where do i start
― waterbabies (waterface), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 17:54 (ten years ago) link
ann powers and carl zoilus are two of the best pop critics working
― katherine, Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:06 (ten years ago) link
i just scanned that but it read pretty fucking great actually
― sitting on a claud all day gotta make your butt numb (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:13 (ten years ago) link
just because they are the best dont make that article good
― waterbabies (waterface), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:14 (ten years ago) link
We still have this spectacle of people (mostly straight white men of a certain age) angry that we treat music made with drum machines, or for dance floors, or with rapping (unless it's "political"), or by Beyoncé with the same respect and depth of thought we'd devote to anthems sung by bands of guys with guitars
Strawman City
― waterbabies (waterface), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:15 (ten years ago) link
brb getting popcorn
― sitting on a claud all day gotta make your butt numb (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:16 (ten years ago) link
stale popcorn
lol
― good and relaxing like akon dont matter (intheblanks), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:18 (ten years ago) link
if you look at the comments on this or any similar article it'll quickly become clear it isn't a straw man at all
― katherine, Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:19 (ten years ago) link
Plus, look at that 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll mentioned. The Washington Post comment board is often filled with such comments in regards to certain music articles.
― curmudgeon, Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:23 (ten years ago) link
Worst comments thread I've read, ever :(
― poopsites attract (flamboyant goon tie included), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:25 (ten years ago) link
oh yeah comments on a news article, like i'm gonna read those and learn something. not.
― waterbabies (waterface), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:25 (ten years ago) link
online comments are such bs
kinda miss the days when not every fuckin' thing on the internet was followed by line after line of hateful garbage
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:27 (ten years ago) link
website guest books > comments sections
― Sufjan Cougar Mellencamp (Sufjan Grafton), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:29 (ten years ago) link
thank you for visiting my website. please sign my guestbook.
― Sufjan Cougar Mellencamp (Sufjan Grafton), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:31 (ten years ago) link
so cordial
The worst passage Wilson writes isn't the "strawmanning" thing, but the part where he weirdly opens part 4 by saying we shouldn't use "poptimism" basically because it sounds lame, but we should still use "rockism."
― good and relaxing like akon dont matter (intheblanks), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:38 (ten years ago) link
otherwise katherine otm, this piece has no business being in this thread. Ann Powers being thoughtful and excellent as always
― good and relaxing like akon dont matter (intheblanks), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:39 (ten years ago) link
1. Don't insist that pop be hip. A good chunk of mainstream music gains inspiration from more cutting-edge stuff — always has. (Remember when The Monkees went psychedelic?) But plenty of it plays by other rules: It could be rooted in Christian contemporary music, emo, or soft rock. That doesn't make it less meaningful; it just takes work to understand these other legacies. It's cool if you find John Legend corny, but respect that for millions his grounding in group harmony singing and Bacharach balladry signals sophistication. Respect values other than your own.
2. Understand that selling records is the point. The major players in creating mainstream pop don't care about integrity, in the restrictive sense. They're collaborators, and they're interested in making money. So yes, Dr. Luke encourages his ingénue protégés to trade in feminine stereotypes (sometimes in highly questionable ways), and Avicii goes for obvious beats. Great pop sneaks in subtleties to enrich and even sometimes undermine the obvious elements that make a song pop out of the radio. Appreciating that requires an adjustment of one's aesthetics. Recognize the value in familiarity and big gestures.
3. Acknowledge that the assembly line is a cornerstone of pop. Since the days of Tin Pan Alley, pop's spirit has been one of energizing collaboration and seat-by-the-pants innovation. There's little room in this game for purist notions of artistic integrity. "We Can't Stop" has seven writers and was originally intended for Rihanna. What's interesting about the song is how it transformed in the process of becoming Miley Cyrus's signature. Know the limits of this kind of production while also noticing where the soul can slip in.
4. Physically connect with the mainstream, but don't presume you know what its different corners are all about. Lindsay Zoladz recently wrote on her Tumblr about attending a Miley concert and realizing that — at least sometimes — she wanted to write for the Bangerz, Miley's devotees, not for her fellow Pitchfork nerds. I applaud her insistence that music obsessives need to look outside the confines of their own tribe and learn from non-fetishists. But the desire to identify can sometimes obscure that "otherness" you mention, even for poptimists. As enriching as it is to feel good in a crowd of strangers, it's equally useful to go where things are less comfortable. For every charming fan you might meet at a non-hipster show, there's a drunk one, and one whose political views are really different than your own, and one who (if you go see Kirk Franklin or Mary J. Blige) might ask you to pray with them. As you've said, encountering the other can be difficult — for poptimists too. It should be difficult. Insight comes from wrestling with the awkwardness.
