Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00 <inaudible>
Speaker 1 00:05 is the annex a sociology podcast. I'm Joe Cohen. I'm Leslie Hinkson and give a Rossman today. Creativity, rejection, and collaboration in country music writing. Our guest is Rachel Skaggs from Ohio State University. Our discussion was recorded on Tuesday, September 10 2019
Speaker 0 00:24 <inaudible>
Speaker 1 00:29 and now we turn to Rachel Skaggs from Ohio State University. Rachel is a sociologist of culture and she recently published socializing, rejection and failure in artistic occupational communities in work in occupations. And I caught a killer presentation from her at this year's ash harmonizing small group cohesion in status in creative collaborations. How songwriters facilitate and manipulate the co-writing process. Is that outrage chiller or are you still sort of circulating it?
Speaker 2 01:00 <inaudible> December. So it's coming out in the SPQ special issue on the social psychology of creativity.
Speaker 1 01:07 Oh, it's a great thing. There's a ton of great material here, not just about country music or the music business or the, you know, songwriting, but also more generally the craft of cultural production, you know, to something that sociologists are deeply involved in and add a lot of turns. When I read your stuff I was like, oh, I can see the parallels between their world and ours. Like there's really along that you won. So first of all, welcome Rachel. Thank you.
Speaker 2 01:32 Yeah, glad to be here.
Speaker 1 01:33 Oh, we're thrilled to have you. Let's start with your work in occupations, uh, papers, socializing, rejection. Can you start off by telling us about the project and what you've found?
Speaker 2 01:44 Sure. So any Grad students listening will be happy to hear that. The stem from my ethnographic field methods class, but so this was a six month participant observation at a job club for songwriters. And so I went every week to this meeting of probably around 40 to 70 songwriters and a publisher. So a prominent person in the field who has the potential to cut their songs or the potential to at least get the songs to someone who could cut them. The songwriters all show up, they play a verse and a chorus of their song in front of all of their peers and the publisher. And then the publisher in real time says either keep or pass, so accept, reject immediately. So the paper is really about how people learn to deal with failure and rejection. So you're all dealing with failure and rejection. The vast majority of songs were rejected, I think over 80% so everyone's dealing with them being rejected from the thing that they thought was really great in front of all of their peers in the moment.
Speaker 3 02:42 So I have a question. I really enjoyed reading that piece and one of the questions that I had was, so did you choose your case because you said to yourself, oh my goodness, I think that this is just such a great for investigating how individuals are socialized to deal with rejection. Knowing that, you know, in the music industry is like, like everyone gets rejected or is it that you really wanted to investigate this case and as you were doing it, you found that one of like the one of the most important norms, right? Uh, or processes of socialization that you witnessed, had to do with, with rejection and how to deal with it and normalizing it.
Speaker 2 03:32 Yeah, absolutely. So I came in expecting to see this as a case of how do people aspiring members of an occupational community come to enter the profession. And I quickly found out that in my opinion, that wasn't happening. So the thing that was happening there was it appeared to be that this was an opportunity to get your material out there, to bring something you've been working on and get somebody from the industry to hear it and hopefully take it on, which we kind of be are entry into the profession or the occupation. And I just found that wasn't the case. I really expected that people would be building careers and getting to know one another and getting to know gatekeepers. But I found that there were so many boundaries around who could and couldn't talk to gatekeepers and that it must only be done within the structure of the club. That really rejection was the most salient and ongoing thing that was happening there.
Speaker 1 04:24 Hmm. You talk about normalizing rejection, what does that mean and how do you do it? Because if that's something that sounds like it's necessity necessary to survive in the music world and in our business too.
