P2K: The Top 200 Albums of the 2000s: 20-1

I think you can introduce good and bad into this (not necessarily "right" and "wrong," though that can certainly enter into it, and one great joy is dissecting the factual inaccuracies of people whose received opinions are so toxic, if only because it's something you can throw back without having to qualify it all that much or open up some go-nowhere convo about diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks or some such thing), and that when we do the conversation here starts to point at what one of the big issues is: we're defining what we want from the world by the conversation we can have with it, and a good conversation is like the ideal space. That conversation doesn't have to be a literal one, but, e.g., Lex is looking for a literal conversation that fits his ideal, and he's not finding it, or when he thinks he finds it, it's tainted by some bad conversation.

Which is kind of the story of conversations, I guess, and particularly music conversations for some reason (no institutional ways of creating a safe space for high-level convos is a double-edged sword -- keeps deadly dullness and joy-sucking out but also lets a ton of other smaller bores in, a death by a thousand paper cuts deal where at least in, say, academia sometimes you can avoid the biggest or most threatening knives, or whatever). We're pointing to all the small ways in which musicwrite doesn't give us what we're looking for -- some of it being obvious sexism, or less-obvious sexism, most of it having to do with a shitty conversation. And the only way to remedy it is to build a better one ourselves, which sucks. It's hard to build a conversation by yourself, or with a really small group with no external incentive for doing it. ILM is the story of such a conversation, one of the few, that works, relatively speaking.

Anyway, I guess the big point here, if there is one, is that this seems to be an argument about the state of conversations, and if that's the case, I don't (usually) actually care about the content of the conversation -- you should be able to have a good conversation about R&B with someone who knows little about or HATES R&B, but what you end up getting is this sort of timidness about the subject, a lot of the baggage intact without at least the boldness of being WRONG. And the people who are boldly wrong, La Roux for instance, are SO wrong that they're not worth engaging with -- they're not being wrong in productive ways, hence they're offering a terrible conversation.

I don't think there's any way to make a bad conversation better, though, without actually getting into the brains of the conversers and changing them: otherwise you just need to find a new place or new people to talk to. And so part of Lex's anxiety about this, I would guess, is that he's fearing that the music he loves doesn't also lead him to the conversations with people he wants to be having.

"what appears to be open-minded criticism can start to seem close-minded in its ruthless application of implicit assumptions regarding open-mindedness"

This is what bothers me about a lot of high-end so-called poptimistic writing, mostly American, that I've been seeing lately: open-mindedness, in and of itself, doesn't mean anything if you're still bad at getting ideas across and can't talk to someone else in an engaging way and are a boring boring boring boring bore. (Strikes me, to use a better Frank Kogan foundation for the developing conversation, something like a PBS Laser Beam, a way to take all of culture that isn't just "for the group," like the trash culture of the 60's becoming the punk culture of the 70's, say, and turn it into gray water instantly, without the benefit even of the support group that usually comes with it.) Something the Singles Jukebox keeps reminding me is that I don't care what anyone likes in particular so long as they write or talk about it well, though I would bet plenty of times what you like is also indicative of the kinds of conversations you'll have about the stuff you like, which is a whole other can of worms.

Frank sez, re: PBS:

"my complaint about the indie/PBS/lonely hearts club in 1987 wasn't that the people in it didn't have broad tastes, but that they ruined everything they touched. In any event, I can't see that the importance and effect of what people say and do in regard to music is inherently different in kind from the importance and effect of what people say and do in regard to health care or in regard to global warming or anything else. That doesn't mean that musical events are as crucial as some of these others, but they are certainly influenced by the discourse, and by how well or poorly people speak."

In this way, opening "us" (or them, or whoever) up to more stuff can also make the conversation that much more rancid -- but since there's no way of keeping us (or them) OUT of the conversation (part of what Ned is experiencing, I think, since though I'm sympathetic to the "everything was better when you were 12 argument" I do honestly think something has fundamentally changed, quickly, recently) is a leveling of the music playing field, so that it's as hard to find a truly Big Thing as it is to find a truly "safe" uncontaminated little music niche for yourself), we have to work on either ignoring them or finding the usefulness in the badness or changing them altogether. And two of these are annoying and the other is usually impossible, I think.

great post (first one), the last paragraph about bores with good taste is spot on.

