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

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.

because R&B and hip hop WERE commercial pop in the nineties.

shh, don't tell him alfred. this is almost cute

The question is framed wrong but there was a definite change in critics perception towards pop from the start of the 00's to the end.

Take per example Daft Punk's Discovery. I remember when it was first released in 2000 it was almost universally panned by most critics that where expecting a house album and got this stupid pop album instead, but by the mid 00's almost all of them reassessed their opinions of it and by the end of the 00's it was in almost every best albums of the decade list. Without this shift of attitudes towards pop music it would have been a struggle uphill.

In 2003 Pitchfork had Beyonce, Justin Timberlake and Kelis in their top 10 songs list and they list those songs without cynicism or excuses because they are great songs. The 90's were way more uptight, it was frowned upon to love all kinds of music, music for many people was more about cred and personality than music itself.

I was going to post a genuine respone. Then I feared the backlash/criticism/laughing

So, instead I'll say this: What's a good book on this topic?

when did it become cool to read books

Pamphlets are the new books.

I'm the kind of person that didn't care back then and I still don't care. So maybe Raccoon hates Starbucks and Apple and commercial pop music and bright lights. I think it's kind of nice more people stopped caring about what their music says about them.

because R&B and hip hop WERE commercial pop in the nineties.

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn),

WOW! Thanks for that!!! Had no idea!! Seriously this is like banging head on a brick wall. You can't be missing the point this much. It's like talking with Bill O Reilly on climate change.

shh, don't tell him alfred. this is almost cute

― maura,

http://i.imgur.com/LVPEIhM.png

you are a dolt

it was only a matter of time before the ethics in gaming journalism-esque stuff began

great job finding that tweet. it has so much to do with this discussion.

The question is framed wrong but there was a definite change in critics perception towards pop from the start of the 00's to the end.

Take per example Daft Punk's Discovery. I remember when it was first released in 2000 it was almost universally panned by most critics that where expecting a house album and got this stupid pop album instead, but by the mid 00's almost all of them reassessed their opinions of it and by the end of the 00's it was in almost every best albums of the decade list. Without this shift of attitudes towards pop music it would have been a struggle uphill.

In 2003 Pitchfork had Beyonce, Justin Timberlake and Kelis in their top 10 songs list and they list those songs without cynicism or excuses because they are great songs. The 90's were way more uptight, it was frowned upon to love all kinds of music, music for many people was more about cred and personality than music itself.

Exactly - although it wasn't framed wrong it was framed perfectly it's just the One Direction and Taylor Swift fans that flooded this thread were never going to accept it.

I don't think 90s were more uptight ( i think the opposite in fact), i think they were more discerning because there was a bigger vairety and a totally different area based scenes. Like I said pre-internet everything was different. If you didn't like what commerical driven TV or radio were giving you you went away and did your own thing. There was more room for rebellion and it became, with the advent of Punk, a huge part of your personality, it was serious, not just music. See hip hop 'way of life' attitudes.

A lot of what the 80s and 90s showed was music by people who weren't expecting to get popular becoming popular almost by acccident and becoming the tastemakers. Happened countless times from Nirvana to Wu Tang, people that had no expectation or desire that their music could sell millions. But the time was ripe for anti commmerical music and hip hop and rock were what's cool, no one wanted that pre-made commercial pop anymore. It wasn't cool. NOW they do again.

Looking back at those solo Wu Tang albums that went platinum it's almost bizarre looking back and this type of completely uncommerical music being dominant in it's genre. But then I compare Chief Keef arrival as another "antidote" music, similar to how Wu or whoever were. People do want that rawness in their music still, it's just theyre not given it as much.

you are a dolt

― goole,

Says the 1D and Harry Styles fan.

i begin to read a raccoon tanuki post and my brain just edits it out like it's on auto-skip, it's very weird

that means you missed his claim that Wu Tang became popular "almost by accident" and that they had no "desire that their music could sell millions"

i'm glad you came

that means you missed his claim that Wu Tang became popular "almost by accident" and that they had no "desire that their music could sell millions"

― The question is why, the answer is internet (rob)

Another bullshit snide pretentious comment that is all people around here seem to be able to come up with. Why contribute without substance? Your just wasting your life in a sea of lame internet board comments. Wanna debate me on Wu Tang or keep making bitch comments like that?

I would never guessed Taylor Swift fans were so bitchy and mean, oh, wait..

what's there to debate? your little word picture of the halcyon rebellious 90s up there is a tired myth, as multiple posters have explained to you. but even ignoring them, I would think anyone who pays attention to music in 2014 would have heard how much commercial pop sold in the 90s, so the idea that no one wanted it anymore is just factually wrong.

as for Wu Tang, I'm not a rap expert but their whole origin story is about RZA securing a record deal for the group that didn't lock down the individual members -- why would he do that if he wasn't planning for success?

point taken about wasting my life reading lame comments

i'm quite sure that at least some of the people responding negatively to your takes are not necessarily taylor swift fans and/or not remotely "offended" in any real sense by you having a bone to pick with commercial pop music

rob you happen to be quite correct about how RZA structured wu's deals, IIRC.