom that cultural opposition is
somehow inherently embedded in the very fabric of popular music. Advocates for this view are
quick to cite the prevalence of genres like rock n’ roll, punk, and hip-hop as powerful evidence
indicating popular music’s political significance. Yet while this remains an attractive idea, it
nevertheless lacks a realistic appreciation of the degree to which the music itself functions as an
articulative system of symbolic meaning. To be more precise, most attempts to locate
contemporary popular music as a site of ideological struggle routinely neglect to adequately
account for popular music as music. Consequently, the tendency has been to favor forms of
analysis that connect a given song’s lyrical text to the development and reinforcement of broader
patterns of cultural resistance. Lyrical analysis alone, however, consistently fails to adequately
recognize the musical material’s powerful affirmative function. Without serious consideration of
the music itself, there is an inherent tendency to exaggerate popular music’s oppositional
potential. In order to fully appreciate the cultural effect of popular music, there needs to be a
taking into account of the complex ways by which the music (i.e., organized sound) itself
functions as a signifier of meaning. And on this question, it is the figure of Theodor W. Adorno
whose thoughts on music in general, and popular music in particular, continue to cast an
everpresent shadow over the seemingly endless debate surrounding the question of popular
music’s countercultural potential. That Adorno still occupies a central role in these discussions is
no doubt attributable, in part, to his famously uncompromising, often withering critique of
industrial capitalism’s debasement of music, in both its “serious” and “popular” forms. Adorno
can be seen in this way as applying specifically to popular music critical theory’s central
assertion that the proper understanding of domination in modern society requires the careful
consideration of the deeper social forces connecting culture to its production and reception.
Situating Music as Signifying Cultural Practice
The sociological study of music is, in essence, the study of symbolic behavior, both as it relates
to the music itself and as it relates to the broader cultural process according to which music is
ascribed meaning. And in terms of communicating symbolic meaning, the process is categorized
into representational and nonrepresentational modes of signification. Music is

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nonrepresentational in the sense that it cannot forge links to objects in the external world in the
way that language can. And even though words constitute the most obvious and important mode
of symbolic communication, they do not constitute an exclusive symbology. As John Shepherd
(1991) notes, although the rational, verbal objectivity embodied in language constitutes a
significant symbolic modality, “it does not follow that reality as comprehended through language
is more real than that articulated through other modes of communication...Different symbolic
modes emphasize different aspects of reality by reason of their different media” (79). This being
the case, it should now be possible to arrive at a working definition of music as a signifying
cultural practice. Accordingly, I’ll be turning to and expanding on the general theory of symbolic
interactionism developed by George Herbert Mead.
For Mead, symbolic meaning is conveyed through what he described as the “gesture.”
Gestures are defined by Mead (1977) as signifiers that become meaningful symbols “when they
implicitly arouse in an individual making them the responses which they explicitly arouse, or are
supposed to arouse, in other individuals, the individuals to whom they are addressed” (158). The
meaning of a given gesture emerges from a sequential process involving the symbolic interaction
between two actors. Meaning in this way originates from the threefold relation between phases
of what he termed the “social act.” According to Mead, the social act consists of the initiating
gesture of one actor, the adjustive response to that gesture by another actor, followed by the
resultant, or agreed upon meaning of the particular gesture involved. Thus by “taking the role of
the other” we come to appropriate the expectations and perspectives of those we interact with.
Most importantly, the meaning of the gesture is not inherent in the gesture itself, but rather the
meaning is a function of the gesture’s ability to evoke a shared response among members within
the same social setting. The crucial point is that through interacting in this way we are necessarily
importing the attitudes and values of the broader community into our symbolic discourse.
Consequently, by incorporating the broader community, or “generalized other,” into our
symbolic discourse, we can say that the symbolic meaning of any particular gesture is shaped by
cultural understandings common to the larger social group. Or as Mead (1977) puts it:
Gestures thus internalized are significant symbols because they have the same
meanings for all individual members of the given society or social group, that is, they