5. Go beyond Beyonce. I think we all need to acknowledge that King Bey is not your average diva-bear, and that putting her on a best-list is not an adventurous move. Assignment for all poptimists: have an opinion about the Jason DeRulo album that drops today.
I've rambled on with my unsolicited advice, and now there's no room to talk about rock! I hope we can take that up in the next round. One thought: in his excellent feature on EMA — whose album The Future's Void is one of my 2014 faves — Sasha Frere-Jones almost calls her music rock, but instead says it's a "hairy, occasionally digital beast." I like that phrase. It sounds like what Jimi Hendrix would play now. In other words, to trace where rock went, we have to agree on what it is. And that isn't easy.
Enlighten me,
AKP
I think this is good, but at the same time I feel a kind of paradox in it, in that it prescribes a very detached and above-it-all style of engagement with music that is almost exclusively going to be the domain of critics, and hence detached from the way most people, even "music fans", engage with music. It also doesn't really leave room for an ideological position against pretty much anything at all in music, which in turn just leaves you with voracious consumerism as the default ideology.
But yeah, it's certainly not "worst music writing" it's quite good -- both of them are quite good.
― ביטקוין (Hurting 2), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:39 (ten years ago) link
hot garbage
"Wrestling with the awkwardness" and respecting non-hip values brings me back to another few thoughts about shame, music and identity. Perhaps it's because music as an art form is so fundamentally abstract — a vibration in the air that produces a sound in the brain, rising almost like a thought — that it makes us feel so tentative and unsure about its status and its meanings. So it gets surrounded with visible signs like fashion and photographs, ranked by charts every week and annual lists, straining to make a form so ineffably mobile to hold still.
― waterbabies (waterface), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:40 (ten years ago) link
you guys can say something is "good" but that doesn't make it good
― waterbabies (waterface), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:41 (ten years ago) link
are you in character right now or what
― goole, Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:42 (ten years ago) link
oh no music makes me tentative and unsure
*rubs hands together, sobs*
― waterbabies (waterface), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:43 (ten years ago) link
waterface making us all realize the emperor has no clothes
― good and relaxing like akon dont matter (intheblanks), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:44 (ten years ago) link
*takes off his bathrobe*
― waterbabies (waterface), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:45 (ten years ago) link
thinking "rockism" is a valid concept to discuss doesn't instantly validate "poptimism" any more than "racism" validates the idea of "reverse racism"
i always thought of 'poptimism' as a tongue-in-cheek ILM/freaky trigger joke and find it mildly horrifying to see that become the official branded term for not being rockist or w/e
― posi riot (some dude), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:45 (ten years ago) link
i find the popism/rockism debate kind of stifling and restrictive so i have no stakes in that article, but waterface you are basically offering no argument besides saying "this sucks." i'm guilty of doing that often enough but i just wanted to point that out.
― marcos, Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:48 (ten years ago) link
If music makes people tentative and unsure in it's meanings, b/c it's so abstract, maybe we should spend less time trying to understand what it all means through long boring articles and more time enjoying it. charts and lists trying to "make" music hold still is totally a silly and stupid concept. you're not making it hold still by ranking your favorite albums.
― waterbabies (waterface), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:51 (ten years ago) link
Well, no, he took off his bathrobe.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:51 (ten years ago) link
read the wilson/powers convo now, it's really good. def not just rehashing the r*ckism debate but actively trying to go beyond it a bit.
― lex pretend, Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:51 (ten years ago) link
^^i'm talking about the last quote I pulled
also the concept of feeling shame for liking something is something i cannot deal with. like what you like.
― waterbabies (waterface), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:52 (ten years ago) link
Perhaps it's because music as an art form is so fundamentally abstract — a vibration in the air that produces a sound in the brain, rising almost like a thought...
this strikes me as maybe the most upside down idea ever. the author thinks music is more abstract than visual art? has he been to a live show? in hearing music, you sense the collision of particles with mass. it's like the artist is throwing shit at you. this is more abstract than looking at a sculpture?
