Moment when it became like cool to like commercial pop music?

Raccoon, honest question here: how old are you?

http://i.imgur.com/4BLmb7n.jpg

No results found for "an actual sock filled with actual shit actually jumping over an actual shark".

The problem with that query is that socks don't actually jump.

http://broadviewthomsonpta.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/sockhop.jpg

xp
yes, that "rap against rockism" article.
2004.
i personally noticed a change around this time. prior to that year, there weren't nearly as many emo/indie/alt kids who were into built to spill and jimmy eat world claiming "ashlee simpson autobiography: album of the year." but in 2004 weezer fans were def saying this and believing it. and it seems as though many of the more open-minded music fans have gotten a kick out of challenging rockists with similar claims ever since. 10 years later, it's become far more commonplace and ordinary for swans and ariana grande to comprise someone's top 2 of 2014.

i mean, the correct answer is who gives a fuck, and just worry about whenever it happened for you specifically, which is what i thought the question was asking prior to reading the OP. and if that moment never took place for you, and you've been listening without bias all along, then good for you. you're the big winner.

xp
agreeing that "Toxic" signified some of this change.

"Taylor Swift's dad removes her songs from Spotify" is totally going to be a line in the updated "We Didn't Start the Fire."

Again no. I feel a lot of people are just missing the whole point.
― Raccoon Tanuki, Friday, November 14, 2014 4:10 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark

ok then ignore nothing to see here

The actual serious answer to this thread is as usual not really about the music or what people like but more about the changing face of music journalism and its publication/distribution, and how that intersects with online fandom and tribalism/interconnectedness.

Like, the first question people should be trying to answer is: "given that, statistically, commercially successful pop music is more likely to be liked by any given person than commercially unsuccessful music, why is it that I am only just now noticing that some people in my own social milieu like some of it?"

the role of imagery in advertising has become more potent than anytime before in history

cause when you're
raccoon
tanuki raccoon tanuki
ya gotta believe em

yes, that "rap against rockism" article.
2004.
i personally noticed a change around this time. prior to that year, there weren't nearly as many emo/indie/alt kids who were into built to spill and jimmy eat world claiming "ashlee simpson autobiography: album of the year." but in 2004 weezer fans were def saying this and believing it. and it seems as though many of the more open-minded music fans have gotten a kick out of challenging rockists with similar claims ever since. 10 years later, it's become far more commonplace and ordinary for swans and ariana grande to comprise someone's top 2 of 2014.

i mean, the correct answer is who gives a fuck, and just worry about whenever it happened for you specifically, which is what i thought the question was asking prior to reading the OP. and if that moment never took place for you, and you've been listening without bias all along, then good for you. you're the big winner.

They weren't into Ashlee Simpson because it hadn't been figured out properly yet how to market this new idea of cool image pop star. They tried with her, but failed. Progression of the internet changed the game. It was no possible to market music made for commercial reasons in a pitch perfect cool image. For example, Lorde, her major label Universal had been carefully preparing her image for years before she even released. Yet when she came out it was made out, deliberately, that she had "come out of no where", it was all corporate marketing, all carefully planned. What the web changed was the ability to do this even more effectively than before even on TV, which did the same thing in creating MJ, Madonna, Elvis. All about the marketed image. Now it was different with those guys, but essentially the system works the same. But during the 90s and 90s there was a popular rebellion against this corp manipulation that corp basicallly embraced and went with for decades, contented as money was so fluent at this time there was no problem in many genres diversifying. But a mindset among people from this period changed away from this, in around 2008-11, to embracing again corporate music as cool. The question is why, the answer is internet, advertising, shrinking profits, electronic music, corporate globalization at levels impossible before the tech rise of the last decade.

Rise of electronic homogeneity in music played a role in enabling too (bands were squeezed out, it's become far easier to learn garageband alone than guitar with friends), which goes in hand with the increase in tech. We've never questioned the role of tech in corporate capitalism essentially, it's only ever fed as a positive thing because the places we are fed info about it are themselves tech based companies. The lack of questioning of "who is benfitting from this?" means we walk blindofld into getting U2 albums force fed onto our new $8000 Iphones

wait where are you buying your iphones?

i can't watch

nuki has a pager obvs because #FEDSWATCHING

Just noticing all these guys deriding this thread posting their favourite songs in that One Direction thread.

