thread to track Poptimism 2.0

idk. i think something is going on with How We Write Music Crit Now Lol and it's not great—not necessarily a new depth of bad so much as maybe a familiar badness in a different package bc of how social media has reshaped our relationships to songs/albums/artists as well as our relationship to personal expression? but i'm also speaking from a position where i've basically already decided forever that pans are a very narrow and dull form of criticism for the most part, and extramusical elements getting drawn into pans is potentially a long established tradition, it's just easier to observe the pattern now bc literally everyone is writing the same two paragraphs (encouraged by editorial!) about jt and janet and the superb owl

i never participate in these discussions bc my thoughts never feel complete about them lol

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Tuesday, 6 February 2018 16:42 (five hours ago) Permalink

this feels right to me.

In some ways my frustrations now are about seeing critical approaches that I "fought for" (to use that term very loosely) being used in ways I find uninspiring and lazy. This is not to say that I fought for the wrong things but rather that no approach to thinking about music comes pre-guaranteed with significance, meaning, nuance, insight etc.

In fact maybe what frustrates me is our apparent failure to remember that fact.

Perhaps the biggest way in which callout-culture writing has morphed into a kind of nu-rockism is not necessarily any of the specific stances taken but rather the way in which particular frames are simply assumed to lend an air of depth and authority to what is not necessarily anything more than a superficial hot-take, thereby discouraging differentiation in thinking/writing outside of relatively shallow political binaries. "Justin Timberlake sucks because he is the embodiment of white male privilege" may well be correct (or more precisely: there are interesting and potentially persuasive ways to make this argument) but as an argument it shouldn't be assumed to have any special significance or power simply because it gestures towards a political frame.

For me the point of calling out rockism was less about demanding a rejection of any notion of authenticity than it was asking that we think harder about it, that we unpack what we mean when we try to articulate why a given artist or piece of music feels more real or more important or more auratic to us than something else does - and come up with something better than just a circular hierarchy without foundation (this is authentic because it is not that, and vice versa).

On balance I think that the current popularity of politicized hot-takes still tends to produce more thoughtful writing than the worst artifacts of old-rockism, but I see similar risks in its codification and formularization - in particular, the risk that the apparent self-evidence of our dichotomies provides us a free pass to think less carefully, both about music and about politics.

Probably the other issue which feeds into the changes to music crit is the influence of twitter, and the way in which it elevates the bald assertion to a higher level of social and critical significance in terms of instigating "important conversations" about current issues/people/events.

A lot of music writing which I consider to fall within the rubric of "callout culture" feels like an assertion that started as a tweet and then was padded out to 400 words. And typically the assertion (at least if you haven't seen it in like twenty-five versions already) seems useful as a prompt for thinking, whereas the padding is just padding (i.e. the prompt evidently failed for the writer at least).

A related but separate influence is the way we now expect articles to lead with their most strident proposition.

Agreed, Tim. I get the feeling that it's common for people to start formulating their savage hot takes ready before they even hear/watch something to maximise the amount of likes or retweets they'll get. There's a competition to become the first to have the most biting take on something, with "I'M SCREAMING!" being the sought out reply from the Twittersphere. And then that hot take become consensus about art - JT is a textbook example of this.

The opposite is true for artists who align closest with the, I guess, millennial political ideal. Like, I can already tell you exactly what the Twitter consensus to whatever Beyonce does next will be. No matter what it is. A lot of knee-jerk "SLAY QUEEN" kinda stuff with little reflection.

are we still pretending to be talking about legacy media critics

if you seriously think the reason Beyonce gets better reviews than Justin Timberlake, is because of those damn millennials and their social justice, and not because Beyonce is making excellent, innovative music and Justin Timberlake is making terrible, dated music, then you should probably stop hate-reading Twitter, or at least redirect your complaints to the comments section of Salon

Some of us most certainly are, others should probably think more deeply about why they associate appropriated slang w their ideological opponents

I wish Katherine could see my twitter timeline right now bc this conversation is really not just happening among Whiney style chapo/cum town podcast listeners. This convo is happening in lots of different spaces ...

I just don’t trust any consensus but that doesn’t mean I’m eager to watch the music press from caring too much about Beyoncé to caring too much about Wilco

if you seriously think the reason Beyonce gets better reviews than Justin Timberlake, is because of those damn millennials and their social justice, and not because Beyonce is making excellent, innovative music and Justin Timberlake is making terrible, dated music, then you should probably stop hate-reading Twitter, or at least redirect your complaints to the comments section of Salon

― algorithm is a dancer (katherine), Wednesday, 7 February 2018 2:34 AM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if you seriously think the reason Beyonce gets better reviews than Justin Timberlake, is because of those damn millennials and their social justice, and not because Beyonce is making excellent, innovative music and Justin Timberlake is making terrible, dated music, then you should probably stop hate-reading Twitter, or at least redirect your complaints to the comments section of Salon

― algorithm is a dancer (katherine), Wednesday, 7 February 2018 2:34 AM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

FWIW I'm not talking about "legacy music critics" per se and I certainly don't think the above proposition - but I'm not sure if this is directed at me or just at triggercut?