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 respectively arouse the same attitudes in the individuals making them that they
arouse in the individuals responding to them (159).
Although here Mead’s understanding of symbolic meaning is customarily restricted to
language as a symbolic medium, music, as I intend to show, is also an expressive form of gestural
meaning. Like language, music too is a sound stimuli that is initiated and predicated on social
interactions occurring within the context of a particular culture. As a result, symbolic meaning
reflects the social-psychological orientation of the larger society. In this way, Mead’s model is
consistent with Geertz’s (1973) observation concerning cultural practices:
Expressive symbols or symbol-systems have, then, at least on thing in common: they
are extrinsic sources of information in terms of which human life can be patterned.
Cultural patterns—religious, philosophical, aesthetic, scientific, ideological—are
programs; they provide a template or blueprint for the organization of social
psychological processes, much as genetic systems provide such a template for the
organization of organic processes (216).
And so with respect to music, we can say that the musical text works as a complex sound
stimulus (gesture), which is patterned with reference to dispositions and expected responses
drawn from within a given set of cultural constraints. By extension, we can think of the
musician/composer as a sound-producing actor articulating a sonorous-rhythmic code understood
within a particular context of meaning. This means that the organization of sound material takes
place within the context of a series of attitudinal adjustments, or “conversation of gestures,”
between composer and listener. Wilson Coker (1972), in his book Music and Meaning, describes
the process in the following way:
We may expect that in the complex creative process the composer repeatedly
assumes the role of various sorts of listeners so that he knows, in the only way
possible, what the force of each musical gesture is and what attitude each gesture may
seem to present to various listeners. By taking the role of listeners the composer
anticipates the impact gestures will have on others, and he isolates thereby gestural
stimuli and responsive sequences that he desires. And in this way the composer at
once exerts control over the probable behavior of listeners and determines the
meaning of his music. So we see that the composer may be expected to move through
the entire range of responses of which he is capable—next instinctual, next
rational—and he does so quite self-consciously and over and over again (in different

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 roles) to obtain exactly what he wants in the music’s personality (21).
Coker then goes on to stress that the process of putting oneself in the place of those others is
what makes the establishment of musical meaning possible:
The composer and listener utilize the music’s gestures as a medium...In musical
experience the composer, by taking the roles of performers and listeners, shapes his
creation so that it will implicitly arouse in himself a sort of response he envisions for
the others. In this way he determines the expressive impact of musical gestures and
embodies that expression in the music. Communication of the expression will be
achieved to the extent he has aptly gauged the responses of others and to the extent
that listeners and performers make corresponding efforts to take the role of one
making the gestures heard (21-22).
It is possible, therefore, to theorize that the social meaning of music results from the
symbolic interaction between the composer and listener such that over time the particular
ordering and patterning of sound come to reflect, in part, the cultural dispositions of the broader
culture. In short, music expresses general patterns of meaning, as it also shapes the culture. This
being the case, before moving directly to a discussion of Adorno, I’d like to work out the
ideological implications suggested by the mutually reinforcing relationship between society’s
prevailing patterns of meaning and the process of musical creation.
Conceptualizing the Ideological Dimension of Music
The extent to which musical practice evolves in a way that is anything but culturally neutral is
made clearer if we consider Harry Partch’s (1974) observation that “Music...has only two
ingredients that might be called God-given—The capacity of a body to vibrate and produce sound
and the mechanism of the human ear that registers it...All else in the art of music, which may be
studied and analyzed, was created by man” (xvi). In other words, certain assumptions of our
musical tradition, which we think of as universal, are far from being so. Organized sound cannot
escape the culture from which it is created. Recalling Mead, we know that symbolic meaning is
never impartial but rather is shaped with reference to the values held by the dominant culture. If
the connection between musical practice and society can be understood in this way, it should
now be possible to begin to address directly the question of how music as a signifying cultural
practice mobilizes sound in a way that can be described as ideological.