Speaker 2 04:39 Yeah, I think we all have at least some kind of mythological idea that artists are going to fail, right? Or that it's hard to make it as an artist. So I don't think anyone will be surprised to hear that most artistic products are fail to be accepted or fail to be successful. That doesn't mean that they're all bad. I think that that's something I have to distinguish between that. I'm not trying to make a value judgment on the quality of songs in this case, but yeah, absolutely. So, so that is the thing. It's like we all know that artists are going to fail, but to actually learn how to fail I think is really important for these people. I think especially in this, there are a lot of parallels between what we do and what they do because you put a lot of thought in energy and creativity and no really time into the things that that we're making. So whether that be a journal article or a song, the recording of a song. And so just learning that you will be rejected frequently and normally is I think key to maintaining just maintaining oneself in the profession. Because if you take failure, if you take rejection is something that's a stopping point, then you will not be able to enter the occupation. You will not successfully join the occupational community
Speaker 3 05:46 but extends beyond that, right? I mean it's not just that you have to accept, you know, rejection is part of it, but you have to accept it in a particular way. Right? So one of the things that I of course I couldn't help but like think about the parallels, right? But one of the biggest differences with us is, okay fine, there was rejection. You are actually allowed to to a certain extent. So number one, when you review, when you get reviewer comments, right? You're supposed to respond to revere comments, right? I think where things get kind of murky is when the is when it's not a revise and resubmit and the editor comes to you and said something like, well, based on the comments it may seem as though this should be an except or revise and resubmit, but blah, blah, blah blah. Right? What do you do then? And I think that different departments and different disciplines and different advisers will give you different advice based on different journals on how to approach that kind of that kind of thing with an editor.
Speaker 2 06:55 Right. And I think that's the perfect extension of what, what I found is that it's community specific, right? The way that people who are aspiring to join a community or maintain membership in a community, the way they deal with, with rejection or failure is really defined by the community. And it's oftentimes informal. So an advisor, an editor, someone giving you a comment on the side and not some formal pronouncement that you must respond to rejection in this way, but responding inappropriately is something that could damage your reputation and could keep you from getting to try again or getting to resubmit something or try at a different venue.
Speaker 1 07:29 So when you talk about normalizing rejection, what you mean is that everybody develops this sense that everybody's getting rejected all over the place and that it's not a stain on yourself to uh, no for something not to be picked up. And you're, you're saying that that's an important element on the path to becoming a professional is, is, is not overreacting to rejection.
Speaker 2 07:52 Yeah, exactly. And I think it was really salient for the songwriters in this job cup format because they might see 70 songs be rejected in one night and one song be accepted, right? And they can say, well, I liked that song and it was still rejected. Right. So I think that that's powerful. And I think that we do get that, that maybe something positive about the cohort model of training in our field is that, you know, you might workshop a paper with your peers and you didn't know that your peer had a good point or you know, that their study is strong in this way or that way. And so even though it gets rejected, when you hear that they got rejected or got an rnr that was was harsh, you can realize that that's a normal part of it. And that that's not a hindrance to, to one's career path as a whole.
Speaker 3 08:31 Yeah. But I mean, so there is one aspect of it, which is this normalization, right? But then there's this, there's this other aspect of it, which is like the legitimization of, you know, of uh, of the, of the criticism or of the, what is the word? I, I the word, I don't want to use this pronouncement, but because it so big, but the decision, right? Like who is this workshop person to be the arbiter of what should be rejected and what should be accepted. So it seems to me that that a very important aspect of this as well is sort of this socialization process whereby you're like, okay, I do not question the legitimacy of whatever taste maker or of whatever reviewer.
Speaker 1 09:20 Can I piggyback on that? Because can we attach that to what you talk about in your paper about interacting with gatekeepers just more generally?
Speaker 2 09:29 Right, right. So I think that these people in all, all people who are aspiring to join occupational communities have to learn how to interact with the gatekeeper again in a way that doesn't damage one's reputation. Right? So being able to interact in a way that doesn't get you marked as someone who's not adhering to the norms of the community is important.
Speaker 1 09:47 What's that like in, in songwriting? What are those norms?
Speaker 2 09:50 Yeah, so there's, there's one that I didn't talk about really in the piece, but the norm of self promotion is, there's a term for it in songwriting. So if you're being too self-promotional, you're someone who's over the top, always pushing your, your CD into someone's hand. It's called <inaudible>. So that's, yeah, g, h. E. R. M. You don't want to be a girl. And I'm not sure if that, that term has fallen out of favor, but for a long time it's been a popular kind of way to indicate that somebody is, is coming on a little bit too strong. So there's a right way to be collegial. And a girl being, you know, a girl would be somebody who might go up to the publisher at the end and say like, well you didn't take that song but maybe you'd like this one. And so that's inappropriate. And so knowing how to interact in, in a way that's formal and accepted.
Speaker 2 10:34 So one of the things that I found was that the songwriters are not supposed to email the publishers. And there was a huge profile full one week when someone did, someone followed up with a publisher, they'd had their song capped. So the publisher liked it and was going to take a second listen. And then it turned out that you know, nothing came of it, which I think was probably the modal outcome for <inaudible> for every song that was kept. And so instead of replying to the songwriter, the publisher cc'd, or maybe even just email directly, the director of the workshop and said, why is this person emailing me? So for the next few weeks, we all got lectures on how to not talk to publishers outside of the specific format of the job club.