(part of what Ned is experiencing, I think, since though I'm sympathetic to the "everything was better when you were 12 argument" I do honestly think something has fundamentally changed, quickly, recently)

The question of that fundamental change is always going to be potentially loaded, I figure. Was it generational or was it caused by perception? (Or both, or something else...)

Well, since I'm a bit younger than you, my experience of the same thing at the same time in the same way probably means something, though not sure what. I bet you could look to the shrinking industry itself -- even though a lot of commentary about how MJ was the "last of something" feels overheated, there's something in there that's factually true, except I'm guessing a more helpful measuring stick would be Britney Spears, not MJ. (I'm guessing her steady decrease in sales is obscured somewhat by relatively stable chart standings, though I haven't explored it.) But if MJ/Madonna are pop-culture touchstones, something that everyone at least has an opinion on whether they like them or not, I do think we're pretty much over that mode of cultural reception. Now rather than not LIKING something, you just say (rightly) that you haven't heard it. I could easily imagine someone, even someone kind of plugged into a mainstream-ish culture (several family members, for instance) who has honestly never heard, or even heard of, most of the #1 artists of this year, which probably wasn't true even in 2000.

Oh your last point has been readily demonstrated all the time, trust me, and it's not just on the outer fringes. I know at least one friend who expressed dumbfounded amazement that a slew of writers/music fans/etc. out there hadn't seemed to have heard either of the Black Eyed Peas number ones this year, even after having a death grip on the charts for more than half its length.

x-post

Like, when I was 13, we could have had a no-holds-barred fight about Rage Against the Machine, but it's probably genuinely more difficult now to share common music that overlaps with the music you happen to like, even for someone with fairly broad taste or an intense interest in talking about music. I mean, I know who BrokenCYDE are, but it feels like an active process of investigation to actually listen to it. (I was somewhat shocked when I first heard 3OH!3 casually in a public setting, mostly because I hadn't heard any popular music I'd talked about recently with anyone in a public setting in so long! Most in-store music is specified for a given store and usually not that contemporary -- just had the weird experience of sitting in a coffee shop that played only 90's singer/songwriter stuff, Lisa Loeb etc., from what I presume was some Satellite radio station or specialty mix, and thinking "there is no difference between this place right now and this place in 1996 except for the sign for free wi-fi.")

Short summary seems to = one risks getting music "wrong" when one writes and/or thinks badly. Which seems reasonable to me -- it's true of almost everything. Other than that, though, I don't think there's anything wrong with the interpretive process that necessarily accompanies the movement of art from one cultural context to another. For instance, the way dance music or hip-hop are understood and used by, say, indie/hipster audiences... The latter probably won't understand & use the music in the same way as serious/knowledgeable fans of the genre. As a result, the qualities they value will necessarily seem "wrong" to anyone who really cares about and has spent substantial time with the genre. And that's okay. I don't see anything wrong with this sort of appropriation and reinterpretation.

(part of what Ned is experiencing, I think, since though I'm sympathetic to the "everything was better when you were 12 argument" I do honestly think something has fundamentally changed, quickly, recently)

The question of that fundamental change is always going to be potentially loaded, I figure. Was it generational or was it caused by perception? (Or both, or something else...)

the landscape of the music industry is such a volatile one that seeking "fundamental" changes and patterns like this over several generations is sort of fruitless - recording technology's only a few generations old, the way people approach/examine/create/digest/market/purchase music changes at variable rates

x-posts

(And I also don't really want to go on a warpath against BrokeNCYDE in part because it took me so much effort just to find the stuff in the first place. It didn't come looking for me, so why should I go looking for a fight? There are answers to that, but they aren't as obvious as when bad music messes up the flow of your everyday existence.)

contederizer, all the more reason to just say "bad" instead of wrong. Sure, they're not wrong, if by wrong you mean what they did was one valid possibility given what the music is. But one can use something in a valid way and still totally suck. If my argument for why they suck is better than their argument for why the music's good on "their terms," I win the conversation, and will be rewarded with their contempt and a lifetime of isolation and bitterness.