Sorry the first quote was meant to be the query about whether we're pretending to talk about legacy music critics.

my dumb outside-writing take is that 'poptimism' was always related to a specific brand of pop sound, although varied in origin and basis, that spanned the original reach

and for a lot of time, it was maligned by some writers! but the jump-on, around the y2k point, was when a lot of things were coalescing and creating things that were both "pop" and popular, whether it was the boy/girl groups, the soloists, the max martin acolytes and timbaland bastions. the nu-madonnas, the torch bearers and rock inverters

there are a lot of modern analogues but a lot of them are consciously or unconsciously seizing on the same themes, the continued pop from the familiars or the carly raes doing good things for the base. but the idea that popular music at large was the same thing as that "pop" is a weird idea, because of the poptimist duality

half of it was always some lineage/recidivism riff championing the bits that were now popular and the other half was pushing music critics liked that was popular but also intriguing

there were a bunch of things that were lost because like all genre segments, genre and love for genre is always backward-looking and eventually what we accept as "pop" slides into that maw

tl;dr maybe I should get into Imagine Dragons now

(actually listened to their stuff today after hearing it in a movie trailer, my early take was "big riffs and choruses and that's it" and for fuck's sake that is actually the whole band concept, their verse parts are so bad)

the threads are blurring together at this point; when this originally came up, days ago, in the defense of Justin Timberlake against the dreaded politics (I cannot believe that this endless dark night of the critical soul has arrived because of MAN OF THE WOODS, of all albums), the claim was "oh, we're talking about legacy media critics doing this, not people on Twitter."

does that album have a couple passable cuts to anchor a tour where he does Timberlake standards? that's really the thing

For what it’s worth I literally never said it was only about legacy media critics, my disdain for a lame critic consensus extends to people on Twitter sure but is less about any specific position than a set of shared assumptions which yes are currently reflected by certain legacy journalists

But I understand now that any criticism of those shared assumptions & the cynicism with which they’re donned like a costume could *only* come from being a Gamergater who thinks Beyoncé is bad 🙄

Imo worse than having been on the wrong side of an argument is opportunistically switching sides & pretending you meant it all along, I find this cynicism pretty unforgiveable, if you’re only right when it’s popular you’re never really right

I think Steven Hyden packages it neatly with his bit on the Default Smart Opinion:

"A Default Smart Opinion is an opinion that’s generally considered to be inarguable because it’s repeated ad nauseam by seemingly intelligent individuals. . . . The usual formula for a regular smart opinion — research plus careful consideration plus nuanced analysis — doesn’t apply. You needn’t actually listen to a Nickelback album or watch The Big Bang Theory or study Kim Kardashian’s collected philosophical scrolls. You merely have to recite recycled bits of conventional wisdom.

Like, no one has to justify their piling on Timberlake at the moment because The Default Smart Opinion is just that he's now bad. You don't even have to listen to his new album to join in! But yeah, regardless of how I personally feel about Timberlake or Beyoncé, I think using these shared assumptions as a launching point for a piece are almost always counterproductive to good or interesting music writing. Either in praise or in denigration.

this is a rambling post and kind of disorganized, but i think y'all get my drift

― austinb, Wednesday, February 7, 2018 8:16 AM (ten hours ago)

i notice that, at least amongst my peers, there's a general disconnect between their ACTUAL listening habits and personal tastes and their tendencies for what they post on social media. the latter is often determined by what's discussed here—political leanings, calling out artists, dissecting their political alignments, dunking on and stanning them to varying degrees (this extends down to indie too! a FB group im in recently renamed itself to Porchrician Thunderdome for a time because everyone had been mocking porches for so long).

I definitely don't

ok, but the actual Default Smart Opinion at work here is that "____________ are vapid, are listening to music the wrong way and ruining music writing," where _________ is never defined as a group of real people with names but instead by an ever-changing group of nebulous signifiers that, for some reason, match exactly all the reactionary stereotypes about "millennials" and progressive writers. This opinion is not questioned and never examined.

Katherine, are you being ... triggered ... by triggercut?

Also, the only person doing the whole "wow new music writers are ESS JAY DUB cucks" thing is triggercut, a poster I've never heard of, so we don't really need to get too far off topic here

steven hyden has no sense of irony does he

Manic Pixie Default Opinion

steven hyden has no sense of irony does he

― lowercase (eric), Wednesday, February 7, 2018 7:20 AM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he lacks a lot of sense

and humor. Does he think "study Kim Kardashian’s collected philosophical scrolls" will have the Default Smart Opiners slapping their knees and going, "This'll knock'em dead"?

