What Does My Music Library Say About Me?

A Rebuttal to the Personality Link

William Sundwick

Ever since I can remember, I’ve liked listening to music. My childhood was spent with a father who was a failed violinist in his youth. (He became an engineer.) But, while he never played for me, he was totally dedicated to the classical, mostly 19^th century, orchestral catalogue. He took off from Paganini and didn’t stop until Heifetz. Listening to music was very serious business to him. It was clearly emotional. I inherited the emotional content, if not the literature.

For me, dramatic always trumped soothing. Heavy was generally better than light. I adored Beethoven -- a love shared with my dad. Schumann, Berlioz, Brahms all get honorable mention. I liked the Russians, too – along with my mother – father not so much (no violinists).

Something happened to me culturally, however, when I got to high school, and obtained a driver’s license. With a little help from my friends, I discovered top 40 radio in the car. It became a social thing. My previous group of friends, intellectually precocious New York Jews, with holocaust survivor parents, had aided and abetted my classical predilections up to that point -- although none of us ever played an instrument. Driving around listening to radio in the car became a liberating experience. Independence at last!

Social acceptance changed tone in college. There, the driving force seemed to be “what’s new.” And, then, what would come next. Thus, the avant-garde invaded my mind, with musical, artistic, and theatrical dimensions. Grafted onto that avant-garde sensibility was social awareness of a different world – an underclass world of black people. Blues and avant-garde jazz were, in my mind as a college student, part of the same “movement.” I had already gained an appreciation for the left from my New York Jewish friends in high school – college gave me the chance to integrate all that into an aesthetic that would become my own.

I still listened to classical music in college but replaced the 19^th century romantics with baroque and more 20th century artists. I liked Shostakovich and Prokofiev symphonies.

After college, it became clear that the future lay with rock music. It was symbolic of the age, and drew from a fabulous, beautiful history of the great migration from the South to the industrial Midwest. Urban blues became my music. As it transmogrified into Chicago Blues or British Blues, it seemed to be part of an evolving tradition. A working-class artform.

I, too, became a worker. I may have been an intellectual worker, but a worker, nonetheless. Adding to that, I was slow to develop intimate relationships – adolescent “sturm und drang” didn’t disappear from my psyche until my late marriage at 35. By that time, I was dedicated to Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. The revolution was still coming – in the future.

If there is anything at all to the psychological studies which claim to correlate musical tastes with personality, I might confess being a “systemizer” more than an “empathizer” – like my engineer father. This does tend to support the basic genres of music I like best. I prefer complex melodies and rhythms, and intense music.

One parameter for musical taste which is clearly bogus in my case is age. I’m still discovering new musical genres at age 71. I have only recently become a fan of heavy metal and punk/post-punk. It says something to me which is as valid now as it was when I was 20 or 25. I’ve never rejected my roots. Sadly, I never participated in creating music. But I still appreciate it.

Today the only time I listen intently to music is at the gym. This means I associate my music library with biofeedback (cardio) and may even use it for “productivity enhancement” (makes me pedal harder). This is a departure from my youthful serious listening, although that listening mode is still imprinted in my emotional affect. I still like sad songs (blues), especially when linked to social alienation and emancipation. I continue associating avant-garde with class struggle, opposing the mainstream.

When music stays “underground,” it is better than when it is commercially successful. I’ve never liked “soothing” or “easy listening” music of the pop world. I reject overly sentimental music, as it cheapens my own emotions. And, I steadfastly reject music with a conservative social message. Commercial Nashville usually epitomizes that -- although I still enjoy some Rolling Stones anthems like “Ruby Tuesday” or “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” (both examples of Keith Richards lapsing into extolling market capitalism’s virtue).

Blues is good. The purity and depth of its sentiment is real. It’s mostly about struggle, as I see it. The world of rock, whether blues-based or more experimental (like heavy metal), strikes me as great when it features virtuoso musicians – vocalists, guitar players, drummers, especially. Harmonica and tenor sax can often give an extra treat to the ear, as well. They contribute a plaintive tone to a song.

But the beat must remain predominant. Even in experimental electronic forms, there must be an underlying regular, repetitive beat. Sometimes the beat gets lost but is heroically rediscovered in the denouement. Zeppelin were masters of this, especially “In My Time of Dying” and “Dazed and Confused”. “Noise rock,”  like Sonic Youth, has tried the same approach – the beat must be at the heart of the song, even if lost in the middle.