Curt1s -- I want to buy that, and I'm usually quick to put the brakes on, but I do think something is different. Maybe fundamental is the wrong word for something that changes a lot anyway (or is too new to have clear "fundamentals"), but I do think that music culture, reception-wise and industrially, isn't just experiencing variability that's in the same ballpark as the relative variability of, let's say, the past fifty years (and hey, maybe it's just my own social blinders and this isn't true of other countries or social contexts). But since I have no evidence I won't take it much further than that.

Bug OTM. I fully endorse the reduction in scope to good arguments about music vs. bad ones.

Short summary seems to = one risks getting music "wrong" when one writes and/or thinks badly. Which seems reasonable to me -- it's true of almost everything. Other than that, though, I don't think there's anything wrong with the interpretive process that necessarily accompanies the movement of art from one cultural context to another. For instance, the way dance music or hip-hop are understood and used by, say, indie/hipster audiences... The latter probably won't understand & use the music in the same way as serious/knowledgeable fans of the genre. As a result, the qualities they value will necessarily seem "wrong" to anyone who really cares about and has spent substantial time with the genre. And that's okay. I don't see anything wrong with this sort of appropriation and reinterpretation.

― from alcoholism to fleshly concerns (contenderizer), Tuesday, October 20, 2009 11:29 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

its easy to say in rhetorical generalities. but things can easily be lost, & are all the time, when u shift contexts like that

I know at least one friend who expressed dumbfounded amazement that a slew of writers/music fans/etc. out there hadn't seemed to have heard either of the Black Eyed Peas number ones this year, even after having a death grip on the charts for more than half its length.

I want to say this is insane to me but then I remember all of the hair metal that I actively shunned back in the 80s and thus never, for example, heard a Winger song in its entirety until this decade. (ps I want my pretty mind back)

Headed for a headache.

Forgot to link the convo from LiveJournal here.

I think a better comparison wouldn't be hair metal or Winger (though I'd bet you'd at least HEARD of Winger and simply chose not to listen to them), but instead whether or not it was possible to actually avoid hearing or knowing about, say, Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" when it came out.

Oh hey, thanks -- 'anchorlessness' is a good choice of word but the way I've articulated it more to myself is process vs. product, where I am increasingly interested/comfortable with the former not the latter. (This does not just apply to music.) I'll probably have more to say about that in the Stylus piece.

Probably not the thread for this, but damn, looking at "biggest jumps to #1" mostly being within the past 3 years is like looking at the record hot days happening in the past 10 years. (Obvious difference that ruins the metaphor is that this has everything to do with downloading counting toward the charts, and streaming as of 2007.)

* 97-1 - Kelly Clarkson — "My Life Would Suck Without You" (February 7, 2009)[2]
* 96-1 - Britney Spears — "Womanizer" (October 25, 2008)[3]
* 80-1 - T.I. featuring Rihanna — "Live Your Life" (October 18, 2008) [4]
* 78-1 - Eminem, Dr. Dre and 50 Cent - "Crack a Bottle" (February 21, 2009)[5]
* 71-1 - T.I. — "Whatever You Like" (September 6, 2008)[6]
* 64-1 - Maroon 5 — "Makes Me Wonder" (May 12, 2007)
* 58-1 - Flo Rida featuring Ke$ha — "Right Round" (February 28, 2009)[7]
* 53-1 - Rihanna — "Take a Bow" (May 24, 2008)[8]
* 52-1 - Kelly Clarkson — "A Moment Like This" (October 5, 2002)
* 51-1 - Usher featuring Young Jeezy — "Love in This Club" (March 15, 2008)

x-post, Ned I'm actually writing about this now as an IRL project (having to do mostly with media education) -- could email you some of the musings etc. if you like. I think our issues are pretty similar, but that we're probably using different approaches to talk about it.

Sure, I know I have your e-mail around but if I can't dig it up, ned at kuci dot org -- I'm going to be working on the initial draft this weekend.

In fact just e-mail me directly, will be simpler!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYjD8jYfWBI

There's a vision.

