Sometimes these social media “experts” tell us why they are “experts” in the field of music analysis. In every reaction video Maggie Renee does on YouTube, for instance, she makes sure to tell viewers, some of whom vote via polls on Patreon as to what piece of pop music Maggie Renee will react to next, that she is a Juilliard trained opera singer and this training at one of the elite music schools in the United States, along with her opera performances in less well known regional opera companies, something noted on her personal website, makes her an “expert" in the field of vocal performance. In her welcoming video to her YouTube page Elizabeth Zharoff, The Charismatic Voice, says she has degrees in voice, opera, and music production, According to Wikipedia Zharoff graduated from Oberlin and Curtis (also see her recent “My Story and Where We Go From Here” YouTube video where she recounts her burgeoning interest in pop music and shills for funding for her research). In her welcoming video to her Virgin Rock YouTube page Amy Shafer, LSRM, FRSM, and RYC, tells us that she is a trained harpist, pianist and teacher, and director of piano studies, and assistant director of harp studies at the Harp School, Inc. On rare occasions these “experts” tell viewers that they still have a lot to learn about both classical and popular music. Capili for instance, notes that she is a young Gen Z opera singer in training and, as a consequence, still has much to learn about the ins and outs of musical and vocal performances, something rare and refreshing in the social media world as far as I can tell from two years of ethnographic study of the medium.
Many of these reactors also use their YouTube pages to promote themselves and their careers. Virgin Rock, for instance, on her YouTube welcome page, offers viewers the opportunity to study one on one with her. The Charismatic Voice posts videos asking for monies to support vocal research (“The Most Important Video You Will Ever Watch”). Beth Roars’s "Symphony of 131 Nations” shows her performing this symphony with others presumably representing the 131 nations referenced in the title of the piece.
What is remarkable about several of these trained experts in music performance and composition, from whom one can indeed learn much about vocal performance, music performance, and music theory, is that so many of them appear to do little research on the music and the musicians they are “reacting” to and “analysing” and several of them seem to have little sense of popular music history. Interestingly, they also tend to ignore issues of technological manipulation including pitch correction and live not live “musical” performances, both of which are quite common in the world of pop music today, making one wonder whether this lack is a product of the fact that they don’t want to offend their revenue generating audience, most of whom, I suspect, are fan boys and fan girls rather than dispassionate analysts, with the truth (see Zharoff’s "My Story and Where We Go From Here" video retrospective on YouTube). I was recently reminded of this lack of historical knowledge and attention to historical context when I watched Shafer’s reaction to the 2001 System of a Down song “Chop Suey”
Shafer admits during the course of her reaction video to “Chop Suey" that she was confused by the song’s lyrical content. She gets the dynamic alterations in the song and comments on its alternation between its more folkish and calmer moments and its moments of speed and intensity. In the video Shafer mistakenly assumes that the song is parodic and humorous, a mistake that could have been avoided if she had actually done a bit of research on the band and the song before jumping off of a contextless hermetic interpretive cliff (the music studies variant of literary studies', film studies', and television studies' crystal ball textualism). Research could have revealed to Virgin Rock that System of a Down have been deeply influenced by Armenian folk musics, so she could have added heft to her been more general the statement that the calmer moments in the song have a folk like quality. Research might also have enabled her to grasp the biblical references ("Father into your hands I commend my spirit”, Luke 23:46) in the song, something that points up the fact that so many today no longer get a well-rounded humanities classical education which might enable them to grasp historical references including those from the Christian Bible. Additionally, research might also have enabled Shafer to understand that the title of the song was System of a Down’s response to real or perceived record company resistance to the original title of the song, "Suicide" according to one of the members of the band, or “Self-Righteous Suicide”, according to the producer of the record. “Suey”, (which band member Serj Tankian is seen presumably eating in the official video), one of the band members said, is suicide chopped in half. Knowing all of this might have helped Shafer understand the serious intent of the song and to better grasp the serious nature of the song’s dynamics. And it is so easy to do in the brave new world of digital media like the internet.
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