Experience economy in the making: Hedonism, play and coolhunting in automotive song lyrics

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore contemporary consumer culture in the making. This is done by means of an analysis of historical consumer cultural products. Through an investigation of a subset of lyrics from the Southern California popular music scene of the early 1960s, themes of hedonic consumption and consumer rituals are analyzed. It is argued that these songs are reflective of a resonant meeting between a market‐oriented culture production system and participation in consumer subcultural systems. As such, it represents an early form of coolhunting. Finally, the themes from the lyrics are used to flesh out the various types and elements of play in consumption practices, as well as to underline the importance of historicizing consumer culture theoretical constructs.

Keywords:

• Beach Boys
• car consumption communities
• hedonism
• play
• rituals

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Matthias Bode for highly useful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. Thanks also to three anonymous CMC reviewers for their helpful suggestions in terms of precision and improvement. Thanks finally to Fleura Bardhi for inspiration and encouragement, and to Worth Wagers for sharing his musical insights and talents with me.

Notes

1. A complete set of Beach Boys lyrics is available, for example, on the website: http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Beach-Boys-Lyrics/505A50D462AD5CE84825699D00291A07.

2. Matthias Bode, personal communication, 18 June 2008.

3. Strictly speaking, not a Beach Boys song (and therefore not included in Table 1), since it was never recorded in the studio by that group. Written but not completed by Brian Wilson, it was given to friends/competitors Jan and Dean, a vocal duo who had a parallel – though much less successful – career path to the early Beach Boys. The song reached number 2 on the national billboard and was the first national “surf music” hit. Murry Wilson was reportedly furious about this free donation of “hit material.”