Rock anthems continue to have an appeal to me. They seem to be hymns, crying “we shall overcome someday.”  Often, they take the form of a personal story, but sometimes they preach. The underlying emotion is hopefulness, with a dash of triumphalism – arrived at mostly through resistance to malevolent forces. Two of my favorite anthems are from the Rolling Stones: “Gimme Shelter” and “Midnight Rambler.” The former is the preaching style, the latter more bluesy.

The singer-songwriter folk tradition also contributes much to my music library. But always a folk-rock beat and instrumental backup is added. Mumford and Sons made a big impression on me when they entered the scene about ten years ago. Banjo replaces lead guitar on their first two albums, but it’s unmistakably folk rock.

The main reason I can’t buy the link between personality and musical tastes is that my tastes are way too varied to be pigeonholed. Why would I want to define who I am, anyway? Different studies have come up with different dimensions of personality and music – there is an “extroversion” scale where the most outgoing folks like the music I like, but the introverted folks also like some of the music I like. The “neuroticism” dimension in different studies concludes that people who rank high in neuroticism like totally opposite kinds of music. Go figure.

I think it’s not about musical genres, but more the socio-cultural tradition you live in that determines your musical taste. Mine has been developing for 71 years. There’s quite a history behind it. If I share it with nobody else, I don’t care.

Selling an Old Name to a New Demographic

Cadillac’s “Break Through” Campaign and the GM Malady

William Sundwick

Picture, if you can, the typical Cadillac of the 1990s. It was probably a De Ville or Fleetwood Brougham. Big, posh, a veritable land yacht. There was the elegant little Allante sports car and, by 1999, the Escalade truck, but nobody at Cadillac had discovered how to market these aberrations to the Florida retirement community consumer, the demographic best understood at the time.

Cadillac needed to discover younger buyers – boomers in their fifties, not the retirees of the “greatest generation” purchasing what might be their last car. The target customers were buying BMWs, Volvos, Mercedes, then Audis. Why? There were many reasons, but marketing was a big one.

General Motors was, indeed, beset by some deep structural problems in the nineties. Fixed costs (both labor and capital equipment) were eating into profits. And, a series of strategic decisions beginning in the sixties had the effect of hollowing out the engineering pool needed for product innovation. Reorganizations, especially the BOC-CPC structure of 1984 (Buick-Olds-Cadillac/Chevrolet-Pontiac-Canada), exacerbated the decline of both quality and engineering creativity.

But, it was the gradual disappearance of its traditional customer base that was the Cadillac brand’s specific problem – it was an actuarial issue. Cadillac buyers may have been drawn to the brand going far back into their collective memories. But, frankly, they were dying off. The affluent younger greneration in their fifties and early sixties, whom Cadillac needed, was underwhelmed by Cadillac’s “standard of the world” slogan, dating from the 1910s. The Cadillacs they saw now belonged to their parents’ cohort.

Boomers were getting press in the nineties and aughts because they seemed to have a very different ethos than the generation before them. They were cast as a “Peter Pan Generation” –  refusing to grow old even in middle age. They were attracted to the edgy, the independent, the counter-cultural. Their classic rock music had stuck, their fitness fetishes caused gyms to sprout on every corner, and women were now as likely as men to be in the appropriate economic strata. These led to clear preferences for smaller, more agile, cars. Many boomers were now reaching the level of personal financial resources that Cadillac marketing was pursuing.

Enter the “Break Through” campaign – its first TV spot was at the 2002 Super Bowl. Rumors had been circulating in the advertising world of an undisclosed princely sum that Cadillac had paid for the rights to a 31-year-old Led Zeppelin song, “Rock and Roll.” It became the centerpiece for an advertising campaign that would last five years before it was finally pulled. There were several TV commercials featuring the song, which became indelibly associated with Cadillac, even among those aficionados who knew the song previously.

The new, naughtier, image that Cadillac was trying to create was not all smoke and mirrors. GM revamped the product line in serious ways – with the small CTS sedan, an entirely new platform for the larger STS, and in 2003, a Cadillac “Corvette,” the XLR.

Both Robert Plant and Jimmy Page thought the licensing terms fair. It was the first song they had ever licensed for a TV commercial. It may have been the first time ANY song from the “classic rock” period was licensed for a TV commercial.