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 To the extent that musical creation emerges out of a process of choice-making within a
specified compositional framework, music can be understood to be the outcome of choosing
between available possibilities shaped to some degree by a set of limitations dictated by the
dominant culture. This process is detailed by Leonard Meyer (1989) in his book Style and Music:
Theory, History, and Ideology. Here, Meyer begins by defining cultural practice as “a replication
of patterning, whether in human behavior or in the artifacts produced by human behavior, that
results from a series of choices made within some set of constraints.” And these constraints are
“adopted as part of the historical/cultural circumstances of individuals or groups” (1). Hence,
musical creation is, in part, a matter of “habits properly acquired (internalized) and appropriately
brought into play” (10). And as such, musical practice reflects, and is subordinate to, dominant
discourses about the world. In this sense, one can think of the ideological properties of musical
practice as developing through the particular ordering of musical sound in accordance with
schemes of perception rooted in society’s prevailing world view. Perhaps nothing illustrates this
process more clearly than Max Weber’s analysis of music in the Western world. In both his well-
known study The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, and his lesser known analysis
contained in The Rational and Social Foundations of Music, Weber demonstrates that insofar as
Western culture asserts the primacy of instrumental rationality generally, Western music also
exhibits an overall tendency toward ordering sound in accordance with calculable principles and
hierarchical structures. According to Weber (1958), “Music of various kinds has been widely
distributed over the earth...but rational harmonious music, both counterpoint and harmony,
formation of the tone material on the basis of three triads with the harmonic third...all these
things are known only in the Occident” (14-15). Weber then goes on to posit that in subsuming
sound to rational-technical procedures, the resultant stylistic paradigm is one centered around the
fundamental tension between dissonance (the irrational element) and consonance (the rational
element). In this context, dissonance refers to unstable tonal constructs that demand resolution,
whereas consonance refers to stable tonal constructs that need no resolution. In practice, a
dissonance must be followed by a consonance, which acts to provide a sense of completion, or
rest. This tension results in sound being patterned according to clearly articulated principles of
strictly regulated successions of dissonance and consonance, or systematic movement toward

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resolution. Without these tensions “motivated by the irrationality of melody,” Weber (1921)
points out, “no modern music could exist...they are among its most effective means of
expression” (10). Thus, for Weber, the peculiarity of Western music is reflective of the overall
ideological thrust of Western culture. One way to illustrate this process is to consider the
alternating definitions of consonance and dissonance in Western musical practice. And although
the underlying operative logic of tonality toward greater and greater rationalization has remained
consistent, the underlying cultural assumptions concerning what constitutes either a consonance
or a dissonance has changed over historical time. As Charles Rosen (1976) explains:
Which sounds are to be consonances is determined at a given historical moment by
the prevailing musical style...Thirds and sixths have been consonances since the
fourteenth century; before that they were considered unequivocally dissonant...It is
not, therefore, the human ear or nervous system that decides what is a dissonance,
unless we are to assume a physiological change between the thirteenth and fifteenth
century...A dissonance is defined by its role in the musical language of the time (33).
This means that change in musical practice can be seen to derive from external forces
embedded in the larger culture. If musical practice ceases to accurately reflect the dominant
culture, composers can be expected to make compositional choices that will bring musical
practice back into alignment. Again recalling Mead, composers, through interaction with the
dominant culture, internalize these assumptions and make practical choices within prevailing
musical parameters that reflect and are in accord with the dominant vision of the social world.
Old practice will thus give way to new under the shifting pressure of the society’s prevailing
world view. In this way, the historical development of musical practice as it relates to changing
attitudes toward consonance and dissonance corresponds to changing cultural assumptions. What
this tells us, then, is that musical practice is arbitrary, it is not natural, universal, or timeless.
Weber’s detailed accounting of Western musical practice makes it clear that there is a determined
correspondence between musical practice and certain underlying assumptions unique to Western
thought. For its part, where music positions us cognitively, as a cultural practice it acts to
affirmatively mediate and to some extent restrict the frame through which we perceive our world.
Music, in effect, is a complex symbolic construction which when taken together with the totality
of cultural practices contributes, in part, to the establishment of the dominant culture’s vision of

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the social world. In terms of symbolic practices generally, therefore, despite appearances to the
contrary, they are, in fact, never neutral. John Thompson (1991) outlines the process this way:
Through the symbolic reproduction of social contexts, the meaning that is conveyed
by symbolic forms and reconstituted in the course of reception often serve to sustain
and reproduce the contexts of production and reception. That is, the meaning of
symbolic forms, as received and understood by recipients, may serve in various ways
to maintain the structured social relations characteristic of the contexts within which
the symbolic forms were produced and/or received (153).
By this account, musical practice can therefore be said to be ideological in the properly
understood sense of ideology as a taken-for-granted network of symbolic forms, that, whether
intentional or not, contribute to the maintenance and reinforcement of society’s dominant world
view. We can consider music, then, as part of a system of meaningful symbols whose ideological
significance stems form its contribution to what Raymond Williams (1977) refers to as the
“saturation of the whole process of living—to such a depth that the pressures and limits of what
can ultimately be seen as a specific economic, political, and cultural system seem to most of us
the pressures and limits of simple experience and common sense” (110). And on this, no other
theoretical project has gone further in explicating the ideological implications associated with
cultural production than that of critical theory. In fact, the critical theorists of the Frankfurt
School are properly credited with being the first to appreciate the extent to which the mass media
generally, and popular culture in particular, operate to sustain dominant ideological systems. And
specifically in terms of popular music, it is Theodor Adorno who, as an original member of the
Frankfurt School, put forward one of the most forceful and coherent arguments to the effect that
the capitalist market’s appropriation and monopolization of musical practice contributes
significantly to the wider process of securing ideological conformity.
Critical Theory and Character of Cultural Domination
The perspective of the Frankfurt School, and subsequently critical theory, is probably best
summarized in Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s (1969) Dialectic of Enlightenment,
originally published in 1947. At its most fundamental level, Dialectic of Enlightenment debates
the problem of the sorcerer’s apprentice who can no longer control the forces he has evoked.
“The fully enlightened earth,” Adorno and Horkheimer (1969) write, “now radiates disaster

