It’s schlock music, according to Jody Rosen, who pens an impassioned defense of a tradition that “has given us our most indestructible songs, a tradition as time-honored, as sturdy, as it is maligned“:
Schlock is music that subjugates all other values to brute emotional impact; it aims to overwhelm, to body-slam the senses, to deliver catharsis like a linebacker delivers a clothesline tackle. The qualities traditionally prized by music critics and other listeners of discerning taste — sophistication, subtlety, wit, irony, originality, “experimentation” — have no place in schlock. Schlock is extravagant, grandiose, sentimental, with an unshakable faith in the crudest melodrama, the biggest statements, the most timeworn tropes and most overwrought gestures. Put another way: Schlock is Rodgers and Hammerstein, not Rodgers and Hart. It’s “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” not “Manhattan” and “My Funny Valentine.”
The word comes from the Yiddish shlak, “meaning secondhand, or damaged, goods”:
Schlock has a close relative in another Yiddishism, schmaltz — a label often given to music that is swamped by goopy sentimentality, as a roast chicken is swamped by rendered fat. Much schlock music qualifies as schmaltz, or is at least very schmaltzy. But schlock is a broader category than schmaltz; it makes room for songs that are grandiose but less reliant on lachrymose sounds and sentiments. (Toto’s “Africa” is schlock but not schmaltz, concealing its torch-ballad bombast beneath a placid easy-listening arrangement.)
Other terms are sometimes used interchangeably with schlock: kitsch, cheese, camp. Schlock contains elements of these, but none are true synonyms. Schlock is more dignified than kitsch like “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” or Red Sovine’s tearjerker trucker ballad “Teddy Bear.” It is weightier, more substantial, than pure pop cheese like the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” or novelty-song cheese Los del Rio’s “Macarena.” And while certain listeners embrace schlock, with both affection and condescension, as camp, schlock itself is allergic to the irony that is a prerequisite of camp. A karaoke singer might perform “The Rose” or “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” or “Kiss From a Rose” as a campy sendup, but Bette Midler and Poison and Seal take those songs seriously — offer up those roses on bended knee.
Schlock is earnest and solemn; it’s ambitious and aspirational and exalted. It shoots for the moon or, at least, for the penthouse suite.
(Video: “Until the Night,” Billy Joel’s surprisingly singular mention on Vulture‘s list of the 150 greatest schlock songs)
The Dish 