Speaker 4 11:15 Hmm. Well, I mean it's a classic case of brokerage, right? We're one reason like we always think like brokers. Why would the primary one, it was the principal want to allow themselves to be manipulated by a broker. But you know, the answer, one of the big answers to that is because it limits the torrent of information, right? You don't want, you know, this endless parade of supplicants bothering you. Yeah. And so, you know, channeling it through the, uh, the song club, you know, it helps maintain and focus that flow of attention to certain specific times. And then like you're saying, there's this norm that effectively saying don't circumvent the broker. Absolutely. I know that gatekeeper has a whole term usage within, uh, the sociology of culture. But you know, it also does within networks here. And in this case, these are gatekeeper brokers in the sense that they're basically like the secretary in front of the bosses desk who doesn't let you go in and bother the boss unless you have an appointment. That's effectively the role that the club is doing and maintaining that norm that you don't just barge into the boss's office.
Speaker 2 12:14 Right. So not just when to communicate with the gatekeeper or the publisher in this case, but also how to, so that was one of the things is that kind of no retorts like if something, if you're rejected, you should not respond. You shouldn't say, well, you didn't listen to the second chorus or like, well you didn't, you know, there's no response there and that's the appropriate way, um, that they have to learn to deal with it. You can't backtrack or say you didn't hear it this way, that it, that never works out well for the songwriter.
Speaker 4 12:42 Is it that you're worried that doing that will endanger the group's access to the gatekeeper? Is that basically what's happening?
Speaker 2 12:48 I think that it's a question of the evaluation of the publisher. So it is subjective. It's not, there is no one good song or a bad song, there's a good song or the right song for the publishers, artists that are looking to plug the songs to. And so they might think your songs fine but not be able to use it or it's good enough but not great. And so I think that that pushback is a pushback on the expertise and taste of, of the publisher, which is not well received.
Speaker 4 13:16 Very interesting. Well, I, I just think it's interesting that, you know, effectively this is so I always lecture on the Hirsch model, which I see is like the fundamental model of the sociology of culture and you know, in some way, and you know, uh, Rachel's nodding so she knows what it's about. But for anyone who's listening who doesn't, yeah. So, uh, Hershaw 1972, it was one of the very first production of culture articles and he argues that you have to look at the entertainment industry as a series of, uh, choke points and at each point the modal experiences failure. So you have a bunch of songwriters who are trying to get their songs sold to, you know, a musician or a publisher or a label or something like that. And uh, he calls those people cultural distributors, right? So if you're going to host a publisher, that'd be a cultural distributor.
Speaker 4 14:03 And the modal response to a pitch is failure, right? You pitch your song and it doesn't get accepted. Only a minority of songs get through. And then the cultural distributors have the same relationship with the surrogate consumers, which are things like radio stations. So most songs that get released by the record labels don't get radio airplay. And then most songs they get radio airplay don't become hints. So basically you have the original artists who would be things like the songwriters. And then you have the cultural distributors would be people like publishers or record labels or movie studios. And then you have the surrogate consumers would be things like book reviewers or radio stations. And then finally you have the mass audience. And at each stage, almost everything fails. And, you know, I've always looked at this through kind of a, uh, you know, the 10,000 foot view of, you know, old graph it and you've got a power law distribution, that sort of thing. But you can lose sight of the fact that, you know, it sucks to be the, the, the stuff that falls outside the funnel, you know, that doesn't make it through. And so it's kind of a micro view of that phenomenon.
Speaker 2 15:07 Yeah. And that's why they have to learn it early on. Right. Because these are all aspiring people. They're not people who have had any, any level of success. And you're right, most of them will not. But to get to that next level, they have to learn that, you know, that that's the case, that they're probably not going to come out on the right side of the funnel.
Speaker 4 15:22 Yeah. And similarly, a, you know, past guests, Pat Riley in his ethnography of standup comedy, he, he says that the rule of thumb and stand up instead, it takes 10 years to make it, I'm not sure how long people expect. How long do songwriters expect to stay in Nashville before they give up and go home?