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triumphant” (1). Throughout the text, Adorno and Horkheimer argue that during the European
Enlightenment, scientific reason was originally employed as a means to advance human freedom
by challenging dogmatism and unburdening humankind from political absolutism. However,
within the context of modern industrialized societies, Adorno and Horkheimer contend that the
scientific reason that underpins modernity no longer plays an emancipatory role but instead has
evolved into a new form of almost absolute domination. And as opposed to traditional forms of
institutional domination, today humanity is entrapped within social structures whose defining
feature lies in its fanatical devotion to technological-rational efficiency. Enlightenment rationality
is viewed as heralding the transformation of science and technology from tools for human
liberation to a new normative order dedicated to the primacy of the commodity form. In so doing,
Adorno and Horkheimer (1969) observe, the Enlightenment has ruthlessly “extinguished any
trace of its own self-consciousness” (4). As a result of this process, human subjectivity and
knowledge is subordinated to the domination of markets and soulless bureaucratic structures.
This process is expressed in terms of a “technological imperative” by which all relations derive
their validation from the degree to which they are instrumental in reproducing social structures
that function to sustain capitalist domination and control.
On the whole, members of the Frankfurt School thus try to show that we now live in a
society where the essence of our humanity is diminished by the progressive narrowing of social
experience to problems soluble within a capitalist, technocratic framework. Under the sway of
bureaucratized reason, the human being becomes, as Herbert Marcuse (1964) famously put it,
“one-dimensional.” According to this view, the resulting inability to imagine alternative
possibilities of a better society is increasingly suppressed. And Adorno and Horkheimer
emphasized that insofar as the so-called “culture industry” monopolizes consciousness, it is the
agent most responsible for bringing the perceptions of the society at large into compliance with,
and allegiance to, our own dehumanization. This point is effectively summarized by Adorno
(1991), who reflecting on his and Horkheimer’s original culture industry thesis, writes:
The total effect of the culture industry is one of anti-enlightenment, in which, as
Horkheimer and I have noted, enlightenment, that is the progressive technical
domination, becomes mass deception and is turned into a means of fettering

9
 consciousness. It impedes the development of autonomous, independent individuals
who judge and decide consciously for themselves …while obstructing the
emancipation for which human beings are as ripe as the productive forces of the
epoch permit (92).
For the critical theorists, therefore, the culture industry exemplifies the process according to
which the commodity form has come to penetrate all facets of social existence. So that
commercial culture, shaped predominantly by market and bureaucratic imperatives, is merely
imitative and reassuring of the surrounding world of false appearances. Making no demands on its
audience, the highly standardized products of the culture industry reinforce conformism by
presenting idealized images of contemporary society that swallow up defiance by artificially
reconciling all apparent contradictions. To be sure, culture in general has historically played an
important role in this process. Still, owing to the advent of large-scale mechanical and electronic
reproduction, the sheer ubiquity and repetition of the cultural commodity is viewed by Adorno
as contributing to an increase in the efficiency of the dominant culture to build and manipulate the
symbolic medium through which the world is comprehended. In films, music, literature, etc., the
prevailing motif is one of standardization. Mass-mediated cultural practices in fact embody
formulae that correspond to society’s deeper bureaucratic structure. What we call “culture” in
this way becomes one with the mechanizations of the culture industry. It thereby becomes
identical to the collective cultural tendencies of modern capitalist society itself, which it reflects
and automatically affirms.
Drawing on this perspective, particularly in terms of music, throughout his career, Adorno
(2003) steadfastly proclaimed that “Music represents at once the immediate manifestation of
impulse and the locus of its taming” (288). Because of this, Adorno devoted a large portion of his
thought to music’s unique potential as an agent of both affirmation and dissent. As for music’s
affirmative dimension, Adorno’s thought draws from a long-standing Western European tradition
which points to music’s unique ability to, as Plato once put it, enter, grip, and position us
emotionally by finding “its way into the inward places of the soul.” Guided by this prospect,
Adorno contended that the formal and tonal structures of contemporary mass-mediated music are
now indeed burrowing into the “inward places of the soul” in order to preserve and reproduce the

