Year-End Critics' Polls 2011

Not yet (and as somebody who didn't have a fb account until a few months ago, I know how annoying that is), but I'll say so if that changes. Just didn't want to clog up this thread with such a long list.

Scratch that; I just posted it here:

XHUXK'S TOP 100+ ALBUMS OF 2010!

Thanks. Yeah, there's a local vegan restaurant (I'm back to vegan at the moment for (my usual) health reasons) which links to its menu but to see it requires that you log in to Facebook. That's demanding a lot of commitment from their customers.

ayo scott your 2011 albums post is so excellent, for real

ann powers is an amazing writer/thinker obv, but the 'pop music is just another niche' was something i've been thinking a lot when i read her coverage, like i kind of feel like it's being beamed in from a world that exists only in the abstract. like, i don't feel like the existing community of fans that listen to exclusively charting ish is really all that big

(any more)

or i should say, listening to a large percentage of the stuff that is charting; there are probably lots of people who still just listen to charting music, but not MOST music that charts

kind of feel that it's gone the other way in the last couple of years (would've said the same thing a few years ago)

rlly? i feel like historically there were lots of people who just liked whatever was on TRL, but now everyone's sorta more adrift

i def get the feeling that the chart pop community has strengthened and expanded recently - cf online stan culture, the nature of increasingly personality-driven pop, cross-pollination between fanbases etc

i feel like it's more of a cult thing tho -- like, it's solidified online into a 'community' and that community has grown, but that community is also fairly restricted & niche-ish, rather than broad and disconnected like it used to be

isn't the nature of pop stardom to create cults around its stars and creations?

well, i get the impression it's becoming far less restricted/niche-ish among a generation of teenage pop fans for whom classroom culture and online culture must constantly blend

isn't the nature of pop stardom to create cults around its stars and creations?

― lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, January 4, 2012 5:51 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

we're talking about, like, constellations of artists. i'm suggesting that while there are people who are like 'top 40 fans,' that is a niche group now, rather than a very general and large group, and while the niche might be growing, it's still small compared w/ the peak TRL era or w/e

well, i get the impression it's becoming far less restricted/niche-ish among a generation of teenage pop fans for whom classroom culture and online culture must constantly blend

― all i see is angels in my eyes (lex pretend), Wednesday, January 4, 2012 5:56 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

but those people aren't into just top 40 artists, they're into a few charting artists, and a few other artists who have a similar style; a wiz khalifa fan in my theory would be more likely to listen to mac miller even tho his singles aren't top 40 than they would ... i dunno .. hot chelle rae

that the kind of top 40 covered by Ann isn't the kind of music listened to by 'just folks,' it's the kind listened to by a niche of top 40 listeners who define themselves as 'top 40 listeners'

idk i'm spitballin

when you get on the internet do you stop being "just folks"?

i don't think it has to do w/ whether or not you're on the internet, it has to do w/ where you spend your time when you're on it. if you're reading blogs that cover Top 40 Music or gossip blogs centered around straight-up popular ppl (as opposed to, like, genre-specific gossip blogs) then you might be identifying as a 'top 40 fan who listens to top 40 music.' there's more self-definition involved when u have to choose what channels you receive your info from.

whereas it used to be u just sorta experienced pop music w/out trying. the 10-CD people, I suspect, have much more RANDOM experiences with music now -- that they might suddenly become aware of something not-top 40 that they dig, and they just sorta go w/ it, because Top 40 is now competing with other channels for their attentions

i always thought npr employed ann powers on some project bootstrap ish tbh

there's still a huge amount of ppl who consider top 40 to be pretty much all of music, or 'real' music. i think once you even get to a point where you know who ann powers is, you're less likely to be exposed to all the normals who love music but aren't really 'into' music (no better or worse than any other fan of music). i've got a few friends who exclusively listen to top 40, 'nostalgic' top 40 (mariah/janet/tlc), and a few passing trends shared between friends (stuff like mika and sara bareilles and all that, and of course disney soundtracks). it's music for driving, for computer speakers in the background, for clubs. i think this is still how most people digest music, they just don't write in blogs about it.

oh god this whole post sounds like a condescending anthropological study, sorry

I don't think that's actually true though. Now they have facebook feeds and twitter and read a wide variety of websites -- not music blogs or ann powers, but like, gossip blogs that also post music. and they come across all kinds of music that way.

deej have you heard of 'kids'

btw carl wilson linked to something i wrote in that slate piece! cool!

idk what you mean

i dunno it just seems odd that you seem to be denying the existence of the gigantic tween top 40 fanbase that is totally controlling the music industry even more than usual lately, like most of what you're saying seems to be true but mainly for people 18 & over

thought you were talking about mgmt

doesn't stop at tweens tho

this is a really dumb permutation of this particular argument

i dunno it just seems odd that you seem to be denying the existence of the gigantic tween top 40 fanbase that is totally controlling the music industry even more than usual lately, like most of what you're saying seems to be true but mainly for people 18 & over

