Artists Don't Always Travel in One Direction
You Know It's Not the Same As It Was
Mark Rushton’s Interpolation in the Arts is a weekly email on Substack where I talk about my ongoing work as a recording artist and visual artist.
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This week’s topics:
Interpolation
Live Streaming on YouTube
Harry Styles - “As It Was”
Interpolation
New year, so I changed the name of this zine a little bit, from Perseverance to Interpolation.
In the world of heuristics, Interpolation refers to introducing something between two data points. It’s something like that. It goes into the extreme mathematical weeds pretty quickly for me. I am a fan of heuristics as a method of problem solving.
In the world of music, Interpolation refers to adding a portion of an existing melody or harmonic sequence into a new composition. This is something I do regularly, but only with my own music. We see this often in other forms. A lot of Christmas music is derived from Bach melodies. Or another example would be Britney Spears and Elton John’s “Hold Me Closer”, which is an interpolation of “Tiny Dancer”.
And I guess a variation of Interpolation in visual art would be like collage or remaking a photo into what you see above.
Live Streaming on YouTube
I spent most of 2024 making “live music” on YouTube, but I got tired of it and stopped doing it. Now I just make music behind the scenes.
Eventually, I realized that I missed live streaming my quicker art creations, like inking the processed photos, and talking about it.
So the other night I drove to Wallyworld and picked up a $139 Acer 315 Chromebook. It worked out of the box, connecting my camera and peripherals. Video streaming was smooth. I do need to get some foam for the headset microphone.
Harry Styles - “As It Was”
I really don’t know anything about pop music these days. I vaguely know who Harry Styles is - he’s very popular and was in some boy band. I did a search: One Direction. Don’t know any of their music. Don’t know any of his music.
If I hear music in public that sounds interesting, I use the Shazam app on my phone to identify it. Twice in the past week, it was Harry Styles.
The other song I heard by Styles was “Sunflower, Vol. 6”, which was at Michael’s when I was picking up some acrylic ink. The speaker was malfunctioning. I’m thinking, “Hmmm, that’s an OK pop song, kinda catchy. Who is this? And what does it sound like when the speaker system isn’t malfunctioning?”
As it turns out, “As It Was” was an enormous hit in 2022. The best-selling global single of 2022. Billions and billions of streams. Won a Grammy. 15 non-consecutive weeks at #1 in the United States and 38 weeks in the Top Ten. Yeah, it was kind of big.
Never heard it before. I live under a rock!
As I dug into it, Styles’ album Harry’s House was inspired by Haruomi “Harry” Hosono, who is the last surviving member of Yellow Magic Orchestra and has had a long solo career making “City Pop”, a very popular Japanese genre. I know who Harry Hosono is: he’s THE CROWN.
In 2019, Hosono remade his folky 1973 album “Hosono’s House” as “Hochono’s House”, a modern updating. I’m fully aware of this record and a fan of it. For my little audience here, I must present this song by Hosono called “Bara to Yajyu” - sung totally in Japanese. “City Pop” is a kinda funky 80s style. All I can think when I hear this is “extremely chilled-out Prince or Steely Dan”. I think it’s outstanding. Hosono was 72 years old when he recorded this gem:
Anyway, I’m totally surprised to read that some big worldwide pop star from England who used to be in a boy band is paying attention and respect to Harry Hosono, particularly his album from 1973. That’s way cool and maybe I need to listen to a little more Harry Styles.