10
cognitive disposition required to sustain the ideology of modern industrial capitalism. As Adorno
sees it, consistent with any other product of the culture industry, the problem is one in which
music becomes just another standardized cultural commodity. Or as Adorno (1978) puts it, “The
role of music in the social process is exclusively that of a commodity; its value is that determined
by the market. Music no longer serves direct needs nor benefits from direct application, but
rather adjusts to the pressure of abstract units” (128). In other words, the distinction between
use-value (a concrete quality related to the inherent value of the commodity) and exchange-value
(an abstract quality related to the market value borne by the commodity) has, within the musical
structure itself, been obliterated by commercial monopolies that “have taken possession of even
the innermost cell of musical practice, i.e., of domestic music making” (129). As a consequence,
Adorno (2003) asserts that the logic of industry extends into the sphere of music itself. So that in
popular music, “the beginning of the chorus is replaceable by the beginning of innumerable other
choruses...every detail is substitutible; it serves its function only as a cog in a machine” (439-
440). Accordingly, in a kind of assembly line process, popular music making largely adheres to a
strict division of labor (i.e., composers, lyricists, arrangers, singers, musicians, etc.) and a high
degree of interchangeability between musical elements (i.e., stock catalogs of stylistic formulae
and clichés). And even as popular music, in fact, becomes more standardized, “pseudo-
individualization” disguises this process by making the popular songs sound more varied and
distinctive than they actually are. As a result, Adorno (2003) contends, the audience is taken in
by “the veneer of individual effects” (438). Pseudo-individualization in this way “involves
endowing cultural mass production with the halo of free choice or open market on the basis of
standardization itself” (445). As a matter of actual musical practice, not surprisingly, the final
product is a readily recognizable form of music bearing a close homological resemblance to the
instrumental imperatives of modern capitalism itself.
All in all, popular musical practices establish an aesthetic predicated on maximizing the sense
of instant identification and recognizability demanded by the market. In particular, Adorno
continually described such music as becoming standardized to the point that the listener is
rendered into a state of regressive passivity. The result, Adorno (2003) observes, is that
“Regressive listeners behave like children. Again and again and with stubborn malice, they

11
demand the one dish they have once been served” (307). And for Adorno (2003), the social
psychological function of regressive listening is that it acts largely as a kind of “social cement”
where the “meaning listeners attribute to a material, the inherent logic of which is inaccessible to
them, is above all a means by which they achieve some psychological adjustment to the
mechanisms of present-day life” (460). Popular music thus falls within a larger process of
cultural discourse that merges the cognitive disposition of the listener with modern capitalist
society’s dominant ideology. In fact, popular music is implicated by Adorno for playing a central
role in securing ideological conformity through its necessary reliance on a standardized and
recognizable template of tonal, stylistic, and formal devices. The ideological dimension of popular
music in this sense has to do with yielding to the pleasure of recognition, where the listening
subject falls into place and is incorporated into the perceptual apparatus of the “culture
industry.” As Adorno sees it, with popular music, the musical material is reduced to preferred
notions of social and cultural order congealed in sociomusicological codes whose contents are
incapable of sustaining a critical consciousness. This means that the ideological effect of popular
music is detrimental not so much because it expresses explicit untruth, but rather, its potency
lies, as Adorno (1967) once put it, in its “pretension to correspond to reality” (32). In the end,
therefore, Adorno sees popular music, and to a lesser degree “serious” music, as embodying the
objective representation of the Enlightenment’s false promise of liberation. Yet despite Adorno’s
apparent hopelessness, he does in fact devote a good deal of thought to constructing an
alternative vision. With this, Adorno envisions the possibility of mobilizing musical sound in the
service of negative critique. In what follows, then, I’d like to summarize Adorno’s aesthetic
theory, including a discussion of its relevance to the ongoing debate concerning the critical
potential of popular music.
Music as Negative Critique: Adorno's Aesthetic Theory
Adorno’s aesthetic theory, as with critical theory in general, takes up from Georg Lukács (1971)
the central proposition that in capitalist society a reified consciousness “stamps its imprint on
the whole consciousness of man” (100). Yet, in opposition to the sweeping Lukácsian conception
which envisions the birth of a revolutionary consciousness, the critical aesthetic instead aims not
at promoting a consciousness capable of realizing the progressive movement of human history