Speaker 2 15:37 Yeah. So that's changing with the kind of changing economy. So people used to say it's a 10 year town, so like if you make it, you get to kind of ride high for 10 years. But I don't know. I don't know that there's any kind of standard at this point. So the other paper is about successful songwriters, so people who have had high degrees of success in a variety of different domains, and even the ones of them who have, who've been around writing hits since the 80s. Um, it's still a struggle for them so that the failure never ends even for people who are Grammy Award winning, you know, number one hit writers.
Speaker 4 16:08 Yeah. That's very encouraging. Oh wait, wait. So while we're on the subject of like old veterans, so 17 needs bilbies work on a screenwriters. It shows that there's a certain amount of age discrimination in Hollywood that, um, studios don't like working with older writers. Uh, they, they, they're always looking for like the, you know, the wounds are canned. Do you have the same issue in Nashville?
Speaker 2 16:31 Yeah, I think so. And I think it might churn quicker for songwriters that for screenwriters. So the unit of a song is so small, right. And in comparison to, um, a TV script or a film script, so they spend about an afternoon or morning, maybe two days writing a song. So any one songwriter should be, if they're doing it full time, you know, writing dozens of songs every year. And so you can really kind of churn through people and ideas and trends much more quickly. Yeah. And so I think that that's where you would see that kind of bias against the old timers. But luckily the co-writing model and songwriting, at least in country song writing means that you, you can have the, the kind of craftsmen when it usually is a man, I'm in country, but this kind of craft brighter that gets paired up with the kind of new flavor of the month. Um, so right now that kind of flavor is the track guy. So the person who their instrument is a guy again. Um, but that uses a computer to come up with drum loops essentially. And so that's the, the kind of new new flavor that gets pulled in. But you still have to have the lyricist or the, the kind of generalist who can pull the song together. You can't just release the drum loop,
Speaker 4 17:40 I believe you on the overall stats. But it's funny cause the most famous example of a country songwriter turning out two songs in a single day, you know, very rapidly is a Dolly Parton
Speaker 1 17:50 road, Jolene. And, um, what was the other one? Uh, I will always love you on the same day. Yeah, yeah, that's totally fine though. Did you sell any songs?
Speaker 2 18:04 Me? Yeah, no, I got asked to go right though, aren't you? Sure? Do you want to write with me? No.
Speaker 1 18:12 All right. Well let's talk about collaboration because that's the topic of your, the second paper that I wanted to talk about today. You did a study of songwriters and, uh, their collaborations with musicians. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Speaker 2 18:26 Sure. Yeah. So, um, this is a paper, the first paper that's coming from my dissertation, so hopefully you'll have a lot more about it in the next few years. But this is, uh, one of the qualitative pieces of it. I did some statistical analyses from 2000 to 2015 and then on kind of what are the most successful songs during this time period. I mapped out the social networks of all of the co-writers who wrote those songs and then the artists who performed them. And then I interviewed on the basis of that sampling frame to really get at what's happening with collaboration in songwriting during this time period. So this paper is looking at, one of the big patterns that I've found that happened during this time period is it has to do with the digitization of music. So starting in 2000, you know that digital music piracy kind of accompanied this shift to a digital medium.
Speaker 2 19:16 Um, and now we see that through Spotify or through other kinds of streaming platforms, but really digital music has shaken up the industry to a point that essentially the record labels had to figure out how are we going to recoup money during this time period. And so they instituted a new kind of contract with recording artists. So when they signed a new recording artists, they signed what's called now a three 60 deals. So they own a portion of 360 degrees of what the artist creates. So that could be merged sales, if there's a special deal with concert venues where you get a portion of sales of mic ultra but not a bud light, they get some of that. But very importantly for what I'm interested in is that artists are now required to write a portion of their a songs. So they're required to own part of their copyright, which was not always the case. Yeah. So this is fundamentally reoriented the way that recording artists must write their own songs. So songwriters must be brought in as collaborators just in case the recording artist doesn't have the chopstick to get the song written. Yeah. And so this paper looks at that phenomenon. And so I talk to songwriters and some recording artists who are also songwriters about their collaborations and about the kinds of strategies that songwriters used to get around the fact that recording artists might not be good songwriters.
Speaker 1 20:35 And you talk about the norm of being a good hang. Can you explain that?