There were other fronts in the campaign besides the music and TV commercials. The automotive press was regaled with track competition for Cadillac models (last seen when Cadillacs competed at Le Mans in the early fifties). The CTS-V, with its supercharged Corvette V8, was dubbed “world’s fastest production sedan” after besting all competitors around the Nurburgring Grand Prix circuit. Indeed, it set a record for lap time at that German course in 2008.

More of the edginess theme could be found in the well-publicized preference among professional athletes for a Cadillac truck – the Escalade. Escalades became synonymous with African-American “bling.” All these things -- the music, the racing, the urban flash – helped boost Cadillac 2003 sales figures by 16 percent.

Cadillac was beginning to reacquire some of the panache those of us old enough to remember the fifties had formerly associated with the make. Too bad for GM that the rest of their lineup didn’t receive equally successful marketing campaigns. Oldsmobile, for instance, died with a whimper at about the same time – its “not your father’s Oldsmobile” campaign had fizzled a few years earlier.

Was it the cars, or was it just that music, that brought Cadillac success? Let’s look at the cars. Compared to Cadillac’s competitors at the time, BMW clearly had the greatest following, and prestige.  Lexus was a little stodgy, Audi was yet to hit its stride, and Mercedes was sharing BMW’s strength with a slightly older demographic. Lincoln was already a non-entity as a competitor. The BMW customer was the “Break Through” campaign’s target. Cadillac’s CTS sedan was intended as a 3-series killer, the STS was squarely aimed at the 5-series, and the DTS would continue to aim at the geriatric crowd (and some Mercedes models). Escalades were aimed at an American high-end urban demographic, not averse to trucks – a market never penetrated by the Germans or Swedes. Volvo still made most of its sales in its lower end models (more Buick than Cadillac?). Lexus saw itself straddling that demographic, too. For the first time in recent memory, Cadillac’s lineup seemed competitive.

Teutonic engineering and style was what Cadillac tried to copy. The precision, the authority, the innovation, styling that was solid, yet sleek, and a sterling reputation for quality. These were BMW’s claims to leadership in the luxury segment. Unfortunately, the paucity of engineering talent at GM forced Cadillac to settle for marketing an image of engineering innovation, and revamped styling,. The reality was still lacking – speed, as in the staged Nurburgring event, would have to substitute for solid engineering.

 The initial boost from the campaign began to wane after the first year. There was a second Super Bowl commercial in 2003. The scene was a New York subway train with advertising posters for Cadillacs from the fifties as the train moved through time to today, and through the windows we could see the current Cadillac line. It may have been too urban-oriented for the Zeppelin sound track. Nevertheless, Cadillac stuck with the campaign, and the music, until 2006. It was succeeded by the “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit” campaign, with more of a country flair. But, that campaign was less successful, perhaps due to a lack of affluent buyers in the target demographic.

The urban orientation seen in the 2003 spot was a signal that future Cadillac marketing would become much more focused on the upper-middle-class professionals who live in large metro areas. It was probably inspired by the continued success of the Escalade and the growing concentration of wealth in cities.

So far, however, this new focus has not paid off. Cadillac sales are again in the doldrums. Perhaps moving Cadillac brand HQs to New York’s soho neighborhood will inspire new strategic thinking. Except that nobody in New York buys cars!

Is the corporation the problem? Could it be that General Motors just can’t decide where Cadillac belongs? GM market share has been increasing over the last couple years, but no thanks to Cadillac – it’s seems mainly driven by Chevrolet now, and newer crossovers from GMC and Buick.

GM’s 2009 bankruptcy forced another realignment. The “new GM” would be much leaner, freed from onerous UAW contracts, and could raise up some bright young engineering talent within its ranks. The new focus would be on technology – both manufacturing and car design. It’s noteworthy that plug-in hybrids and all-electrics are now being developed by GM faster than anybody else in the U.S. market except Tesla. Cadillac, for its part, is seeking to unveil a more extensive semi-autonomous driving package than any other domestic make. Coming soon.

The new marketing target for Cadillac is Generation-X. They are as different from their boomer parents as the boomers were from their parents. Gen-Xers still value independence and edginess, but are less concerned with social status than their elders, more pragmatic. They are less easily intimidated by group pressure. And, they are financially less secure than their elders – worrying about how to pay for their kids’ college!

All this may lead them to make more conservative choices in cars. A new marketing campaign for GM’s luxury brand could be a serious challenge for that old Cadillac crest. We’ll see if the current urban focus is the correct one.