MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Tobias Forge has had a plan. He strives to make the band Ghost seen and heard at a time when musical acts find it difficult to achieve success – i.e. to cut through the saturated world of social media and the obscure algorithms of musical streaming services, to say nothing of the marketing and distribution practices of record companies. For all his song writing gifts and deep knowledge of the tropes of heavy metal and pop music, Forge has strategically deployed ironic tactics at every stage of Ghost’s ongoing ascent into mainstream musical success. As Katherine L. Turner observes, recent studies of irony and popular music comprise not so much a unified theory, but rather a series of related ideas, discourses, and “treatments of dissemblage” that variously examine the rhetorical and cultural forms of contemporary music, as well as the power relationships between artists and listeners. While some bands may write the occasional ironic song (e.g. Anthrax’s “I’m the Man”), and while others, like System of a Down and Tool, have challenged their audiences by ironically subverting the conventions of heavy metal lyrics and musical forms, Forge skillfully uses irony as one of his principal tools in trying to make Ghost one of the more popular musical acts in the world. With each album and music video, he deliberately shapes the concept, look, and sound of the band through verbal, visual, and musical irony, a veritable assembling of a Trojan Horse over ten years by which the band achieved ever increasing visibility (and notoriety) and who are now appealing to listeners of more mainstream popular music. Exploring Ghost’s ironic strategies illuminates their rhetorical sophistication and allows us to consider some of the tension and resistance felt by some listeners and critics when heavy music flirts with popularity.