Speaker 2 20:40 Yeah, absolutely. So, um, songwriters are working in a reputational labor market, so it's important that you need talented, there's a baseline level of talent. But really the job is to sit around in a room together for a few hours and hang out. So you start the song writing the co-write as it's called by, you know, just saying like, how was your weekend, what have you been up to? And then hopefully you talk around in circles until you land on an idea that you all want to write about together. And then you sit for a few more hours and you hammer it out and try to come to some shared agreement on hopefully, uh, you know, a topic about like love or I'm saying, or the kind of overall line of human history and how we've gotten to this point. But also sometimes it could be about, you know, chapters and beers and um, but in general, like people aren't gonna co-write with you. Again, if you're not a good hang, if you're not someone who's fun to hang out with. So above even writing a good song, you want to be a good hang to maintain your network and have a good reputation. How does gender influence
Speaker 4 21:40 who gets to be designated a good hand?
Speaker 2 21:43 Absolutely. So women, you know, it's not as easy for them to be a good hang, right? Um, at least within the context of a very male dominated industry and one where songs are often written about those topics, like getting drunk last night or going out on a tailgate and taking your girl out with you. I have one songwriter who told me that there's not just a gender thing, but an age thing and again, an artist songwriter thing to wear. So he is a very established songwriter and had a recording contract a few decades ago. I don't want to be too specific, but told me that, you know, he's expected to write with young artists, and many of these young artists are women, but that he can't go to the back seat with them. Right? Like if you're writing a song about prom night, the song that he can write with a woman, a young woman, maybe a teenager can't go to the back seat. And so while that's something to think about from his point of view, especially in the context of the kind of me too movement and the fact that it's an informal job, right? There's no protections for either of them, but what does that mean for that woman and for the, for that young woman in the song she's able to write and the collaborations that she's able to make. So it is a very male dominated network. So the network patterns are very homogenous. Yeah. Toward men.
Speaker 4 22:56 So this one reminded me a little bit of the Lyle v Warner case where there was a lawsuit. This was actually parodied in, um, the comeback, which was Lisa Kudrow show. It was a real case where one of the writers or a couple of the writers on friends sued Warner Brothers for hostile environment sexual harassment basically because the writer's room was like, you know, hanging out at a frat party where, you know, the, the, basically the writers would make dirty jokes all day and stuff like that for hours and hours. And then they'd finally get down to writing the script. And Warner Brothers defense was that comedy writing. It's just not conducive to, you know, a professional environment that you kind of have to be a little bit rowdy and a little bit loose. And like even if, and one of the issues was that they would often make about anal intercourse and then the plaintiff was like, well, why do they have to make jokes about anal intercourse?
Speaker 4 23:50 When it turns out there was never a joke about anal intercourse on the show and it then Warner's defense, which the judge accepted was you don't know what the jokes are going to be about and make it onto the show. You have to have that degree of looseness to talk about things beyond what would be acceptable on network television in order to have that. So in this case, the, in l a it's very hard to say whether you'd get the same ruling 25 years later, but at the time the court ruled for Warner and said that you basically can have this pretty rowdy atmosphere, a specifically because it's a creative workplace, you know, and you know, you're talking about something in more recently, it's a different industry. You know, it can involve two people were two or three people rather than a dozen people, which could be a different dynamic, you know.
Speaker 4 24:38 Anyway, it just kind of reminds me of that and how it works. And I'm also thinking like, to what extent is a good Hayne about like, let's say that we buy the defendant slash judge's opinion in Louvie, the Warner that effectively a good hang as part of the creative process, you know? Or to what extent is it, well, I could write with you or I could write it with Joe and you and I could coauthor just as good as a paper, but I've known Joe longer than I've known you and so, you know, it might just be more fun even though the paper would be just as productive, you know? So effectively it's a form of consumption.
Speaker 2 25:11 <inaudible> yeah, I think that that, you know, I definitely identify with that and I think that I, I mean I didn't do ethnography, I did sit in on co-writing session, so I didn't get into kind of those specific things. But I think that that's absolutely happening, that you have people, you, you have to go beyond the context of what you're writing about to get the good ideas right or to to land on the thing that works. The thing that I think is a little bit different here is again, this inter occupational thing that's happening with songwriters, having artists in the room. So the songwriters might be the ones, the perfect, the groups of professional songwriters who are not trying to be the recording artists might be the ones who would be more analogous to the, the kind of past groups like you were talking about in that case.
