Year-End Critics' Polls 2011

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.

I'm not the biggest Ann Powers fan, but can't the insertion of anecdotes about parenting and/or shopping at Whole Foods simply be a means of engaging the reader? If they're good parenting anecdotes--funny, observant, related to the music under discussion, however tangentially (unless they're really good parenting anecdotes, and then I don't even need that)--then great. Truthfully, I'd rather read that than close analysis of the artist's mindset.

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?

― lumber up, limbaugh down (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, January 4, 2012 8:33 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

oh yeah i mean no question & im certainly not saying she sucks or should be fired

i guess it's this sense that her engagement w/ the pop charts maybe feels a little bit like fronting? like what does she *really* want to be reviewing? and I almost would rather (and i recognize this might threaten job security) know what she just sorta naturally was drawn to

obv i'm making a bunch of assumptions here abt what she 'likes' and 'really likes' but maybe what i'd like to read about & what her paper and her audience more generally want to read about are all difft things

bleh. i mean, i could be entirely misreading her, too.

i think that last part is a really safe assumption to make

No, she really does love chart pop!

i think that last part is a really safe assumption to make

― J0rdan S., Wednesday, January 4, 2012 8:39 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

how abt sharing your ideas instead of sniping, some dude jr.?

cuz i'm watching basketball right now

I've met her twice at EMP and have known her voice since the publication of the Big Orange SPIN Book on alternative rock and she's never been shy about her populist tendencies (her husband's tastes run closer to the other end, although he likes a lot of country).

I love when you two snipe at each other tbh

also i have no idea what article you guys are talking about, so that's another issue

yah i think maybe that's just what i'm bumping up against -- i feel like the way populism enters into my ideas of music is probably v different than hers

i shared lots of ideas itt just now, leave me out of this

in that SPIN guide she wrote about John Cale and Pearl Jam.

among others; I'm just trying to suggest her breadth in 1994.

but yeah i keep trying to find what powers article we're talking about and i guess the wilson slate piece is part of a back-and-forth w/ several people and there are multiple powers pieces in the series, don't know if there's one in particular that kicked this off (xpost)

i was speaking more from a general experience w/ her writing. I think it might just come down to, I have trouble imagining what a reader of ann powers would get from reading someone who puts "top 40" as a central part of their perspective. I guess. that it feels, i dunno, obsequious to an artificial structure, and that i get the feeling that at some point anything that is *that* successful gets treated w/ a geniality that ... idk maybe i'm a bitter person ha but sometimes i like when a person meets a 'system' like the charts and then you find out where they collide and where they coincide and i don't get as much of a friction from her writing

i think that's how i'd put it

haha i just reread and that's very abstract

i suspect only lamp could possibly decode me there

I'm coming from the same place as D on this - more of a general response to her work (as I perceive it; back in '94 I was mostly reading like Forced Exposure and The Wire and Metal Maniacs and totally ignoring Rolling Stone and Spin) than to any particular article. Though that whole Slate music critics' roundtable presents such a narrow idea of what's going on in the world that reading it drives me kinda batshit.

^^^ooh yeah thats a good pt ... it felt very uninvolving to me, like i almost wish that the writers had each found a corner of the world that they really enjoyed this year & talked about it, instead of like, "here's the common ground music we were all supposed to care about" because, like, i don't really care to read what the foremost thinkers in music crit have decided about katy perry! I'd rather just hear Nitsuh tell me what he really liked listening to this year, and explain why, and maybe it would be more like the TV show Check Please! except with music instead of restaurants, so everyone tries out each other's favorite thing & then they discuss from their perspective

It wasn't describing the world -- it wasn't a CIA memo -- it was describing how their choices for best albums related to other developments.

OK, deej's point is a fair one, and it reminds me of the problems with "round tables" in general: it's impossible to control the ebb and flow once it starts.

yeah i mean you can't really gripe that a multi-perspective 'year in review' is too broad and centrist, that's the whole point

there has to be a common ground to talk about but i'd rather it be about interesting corners of the music world than the pop charts entirely

i'm sure all of them were very interested in talking about the weeknd, that's more 'interesting' than katy perry, right

well no, but one of nitsuh's fav rap records was kendrick lamar, and i think it would be really interesting to see ann powers tackle that, and i'm much more interested in reading a person that smart engaging w/ something i find interesting (and i just used that example b/c its in my wheelhouse but this could easily apply to stuff i haven't heard as well)