You'd be surprised!

He really does fill that role of craft beer philosopher for a sea of middle class rock music fans quite successfully, for better or worse.

well the position that elevated him to 'importance' was one where he was hired to be klosterman ii so...

Yeah, Hyden is not the guy to talk about coasting on received wisdom.

xp with grawlix, and seriously

anyway i think tim is pretty OTM about this. and it's certainly not only millennials who can get drawn in by the oxytocin rush of likes and retweets and "social media popularity." if anything "legacy music critics" (which is also a fairly nebulous term!) are probably more susceptible to it because it's proof that they're not out of touch despite their bosses' needling and editors' turning down of their pitches. (probably worth noting: having that thought just made me google "eric garland age.")

I still have yet to locate this mysterious distinguished 60-year-old male critic for a paper of record who writes I'M SCREAMING on social media

The screaming is DEAFENING!

— Bob Lefsetz (@Lefsetz) June 17, 2012

funny, but that's not the same and everyone here knows it

maybe they're secretly Russian trolls like large swaths of the internet are turning out to be, who knows

'twas merely a jokey interlude, do carry on

it's not simply writing I'M SCREAMING, katherine. surely you know, even in your seemingly endless crusade to prove that concern about the way music journalism (and journalism as a whole) is going is merely ageism and nothing else, that there's a spectrum of effects here. although if you want to see adults trying on the lingo they perceive to be "of the youth," i suggest you look at any media outlet's snapchat story.

I don't think it's just ageism, but I do think it's displaced resentment: resentment that's really about a certain group of people existing and saying things. this resentment happens to be the exact same resentment shared by the most reactionary parts of the world, and is often phrased in the same terms. I don't know how many times I have to rephrase this until it gets across.

and yes, I'm invested in this, given that I am part of the wave of writers who have supposedly ruined everything for everyone.

katherine, again, literally one person in this thread was doing that

at this point it's been, what, five threads across three days, all because people didn't like a mediocre-to-terrible Justin Timberlake album and thought some plausibly racist elements about its elevation were plausibly racist?

given that I am part of the wave of writers who have supposedly ruined everything for everyone

no offense but a lot of your re-triangulating of peoples' arguments seems to be an attempt to bait people into saying exactly this to you, even though nobody really thinks it!

I still have yet to locate this mysterious distinguished 60-year-old male critic for a paper of record who writes I'M SCREAMING on social media

Well, me neither. This is a a misrepresentation of what I said. What I was saying is that music critics (whether they’re “legacy” or not, that doesn’t really come into it) increasingly seem like they’re writing for that kind of response. I just feel like it’s getting harder for writers to represent their thoughts and feelings on music honestly when they know that saying the “wrong thing” can set off a firestorm against them. But this is just my perception of course. So, a question for the music writers here: how much do you think about a potential social media response to a piece before posting it? And how have you dealt with any social media backlash you’ve had to a piece? FWIW, I think the writers who also happen to post here demonstrate more honesty and integrity than the writers of the kind of pieces I’m referring to here.

I also resent the accusation that I’m arguing that “new music writers are SJW cucks” thing. Come on, now. I don’t believe that at all. I think social media is having a huge impact on music writing, so I just want to have an honest discussion about what those impacts are.

like there are a lot of STRUCTURAL CHANGES IN THE WAY JOURNALISM IS MADE AND CONSUMED at work here that go far beyond "we hate the kids"* and it's frustrating that you're continually recentering the argument so that it's writer-focused

*if anything it's "fire all the executives and also nationalize google"

The sum total of my thoughts about the potential social media response to anything I write is to lock my account before anything gets posted so I can at least cordon off the angry tweets about my writing ability and sometimes my appearance to a place where they do not bombard me in the office. I forgot to do this for the Grammys piece because I was too sleep-deprived, and ended up regretting it.

oh and nationalize facebook too obv

thread to track Poptimism 2.0 katherine

Thread to Defend Justin Timberlake Against The Mean Millennials doesn't exist yet

ah, yes, it was definitely the rogue millennials and not the gen-xers and xennials assigning, editing and dictating the editorial visions of outlets they own and run

i mean if you're getting shitty dms that sucks but to me your replies from the post-grammys scrum look pretty positive? 'magnificent' and 'powerful' are pretty great compliments and ones that not many people receive

This is where the benefits of being a niche writer covering niche music really show up.

how much do you think about a potential social media response to a piece before posting it?

Not at all.

And how have you dealt with any social media backlash you’ve had to a piece?

This has never happened to me.

The sum total of my thoughts about the potential social media response to anything I write is to lock my account before anything gets posted so I can at least cordon off the angry tweets about my writing ability and sometimes my appearance to a place where they do not bombard me in the office. I forgot to do this for the Grammys piece because I was too sleep-deprived, and ended up regretting it.

didn't you get into a fight with some shitty nu-metal band recently lol xp