― Sufjan Cougar Mellencamp (Sufjan Grafton), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:52 (ten years ago) link
also telling that as tired as we find that debate, how many official texts do we even have on it? let's talk about love and that sanneh essay and, less explicitly, tom ewing's columns. that's pretty much it?
― lex pretend, Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:52 (ten years ago) link
1,000,000,000,000,000 ILM threads
― marcos, Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:55 (ten years ago) link
haha
― good and relaxing like akon dont matter (intheblanks), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:57 (ten years ago) link
Hermann von Helmholtz was otm in "On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music" when he wrote it in the 19th century.
― Sufjan Cougar Mellencamp (Sufjan Grafton), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 18:59 (ten years ago) link
how many official texts do we even have on it?official texts? what are you, a rockist?
― marcos, Tuesday, 15 April 2014 19:02 (ten years ago) link
the poptimist manifesto by marx and engels
― posi riot (some dude), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 19:10 (ten years ago) link
the 'journo chat' format, gross
― j., Tuesday, 15 April 2014 19:20 (ten years ago) link
― posi riot (some dude), Tuesday, April 15, 2014 1:45 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
yeah back when these things were being hashed out it seemed to be one variety of non/anti-rockism, alongside, idk, dissensus, reynolds, marcello's blog, k-punk (but he wrote more about politics and theory eventually), the voice music page in toto. and none of them got along!
wow that's a pretty anglo list isn't it.
― goole, Tuesday, 15 April 2014 19:25 (ten years ago) link
to say nothing of the huge range of rap crit and the writers that came out of that
― goole, Tuesday, 15 April 2014 19:28 (ten years ago) link
I can't even with discussions of "rockism" and "popism" in 2014...
Pretty much every critic under 35 just sees pop and rock as two acceptable types of music that you get emails in your inbox about and then turn into content for traffic. The identity politics stuff about "ROCK BANDS PLAYING REAL ROCK MUSIC" is for comment section people and olds. No one gives a fuck about this crap anymore
― Whiney G. Weingarten, Tuesday, 15 April 2014 19:35 (ten years ago) link
editors who are aiming for the conflict=pageviews thing dohow quickly you forget young skywalker
― sitting on a claud all day gotta make your butt numb (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 19:36 (ten years ago) link
"anymore"
― markers, Tuesday, 15 April 2014 19:37 (ten years ago) link
like, i saw maura's NYT is fulla shit article passed around a lot in the past week or so and, while it's a well written piece, i think the main draw for virality there is FITE
― sitting on a claud all day gotta make your butt numb (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 19:37 (ten years ago) link
I'm back from lunch. What'd I miss? Problem solved?
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 19:37 (ten years ago) link
yeah, forks, nyt really scoring a slam dunk by riling up the 100 people in the rock critic jerk. deft use of noisey's editorial strategy. david carr is rap game mr burns wringing his hands and saying excellent that he got a katherine st asaph tumblr post and a @maura twitter rant, the sound of cash registers ricocheting in the background
― Whiney G. Weingarten, Tuesday, 15 April 2014 19:39 (ten years ago) link
its so disheartening to see people even READING, let alone ENGAGING with the NYT article. It's a 10-year-old argument about a thing that doesn't even exist w/r/t all the working critics who know how to use the internet, i.e., the ones who will still have a job in 5 years
― Whiney G. Weingarten, Tuesday, 15 April 2014 19:40 (ten years ago) link
Going back to that strawmanning thing, I understand the general sentiment Wilson's expressing here:
"We still have this spectacle of people (mostly straight white men of a certain age) angry that we treat music made with drum machines, or for dance floors, or with rapping (unless it's 'political'), or by Beyoncé with the same respect and depth of thought we'd devote to anthems sung by bands of guys with guitars.")
But I think that painting with such a broad brush doesn't do his argument any favors rhetorically, and actually overlooks a specific facet of "rockism." Which is this: rockist critics ALWAYS had time for a handful of R&B/pop/hip-hop artists, whether it was Motown in the late 60s or Timbaland in the late 90s. But that didn't mean that these genres or the artists who worked in them were getting anywhere near the critical analysis in mainstream publications that they deserved.
But when Wilson or whoever describes rockist types as only liking rock music, it makes it super-easy for people like Austerlitz to counter with, "Here's a list of dance-floor friendly things I'm on the record as liking!"
― good and relaxing like akon dont matter (intheblanks), Tuesday, 15 April 2014 19:42 (ten years ago) link