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but, more modestly, at a consciousness capable of affecting a break from the realm of utilitarian
necessity. Given this view, critical theorists concluded that artistic expression is, in important
ways, the last refuge in a world characterized by universal commodification. Conceding to the
virtual entirety of domination in advanced modern societies, Adorno in particular nevertheless
maintained faith in the potential of art to foster a critical consciousness. That is, even as the
“culture industry” swallows up defiance through processes of instrumental cultural co-option, it
also leaves behind traces of idealism in art, creating a space through which opposition can find its
voice. And it is in this space that the aesthetic dimension can uncover the falsity of appearances
and overcome ideological conformity. As indicated by Adorno, affecting this break is problematic
in light of the totalizing integration of the particular individual into the general apparatus of
instrumental reason. At the same time, if one accepts Adorno’s proposition that modern
capitalist society has brought forth new levels of dehumanization, any form of art that
contributes to the affirmation of this world would, in effect, represent a profound moral failing.
Accordingly, the task of critical art is to make people keenly aware of the discrepancy between
modernity’s false promise of self-realization and the reality of its spiritual deprivation. Seen in
relation to music, then, what is essential to critical aesthetic practice is its radical separation from
formulaic aesthetic experience. The work of critical music in this way functions by resisting
integration into any pleasing aesthetic totality. Instead, the critical work enacts an alternative
vision, which through its mode of expression negates the totalizing perspective of enlightened
rationality. Most of all, Adorno sees the critical aesthetic as a kind of mirror which is capable of
accurately reflecting, or objectively bearing witness to, the depth of human misery in modern
capitalist society. By giving aesthetic form to modernity’s nightmarish authoritarianism, the
critical work of art, in Adorno’s (1976) view, achieves its artistic end where “the purer and more
unalloyed its grasp of an antagonism, and the more profound its representation, the more correct
its posture as objective consciousness” (69). Therefore, Adorno insists that the authentically
critical piece of music is not one which “resolves objective contradiction in a spurious harmony,
but one which expresses the idea of harmony negatively by embodying contradictions, pure and
uncompromised, in its innermost structure” (678). That is to say, as Bill Nichols (1981)
helpfully describes it, the aesthetic sphere:

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 Need not function to confirm what is as all there need be. Instead, art preserves the
possibility that what is differs radically from what might be or ought to be. Art can
put ideology on display; in its liberating mode it helps us see afresh the pure
contingency of what otherwise appears as necessity. The veils hiding the tactics and
purpose of ideology are lifted (290-291).
Consequently, against the false harmonies of popular and affirmative music, Adorno defended
critical music by its ability to throw off false veils of harmony and beauty in favor of ugliness,
dissonance, fragmentation, and negation, all of which he believed provided a more truthful
reflection of modern society. And as far as Adorno (1973) is concerned, truth in art succeeds to
the degree that it maintains unreconciled opposites, so that the harsh reality of modernity’s
existential alienation takes upon itself “all the darkness and guilt of the word,” whereby “all its
happiness comes in the perception of misery; all its beauty comes in the rejection of beauty’s
illusion” (133). The resulting disruption of music’s stylistic and tonal expectations serves as a
powerful cultural critique through its abrasive reproduction of society’s deformations. Through
this process, music is able to carve out a sphere of cultural opposition by refusing specious
harmonization and reconciliation. Adorno (1973) makes clear this point when he writes that
music as a site of cultural resistance functions “more by its denial of any meaning in organized
society, to which it will have no part—accomplished by its own organized vacuity—then by any
capability of positive meaning with itself. Under the present circumstances, it is restricted to
definitive negation” (20). This being the case, Adorno often cites the music of Arnold Schoenberg
as being exemplary in this regard.
In contrast to the diatonic hierarchy of functional tonality, Schoenberg’s “twelve tone”
musical compositions are based on a “tone row.” This row, set, or series is a succession of the
twelve pitches of the octave in an order chosen by the composer irrespective of any
predetermined tonal hierarchy. That is, the musical material is organized in a way that avoids the
totalizing integration of the particular instance (i.e., tonal material) into the general series (i.e.,
recognized stylistic conventions). The material subsequently used in the composition itself is
derived from the continuous repetition of the series in changing rhythmic guise. In strict twelve
tone style, each statement of the row must be complete; a tone may be reiterated but may not
otherwise reoccur within a single statement of the row. The atonal result, not surprisingly, is