― we bought a zoo in a hopeless place (some dude), Wednesday, January 4, 2012 7:38 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ahh good pt. yeah i dunno i'm just sorta spitballin
do u think the tween top 40 fanbase likes alla the same shit tho? i'm only somewhat familiar w/ the stuff ann powers covers, also, this was a kneejerk impression i got; it just seemed like her coverage felt kinda detached & anthropological at times or something ? idk. i'm curious how you think the nature of the tween market is, b/c you probably have a better idea than i

my feeling is that in the last couple years there has been a shift of pop (as in popular music) moving more toward pop (as in the genre) -- like first it just seemed like Gaga was the kind of singular, lightening rod act in a role usually occupied by a rapper or a rock band, but now there's this whole increasingly strong web of pop stars that are POP pop but also kind of serving as surrogates for the genres that used to produce major stars. like in the early Britney/BSB era, they were so far removed from R&B and hip hop that there was no sense that whether they sold records had any effect on who else sold records. but now you've got like Bruno Mars and LMFAO taking up the room on the top 10 and the pop stations that used to be occupied by urban crossover hits, the same way that Maroon 5 and OneRepublic etc. have been more popular on the singles charts than any ROCK rock band for years and years.

also top 40 is VERY homogenous right now, it's mostly variations on four-on-the-floor dance pop broken up by the occasional Adele song, so i don't know why it'd be strange to consider that there are millions and millions of people who all like pretty much that whole set of music and little else.

granted i haven't read the ann powers thing so i can't speak to that part of your post

Which explains the popularity of "Pumped Up Kicks" -- a novelty in the context you've drawn.

hmm u make a convincing argument

Yeah if anything there's probably more unity - in terms of lots and lots of people listening to the same songs, albeit not necessarily buying - in pop music than there has been at any time in the last ten years.

I can go to an R&B club, a gay club, a bogan suburban pub, a teenbait top 40 club and a teenbait "commercial dance" club and hear much the same music in all of them.

I kind of agree with D on this - I had very similar thoughts about Powers the other day, that her whole style tells you exactly who she's writing for. The focus on backstory and half-complete sociological musings versus actually saying anything about the music itself, the insertion of anecdotes about parenting and/or shopping at Whole Foods to ground the music-listening in a particular socio-cultural worldview...she is so completely and perfectly NPR, and so perfectly suited to people who buy 10 CDs a year, that they might as well have grown her in a vat.

isnt the argument that pop/top 40 is narrowing its aesthetic a point of favor deej's amorphous feeling that pop itself is becoming genrefied/more niche?

i mean i really do wonder how many people exist for whom 'top 40' is the boundaries of their musical xp other than yeah, v v young ppl. and even then. but i really have no idea where to even find that data, except to say that both nominal and relative # of people who are 'top 40 listeners' for ex is still decreasing? but im not on v solid ground arguing abt this stuff since have zero rl engagement w/ it

you should def keep arguing about it tho

wellllllllll

is he arguing or discussing

The focus on backstory and half-complete sociological musings versus actually saying anything about the music itself, the insertion of anecdotes about parenting and/or shopping at Whole Foods to ground the music-listening in a particular socio-cultural worldview...she is so completely and perfectly NPR, and so perfectly suited to people who buy 10 CDs a year, that they might as well have grown her in a vat.

I disagree with most of this, in part because being a generalist is what writing for a daily newspaper requires -- in 1988 and 2012.

To me it's marvelous that within the confines of a daily newspaper Powers can recommend tuneYARDS, Pistol Annies, Taylor Swift, and have a reasonable discussion about Adele.

we've all, including myself, made snarky remarks over the years about the NPR Tone but insofar as such a thing exists then Ann Powers' voice is a sharp, catholic approximate.

The "grown her in a vat" thing is probably excessively snarky, since I like Ann as a person. But I have long been totally anti generalist music criticism. People who have something to say about everything have nothing to say about anything, is my view.

that's nonsense!

that's really stupid

yeah i mean i don't mind the shopping at whole foods thing, or that she's writing to a generalist audience, i guess it's more that I don't get a sense of what she likes as much as a sense of what she thinks she needs to cover, all of which she's vaguely enthusiastic about, and as a result the coverage is of a fairly rote series of artists I guess? idk I guess I'd just like to see some more personality in it or something

idk I'm probably being unfair. at a certain pt. the job is covering what people are likely to care about. although i'm not sure that explains the tuneyards thing which is p niche right?

fwiw i always find her writing very insightful, this 'critique' is really about some small beans stuff

I argue twice a week with our daily newspaper's film critic, whom I like very much as a guy, but whose opinions I usually dismiss, and it's no secret. But I don't forget for a moment that in this climate -- when the J. Hobermans are losing sinecures all over the place -- the impossible tightrope a film/music critic must walk at a daily or weekly publication. How long can you inveigh against crap before readers turn on you and you get fired?

and I'm not hinting that these critics dilute their opinions or lie about them; it's just that keeping an open ear/eye on what the public consumes is a large part of the job.

She’s gotten more into roots Americana stuff since moving to Nashville ( but she’s missing out on less hyped southern soul, zydeco, blues, brass band , whatever Americana)