Speaker 2 25:51 And I'm not, not even just in terms of the content of what they're, they're writing about, but just in general, this kind of camaraderie and group understanding or community sense of what they're doing. But bringing in this person who doesn't have the skillset necessarily, perhaps they do, and perhaps they could be trained, but artists who have a different goal, different personal branding ideas and a different even format of what makes money for them. So for songwriters, their songs make the most money if they're on the radio. But for recording artists, they make the most money by touring. So the song that does well on the radio might not be the same song that does well touring. So really just the entire collaboration is reformulated toward the goals of the artist and toward being a good hang <inaudible> artists has a good experience so that the artists, the valence of the emotion that surrounds that song for them and their memory contributes to them wanting it to be on the, because it was fun. And so every night when I perform it, I remember that I had fun. Right,
Speaker 1 26:48 right. Oh, that's clever. I have a question. How often in the songwriters view and in the view of your data, how often is the singer a positive force you think in the writing process?
Speaker 2 27:00 Yeah, so I think that everyone has an effect on the process. That's something that all of my interviewees were clear about, that it's not that anyone is kind of dead weight and not contributing. They talked about it as there's kind of an Arra in the room. Even if you say nothing, it will be changed by your presence. So there's this real sense that it is a product of the group and a product of the collaboration regardless of you contributed this and I contributed that. But yeah, I'm not sure if beyond did, was there any specific piece that made you
Speaker 1 27:29 no, I mean it's actually introduced an emergent phenomenon is what you're saying. You can't deconstruct it. It's like a moment is created and either it works or it doesn't is what I'm gathering.
Speaker 2 27:40 Yeah, I think that's the case and I think that a lot of writers would tell you that not every song does work. There are times when it doesn't happen and there are times when you're really like forcing the song and you're just kind of looking to like, you know, you're working for the weekend or working for 5:00 PM to come so that you can say like, well we got it. Like we got a demo tape done of this and now let's, let's go go about our way. So they won't, they won't all be good there. There's rejection. Even on the part of the people who are creating it. We're rejecting this one and going forward toward luckily let, if you were all good hanging, you had a good time together, you'll write again and maybe the next thought will be good.
Speaker 3 28:16 So this idea of, of the good hang and this is I and then I'll let it go. Right? Because this idea of the good hang, how much of that is influenced by, you know, sort of like the synergy, right? Or the chemistry between the song writer and the artist and how much of it is informed by expectations, right. So I mean just thinking about, you know, Gabriel's example, right? This idea that well there expectations of what a writer's room is supposed to look like and what it's supposed to be like in order to be creative based on who we've always had in the writer's room. Right. And so how much of what constitutes a good hang is also dependent on sort of like these industries specific expectations of what creativity is supposed to look like. What collaboration is supposed to look like and what a good hang as supposed to look like.
Speaker 2 29:12 Yeah, I think a, a first kind of answer to that is just how the co-writing groups come about. So a lot of times the first time that a group comes together, it'll be kind of a constructed group that publishers will actually calling get on somebody else's calendar. So like, oh, we're going to write with this famous artists, we've got a space on his calendar so we're going to get together. So there may not be that synergy there at the first, you know, the first meeting. And so that's why they spend so much time at the beginning talking about like, well tell me about your daughter. I'm going to look at a picture of your dog. And that's great. Yeah. So, so you have all of this kind of buildup and and kind of time that, that people have to really spend getting to know one another.
Speaker 2 29:49 But I do think that you're right, that there is some expectation around what it should be like. And I don't think it's quite that it probably can get rowdy sometimes, but I think it's more, do you know the, the rooms that they write in are really small and it's all kind of like, you're, you're together in this room and you've got the door shut, you have a guitar and your iPhone is recording, you know, you're recording the interactions that you're all having. And so I think that the goal there is to have a kind of transcended moment where there's a lyric to a song called 16th Avenue that's about songwriters in Nashville. And one of the lines says, I'm a golden w word rolls off of someone's tongue. And so I think that that is kind of the ideal is that you have this moment of collective kind of transcendence. So where you get this, this thread of truth or this kind of universal idea that centers your thought, and that's not always going to happen, which is what leads people to take on these kinds of strategies to make the artists feel like they're contributing to that even when they might not be <inaudible>
Speaker 5 30:43 <inaudible>
Speaker 1 30:48 you've been listening to the annex sociology podcast, a special thank you to Rachel Skaggs from Ohio State University. We're on the web socio cast.org/annex on Twitter at <inaudible> and on Facebook, the annex sociology podcast. Our producer is Liz Seth Merino. On behalf of Leslie Hickson and Gabriel Rossman, I'm Joe Cohen. Thanks for listening. Bye Bye.
Speaker 5 31:14 <inaudible>.