14
unrecognizable with respect to established Western musical conventions. The listener is never
prepared for what is to come next. Hence, in contrast to the reflexive reactions engendered by the
repetitive and standardized music associated with the contemporary popular music, Schoenberg’s
compositions are seen as a radically new departure for the listener. In a metaphorical sense, this
music represents a sonic paradigm in which the particular stands totally disengaged from the
general. By refusing totalizing integration, authentic critical expression offers an objective
embodiment of sound representative of the alienated dehumanization of the human condition in a
fully enlightened society. Or, as Adorno (1984) explains, “The terror that the music of
Schoenberg spreads ...does not derive from the fact that it is incomprehensible, but from the fact
that it understands exactly too much: it gives form to that anguish, to that terror and to its vision
of a catastrophe” (51).
As opposed to standardized music that comes to be seen as normal, universal, and timeless,
critical music gives aesthetic form to what is in fact profoundly unnatural (e.g., exploitation and
spiritual desolation). Against this surface illusion of normalcy, critical music’s power lies in its
insistence on subverting the recognizable and reconciliatory tendencies inherent in the musical
practices preferred by the dominant culture. In this way, the taken-for-granted nature of cultural
domination is thrown into question, which, in turn, enables art to carry out its critique. In actual
practice, this means that music as cultural resistance works by suggesting an alternative vision of
the world, altering or suspending our commonly understood perceptual orientations. The radical
aesthetic thus conceptualizes musical practice itself as having deeper oppositional potential
insofar as music, as opposed to lyrics, confounds ideological totalization on a deeper cultural
level. Seen in this light, dissent is described not as an alternative political ideology but, rather, as
carving out a space within which listeners are at least temporarily capable of recognizing their
own diminishing humanity. Ideally the critical aesthetic provokes the listener into becoming
cognizant of the necessity to bring about a better world.
Of course, in putting forward such an uncompromising view, Adorno’s categorical dismissal
of popular music’s countercultural potential still strikes most scholars and fans of popular music
as unnecessarily pessimistic. It is therefore perhaps not altogether surprising that many critics
today find Adorno’s conclusions on popular music both objectionable and unpersuasive. At the

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same time, notwithstanding Adorno’s exposition on critical aesthetics, it’s unlikely that the
aesthetic subversion of musical representation of the kind envisioned by Adorno can be achieved
with any degree of success within the musical framework of today’s popular music. Still, there is
a commonly expressed concern that it does not seriously seem to have occurred to Adorno that
certain kinds of popular music may also at times contain moments of genuine protest. This
argument reflects doubts over what is considered to be Adorno’s overly broad assertion that the
main split between affirmation and dissent is that between “uncritical, standardized” and “critical
unstandardized” musical practices. Is it possible, critics ask, that Adorno’s views made some
sense in the 1940s or 1950s when they were formulated but that certainly today there is a rather
large body of music with a significant audience that resists standardization? Indeed, the argument
is often made that rather than reflecting the level of homogenization described by Adorno,
popular culture today, specifically popular music, reflects a growing contingent of artists who are
becoming both more eclectic in their choice of musical inspiration and more independent in their
production of music. Another and related objection to Adorno’s relates to his insistence that only
musical practices that remain independent, or autonomous from the integrative demands of the
culture industry, are capable of providing any meaningful cultural critique. According to the terms
set by Adorno, in other words, mass-mediated musical resistance is, almost by definition,
impossible. Against this view, critics of Adorno often cite concrete examples of insurgent
tendencies found within the field of today’s popular music. Accordingly, it is argued, corporate
dictates do not inevitably mean that the work of musicians and workers within the media
industry in general can simply be reduced to and explained according to one instrumental logic.
To be sure, one can readily think of examples that, on the surface, appear to embody moments of
genuine protest, if not necessarily the critical aesthetic articulated by Adorno. Most listeners can
call to mind any number of popular genres that seem to embody opposition. For instance,
recently the hardcore metal band System of a Down somehow managed to get their strident
antiwar song “Boom!” into MTV rotation. Given the dominant culture’s apparent enthusiasm for
war, the lyrical content is indeed subversive, yet the musical material is in strict accordance with
the stylistic conventions and clichés that have come to define the hardcore genre. Likewise,
Eminem, whose lyrics have led him to be dubbed today’s most menacing rapper, employs a

