Lego Blur, Lego Bowie, and Legofication

It's time for me to reference Coilhouse again. Specifically, a blog post they did a while back in which they coined a term I fell in love with: "Legofication." According to Coilhouse, legofication refers to the way in which pop songs have started being stacked up against each other in mash-ups, just like legos. It refers to the fact that right now it is common for pop songs to not be viewed as complete wholes, but as pieces that can be put together to make something cooler. I love this idea so much that I'd like to apply it to not just pop music, but pop culture in general.


Originally, I was planning to write a lengthy post about the postmodern aspects of music games like Guitar Hero, DJ Hero, and Rock Band, but then I realized that I didn't have enough time/will-power/intellect to do that, and that it would be way too boring/pretentious. So instead I'm doing a much simpler version of that original idea by specifically focusing on one of the newest music games, Lego Rock Band. I think it's entirely appropriate that a game so heavily constructed around legofication uses legos themselves as part of these pop culture building blocks.

In the Coilhouse piece about legofication, they mention how songs are basically starting to be used as building blocks for mash-ups. I'd like to extend this idea, arguing that in the case of Lego Rock Band pop culture icons are being used as building blocks. While Legos themselves are literally building blocks, the entire lego franchise can definitely be viewed as a pop culture icon as well. This pop culture icon is one building block in the construction of Lego Rock Band; so are the images of Blur, David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Queen. (I have to say I'm impressed with the Lego rendering of Bowie, since they actually gave him two different eye colors.) Bands and singers that are obviously viewed as entire wholes are again being used as building blocks in a larger pop-culture artifact, in a slightly different way from how Coilhouse discusses this idea. These pop-culture entities are rendered using the style of another pop culture entity, and then put inside a third pop culture entity, namely the Rock Band series. It's one thing to make Lego renderings of famous musicians. It's another thing to put images of famous musicians in a video game. And it's another thing to put Legos inside a video game. These have all been done before. But Lego Rock Band is simply taking Legofication to entirely new levels (although this does remind me of the Lego Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones series).

One question I've been wondering is whether or not anyone actually expects Lego Rock Band to be good. While people might be excited about their favorite musicians appearing together in a video game, too much legofication might not be a good thing. I'm reminded of The Good, The Bad, and The Queen, a supergroup featuring Damon Albarn of Blur, Paul Simonon of the Clash, the guitarist from The Verve (I don't remember his name), and Tony Allen, Fela Kuti's drummer. To top off this list of talent, their album was produced by Dangermouse. And it was really disappointing. Sure the album is fairly good, but considering all the names that went into it, it could've been way better. Now, I don't have high hopes for Lego Rock Band, and I'm sure a lot of people feel the same way as me. The only point that I'm trying to make is that in a lot of cases, Legofication could possibly lead to huge disappointment.

Another question that people have raised about Lego Rock Band is whether or not you'll be able to have Blur play songs by Queen, or whether David Bowie will be able to sing Iggy Pop songs. People have raised this question because there was a lot of controversy over the appearances of Johnny Cash and Kurt Cobain in Guitar Hero 5. In that game, both musicians were able to play songs by other artists, and lots of people had intense reactions to that, since they felt it was disrespectful to the musicians. Now, personally, I think having Kurt Cobain play songs by other artists sounds awesome. But I'm not here to argue about whether or not the inclusion of that feature was a good thing. The point that I do want to make, that comes from the post I was originally planning on writing, is that this feature is one of the most postmodern aspects of these games. One defining element of postmodernism as a movement is pastiche, which throws different cultural artifacts together and either strips them of their meaning or gives them new meaning. (If you think about it, legofication is really just another way of describing pastiche.) Having Johnny Cash playing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is without a doubt a form of pastiche that dramatically changes the meanings of the cultural artifacts involved. Which is why people got so upset over this.

We can see postmodernism, pastiche, and legofication in DJ Hero as well, a music game that revolves around mash-ups. Again, in this example we essentially have two pastiches put together: the game involves musicians being represented in a video game, and these musicians play songs made up of other songs. In this case, pop songs that have already been legofied are put into another pop culture artifact for further legofication.

Now, I'm not arguing whether or not these games are good. I personally enjoyed Guitar Hero II, and I've also enjoyed playing Rock Band at parties, but I was really disappointed by Guitar Hero III, and I haven't had much interest in these types of games otherwise, although I've read a lot about them on video game and music blogs. But from my experience with these types of games, they are perfect examples of the legofication of popular culture.