No Orlando

Dave Q - it's a desire to understand and empathise at the very most. If an ILM Britneyphile started listening to *only* Britney you might have a point.

I used Dave Davies' guitar playing as a symbol of what I always liked about rock & pop music or art, or, for that matter people in general - its traditional but innovative, cheap, efficient, confusing, accessible, individual, brutal, beautiful, human. I just don't see any of these traits in an artist like Spears. It's not a high art - low art thing, it's about human art.

And I think people who defend her here do so out of a patronising "isn't it fun to pretend she's a serious artist" attitude more than any real regard for her music or persona. Of course, it's outrageous of me to imply that I can tell what people are really thinking but that's just the sense I get.

This pretty much sums up why this thread is futile. I can see all sorts of point to arguing about pop music but arguing about pop music with people who won't believe you is a hiding to nothing. I could just do what Ned has - quite sympathetically done - and reply to everything with "I like what I like, whee!" (to simplify Ned's position a bit) - instead I've tried to offer reasons and fly kites as to why I find some music worth listening to. If people won't take those seriously then there's no point in continuing debating - I'll stick to offering opinions on artists where criticism isn't continually second-guessed (i.e. those where every critical position was long-ago mapped out and 'debate' is as formal as Sunday mass).

For what it's worth I'd never describe or think of Britney as a "serious artist" because I think the category "serious artist" does more harm than good. I've talked specifically about Britney as machine-pop, meaning pop in which the autonomy of the artist has been rendered irrelevant, and I've offered arguments elsewhere as to the positive qualities of this kind of pop. I don't think that one set of critical tools fits all artists, nor do I think that criticism means unending lists of who you think is good or bad.

Sounds like la Brit at her best all the way, if you ask me!

No need to apologize for that, Tom, that is my position. That's the whole point of it.

Meanwhile the basic point of your post - eclecticism is bad for you - is definitely worth talking about so having got that off my chest I will get back to normal.

If one was to say, "it has no value", another can argue "it's not meant to have value". If one says "it reflects only the banal and base desires of our culture," another can say "that's hierarchical, you could say the same of blah blah blah." and so on. One could say, "It's manufactured - the artists have no input into what they are creating. They are no better than puppets." and another could answer, "That's what's fascinating about it - it makes no pretense to being more than manufactured pop."

It's a circular argument and so we end up with an entirely relativist criterion of cultural value, and nothing can having meaning or value at all because meaning and value are stodgy, rockist, old-fashioned concepts. Fine.

I say, for one's own mental health, too much acceptance of crap is dangerous. There's nothing wrong with rejecting it outright.

(Christ, I'm turning into my grandfather here)

btw, where's Nitsuh?

I say, for one's own mental health, too much acceptance of crap is dangerous. There's nothing wrong with rejecting it outright.

Ah well, there's your answer -- these two stances aren't incompatible. All it boils down to is a personal definition of crap. From there, it's easy -- you can reject 'crap' as you hear/experience it, but that being the case, then one more time, there is no law -- merely your own filters. :-)

*shrug* You certainly don't have to. But that doesn't explain it away or render it automatically not of worth. It's still there, and opinions on it will always fracture as with anything else. Even if you choose to set it aside, slamming others -- and I don't think you were intending to do this, but it reads this way -- for *wanting* to engage with it, and even celebrating it, is not your prerogative in the end, no more so than it would be mine (say) to tell you to listen and enjoy.

Using hyperbole to keep the argument urgent (c or d?): Ever since 60's counterculture took the reins of aboveboard cultural dominance, things have gone steadily to muddle-headed shit. When they were still in opposition to the dominant culture, the hippies were OK. The culture wars of 57 - 67 produced the coolest pop culture ever. When they out & out won the culture wars the boomers began to learn to walk upright like the Animal Farm pigs. (Standard issue cliche Gen X griping, I know.) Nothing musically interesting since '67 except brief volleys of opposition: punk, postpunk, hip hop, ahem... grunge. All completely absorbed or corrupted within a year of being a blip on the radar. Why bother staying engaged?

I'll set aside the other (as you say, hyperbolic) bits to concentrate on this -- why? For my part, why not? There's no reason not to, because who knows what might occur next? I will always believe in a capacity for surprise and sudden interest. :-)

Uh...but I don't see it like that and never have. I see it as "Do I like this or not?" You don't justify something in order to enjoy it, you listen and then decide if you enjoy it...and then worry nervously about justifying your liking for it or *don't* worry and have fun. :-)

Hats off to you, and go read Huckleberry Finn, you nut. It's great once they get out on the river.

Oh, I'm sure. But I've got other fish to fry now, I admit. ;-)

I am guilty of Nostalgia - false feeling for a false time. I'm mythologizing a Golden Age from whence the Golden Oldies sprung fully formed from the street corners, sure.

Machine-pop is instant nostalgia - creating a false image of a real time, the time I am living through. It's jarring. Maybe the Golden Oldies did exactly the same thing in their time, but I'll never know. I wasn't there. Ignorance is bliss. To me, the fiction of pop can only best be enjoyed in retrospect, when it is properly dream-like.

(P.S. Smug? That stings a bit but it's fair enough too. Honestly, though, my argument is so full of holes and hand-wringing that I can't see how anyone could see it as self-satisfied. Disengage from culture? Where am I going to go, space?)

Every britnista to a wo/man has dissed "I Wuv Wock'n'Woll" so notion that ANYTHING GOES = disproven from outset.

if it IS overweaning presence of craft chops which alienates you fritxz, then which side of high/low divide are *you* placing yrself? "I hate this cuz it goes ovah my head"?

Even so, was the process of recording a song pre-'67 less complex? Spector less complex than Max Martin?

Can you really hear the divergent self-justification of promo people on a record? Would you want to?

I wouldn't place myself on either side of a high/low divide, but as part of a continuum like everything else. I think high/low distinctions are useful if only because they create standards, the standards are continually under attack and in flux. I hope I don't hate things that go over my head, but it's possible.

also promo = where the initial "context of judgment" tends to flourish (cf blink 182 = punk; betcha THAT was a press release before it was something the blinkies were having to deny)

process of recording under eg spector = more auterishly controlled; also contained within shared grid of stave-music and (somewhat, probably) shared music tastes of performers; ambiguity NOW arises from shared assumptions which would dissolve if examined

on a thread far away and long long ago, in contention with g.macdonald, i said that nu-pop => prog: and i kinda stick by that; an awful lot of TECHNIQUE is being poured into this music, which to the musicians means a LOT (they're making choices all the time) and yet to us means what?

(yr dream point is interesting tho: i guess my (benjaminian haha) attitude to pop now is that it's ruins of the dreams of NOW, which is when i live (which is kinda what you said, only I like it): the charts are our arcades)

I think the fiction or dream of pop and its relation to reality/the present is actually the central point here.

30 years ago it was I'd guess much more difficult to hear stuff that wasn't 'chart music' - now, even despite and partly because of the ministrations of Clear Channel, music finds its level, i.e. if your involvement with music is such that the charts will do you nicely then you won't be subjected to anything else. If you want to hear more music it's there and the (tiny) effort involved in finding it will be part of your personal context i.e. you'll feel a bit cooler for it. The charts are an odd target now because they don't have to bear the weight of expectations they once did. (So in other words they're not our arcades any more).

My good friend Mr Klemmer might have a few words to say on this matter.

This is meandering slightly, especially since you have declared your war on ALL post-67 music not just the popcharts.