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musical vocabulary firmly rooted in stock hip-hop formulas that convey a fabricated musical
militancy. Welcome though any protest may be, and recognizing the theoretical possibility that
popular music may indeed cultivate the appearance of opposition (i.e., opposition on the level of
lyrical content), Adorno’s concept of “pseudoindividualism” readily accounts for the illusory
power of what is, in effect, the representation of countercultural resistance. In fact, with
“pseudo-individualization,” Adorno (2003) reminds us, artists are provided with “distinguishing
trademarks...for differentiating between the actually undifferentiated,” wherein “popular music
becomes a multiple-choice questionnaire” (446). So while much of popular music’s reputation for
rebellion draws from a well-stocked buffet of strident sounding riffs and other stylistic clichés,
whatever the musical merits may be, authentic ideological critique is not one of them. Even
though artists and their record companies may go to great lengths to cultivate an image of
rebellion, a close analysis of the musical material reveals a standardized musical language that
ultimately evokes, to borrow Adorno’s phrase, the “halo” of opposition.
Ironically, by perpetuating the facade of cultural pluralism, popular “protest” music actually
constitutes a set of signifying practices that work to sustain society’s dominant ideology. For
example, when an anti-establishment artist like 50 Cent—who conjures the specter of urban
authenticity— shares a place on Billboard’s Top 10 list with a harmless pop favorite like Britney
Spears, to the casual observer, popular music might appear to be a field of discourse consistent
with a so-called “contested space.” However, in contrast to the appearance of opposition (50
Cent) to the status quo (Britney Spears), what goes unnoticed is that when the musical material
is reduced to its fundamental essence, both “opposition” and the “status quo” are musically at
least, one and the same. And by framing all competing definitions of reality within the dominant
ideology’s range, popular music’s “ideological effect” is achieved by reinforcing the “common
sense” perception that there are viable alternatives to what might otherwise appear to be a
monolithic cultural framework. Thought of in this light, it’s easy to see why Adorno’s analysis
continues to cause a considerable level of discomfort. This is not to say, as many claim, that
popular music is necessarily devoid of any artistic merit, but rather, given the relationship
between contemporary musical practice and its co-option by market imperatives, music judged as
authentic, or artistic, for all its virtues, doesn’t appear to offer a meaningful site of resistance.

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Conclusion
Critical theory’s theoretical project is characterized by its orientation to the cultural dimension of
modern capitalist society. In this way, critical theory’s primary contribution to the sociology of
culture stems from its explicit focus on the cultural means of domination. If, as critical theory
suggests, musical practice is understood in terms of the economic and cultural conditions
surrounding its creation, music itself can be rightly considered ideological, irrespective of the
lyrical text. Critical theory, in other words, calls for developing analytical categories appropriate
theorizing the musical text as a site of power, dominance, and resistance. Drawing on this
perspective, I have tried to demonstrate that since musical signification is always expressed
within the prescriptive constraints of the larger culture, it should nonetheless be plausible to
suggest that the music itself functions to in some way reinforce world views favorable to
society’s dominant ideology. Indeed, with the corporate domination of the means of cultural
production, and judging by what today passes as musical rebellion, Adorno’s prediction appears
to have, in part, come to pass. Obviously, it is impossible at this stage to estimate the causal
connection between popular music and the frightening level of mass conformity Adorno feared.
Still, it ought to be possible to accept Adorno’s focus on popular music’s “regressive”
tendencies, while at the same time holding to the realistic prospect that music itself still
possesses critical potential. In fact, one of the critical theory’s major contentions is that even
though capitalist cultural systems tend to work against creative expression by absorbing and
neutralizing all opposition, the stubborn impulse of the human spirit to ascribe meaning to
existence is still very much alive. Toward this end, music and the arts may never usher in any
sweeping social transformation, but as long as creative artists strive through their work to remind
us of our own humanity, we will never be completely defenseless against the degradations of
capitalist exploitation. In the end, of course, no one should expect that the instrumentalities of
domination will ever be entirely undone. But even Adorno, I think, would concede that however
formidable the challenge we confront, surely it is preferable to strive toward giving aesthetic form
to the reality we face than to live in the comfort of illusion.

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