This probably happened around the time it began to become more difficult to kick a ball in the street, the irony of course being that in many respects (modern footwear, lighter balls), its actually never been easier to kick a ball in the street. We've become a society that knows better than ever before exactly how to kick, yet isnt capable of kicking. Its almost impossible to pinpoint when this started but I first became aware of it in 2006

one day i'll be living in raccoon tanuki
and all you're ever gonna be is mean

http://media2.giphy.com/media/snzf0ayzx1gn6/200.gif

This song (2001) should also be mentioned in the timeline:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWZKw_MgUPI

It didn't in the end have a huge influence but I remember at the time it was seen as a kind of surprising song for non fans of NSync's usual music. Obviously the lyrics talk about how pop boy band music deserves more respect but it was probably their first song that really warranted it. I was surprised a little that is was as far back as 2001.

Failed attempt:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/96/U2-Pop-cover.png

I remember being a little obsessed with this song in 99:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijXcYLV1aNg

I never had any hang ups on pop music growing up even though I mostly listened to non pop. I seem to remember being avidly tuned into the USA charts at this time, that were mostly dominated by Rnb and rap of the time, often worked into pop, something the UK charts mostly lacked. But NSync's "Pop" song seemed like a break from RnB influence nearer to EDM of today?

i keep seeing this thread title pop up and each time i think, "WTF?" what an ahistorical question.

i finally clicked on it... and look who it is!

surprise surprise

the weirdest thing i encounter on ILX is people whose historical consciousness seems to date back no farther than the late 1990s. i don't know if ILXORs are getting younger or what. maybe some of them were born then.

yea this is a terrible thread

sorry raccoon

meh, i understood what raccoon was asking even if obv it can be picked a part pretty easily. he meant when did it become cool among hipsterati 20-30something urban white males to like pop music.

yeah but the fact that he didn't make that context explicit -- and therefore assumed that frame of reference -- strikes me as deeply weird (not to say dumb). but then again I'm an old dude.

i don't think he was looking for the point that 20th century classical music diverged from folk vernacular or whatever

xpost

and btw i still think the way you phrased it, mordy, is completely ahistorical and weird. speaking as a guy who has witnessed numerous changes (just in the past 10-20 years!) in the way that the "hipsterati" have approached/appreciated chart music.

the idea that there was One Moment When It All Changed just seems patently absurd

...but very ILM, maybe.

Still think focusing on specific pieces of music qua music is a mistake. Confusing effects with causes.

?

are you saying that is your belief, or are you ascribing it someone else? and what is the context here? what do you mean? maybe it would make sense if i was following the whole thread, but you couldn't pay me to do that. :(

The actual serious answer to this thread is as usual not really about the music or what people like but more about the changing face of music journalism and its publication/distribution, and how that intersects with online fandom and tribalism/interconnectedness.
― Tim F, Tuesday, 18 November 2014 21:22 (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Like, the first question people should be trying to answer is: "given that, statistically, commercially successful pop music is more likely to be liked by any given person than commercially unsuccessful music, why is it that I am only just now noticing that some people in my own social milieu like some of it?"
― Tim F, Tuesday, 18 November 2014 21:25 (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ah yes, i don't think a formalist answer would be the right way to approach OP's question, as misguided as it is.

amateruist you're as condescending as it gets, wow.

As in, the thing that has changed more than anything else is the way the information about and tastes in music are publicised, disseminated and shared, and this is the main cause of pretty much all perceived recent changes in the critical climate.

amateruist you're as condescending as it gets, wow.

― Raccoon Tanuki, Thursday, November 20, 2014 2:23 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, well, look who i'm talking to!

As the lyrics in Nsync song I posted showed, in 2001 there was a disconnect between respect for clean Pop music to other types of music. No pop star today is required to justify their credibility, back then you were, because there were, because of competing genres and other reasons like a distaste and cynicism for commercialism in general, IMO, in *comparison* to today.

huh?

huh what?

hipsters didn't listen to Mary J Blige, TLC, and Mariah in the nineties apparently

there are so many gaseous superwords being employed in this discussion ("popular" "hipster" "credibility" "commercialism") that i'm surprised the thread hasn't blasted off and started orbiting the earth

You could say pop has done a 180 From Nsync getting defensive over their credibility to Lorde's Royals being able to actively attacking mainstream tropes (moronically, yes) while being one of the most pop things of its time. You could never have had NSync attacking the music of others.

As has been mentioned by others in the thread there were numerous attempts at making pop music cool in the intermediate years 2000-2006 like Ashlee Simpson that all failed in a kind of humiliation. No doubt though in another branch Timbo and Pharrell played a role in branching pop off and Gwen Stefani love angel music baby was cool enough for people to get with but still had the rnb influence all over it of late 90s early o's. So i can't really put it in the frame like pop hipster glean of lana or lorde, because what Gwen did on that album was never not cool.

hipsters didn't listen to Mary J Blige, TLC, and Mariah in the nineties apparently

You're mistaking rnb/hip hop with commercial pop, why.