Mention that song in your piece, Ned. I'll give you a dollar.

BRIBERY

I know at least one friend who expressed dumbfounded amazement that a slew of writers/music fans/etc. out there hadn't seemed to have heard either of the Black Eyed Peas number ones this year, even after having a death grip on the charts for more than half its length.

I've said this repeatedly, but it's really, really easy to not pay attention to huge mainstream songs like this. I do because I'm interested in What's Going On in Pop Music, but I'll also note that the vast majority of times I've heard "I Gotta Feeling" have been from listening to the radio in my car. If I didn't drive, or even if I just took the top 40 stations off my presets, I might have heard it a couple of times in a public place (or at a wedding or whatever) but not been able to ID it or remember that I'd heard it before.

Moreover, I don't think this is any more true now than it was 10 years ago (especially for me, since I was in college then and very suspect of mainstream pop culture). Is the difference that critics no longer feel an obligation to pay attention to Top 40 because there are so many other stories now?

i think if i heard 'i gotta feeling' on a station i listen to i would remove said station from my regular rotation

I've said this repeatedly, but it's really, really easy to not pay attention to huge mainstream songs like this. I do because I'm interested in What's Going On in Pop Music, but I'll also note that the vast majority of times I've heard "I Gotta Feeling" have been from listening to the radio in my car. If I didn't drive, or even if I just took the top 40 stations off my presets, I might have heard it a couple of times in a public place (or at a wedding or whatever) but not been able to ID it or remember that I'd heard it before.

That particular song (and many other BEP singles) are all over prime-time television ads though, so you're not only actively avoiding mainstream radio but you're also actively avoiding live television.

My personal opinion is that if you are working as a music critic, you should be prepared to write about any type of music; you may have a specialty or comfort zone but you're not doing your job if you actively avoid wide swathes of music.

but you're also actively avoiding live television.

Probably true -- apart from late-night TV (Conan, Oprah, etc.) a couple times a week, most of the TV I watch is online.

I'm wondering if you could find any sort of analogy in, e.g., the film industry in the 60's with declining film attendance and box office versus technical popularity/box office rankings of films overall (lower total sales, so the #1 sells less and non-#1 stuff may be far more popular in other ways). From a sort of armchair vantage, it seems like at this point in American semi-mainstream or mainstream filmmaking the biggest stories, the films with the most cultural resonance, didn't map onto what was most successful in any meaningful way ("The Graduate" is an exception). Problem with finding the data for this from obvious places is that many places counts continuing sales, so Disney product starts to dominate with continued rereleasing through the decades.

Clearly there's a difference here in the cultural clout of the highest-sellers -- I think you'd be hard-pressed to call many of the highest-grossing 60's films historically iconic in the way that you could for the 70's films. Something similar seems to be happening on the charts, except rather than a transitional slump, I imagine there's not much turning back from the lowered sales, unlike the film industry ('course all of this is hand-wavey and not based in nearly enough evidence, and if you can prove it wrong please do so!).

Getting back to the subject at hand, though, I mean, yeah critics should listen to wide swathes of music, but not for any great unifying reason. It just happens to make most people better critics. Tom Ewing, e.g., has insisted that his own musical knowledge is quite narrow -- more narrow than most people assume it is -- and I don't think this makes him any poorer of a critic ('course he's OPEN to wide swathes of music -- if you're really avoiding so much music, a natural question that arises is what the heck you're doing in the whole music critic racket in the first place.)

The question must partially reside with individual circumstance/opportunity, obv. -- consider Tom's full-time work elsewhere, raising a family, etc., so when he speaks of his knowledge being narrow, that background is part of what's at play. Similarly my own full-time work, my multiplicity of other interests and things I like to do -- if I'm spending (as I have done) between one to two hours in the evening working on some sort of new dish in the kitchen, I'm much more likely to be doing comfort listening than anything else! And we all have our own examples at work.

tl;dr guys

In most cases I agree with Dan's statement – it's not a stretch for me because I've loved Top 40 radio since I was knee high to a grasshopper – but I'm loosening up.

Glad ppl finally got round to discussing the merits&drawbacks of music crit by outsiders and taste in music as dialogue, two excellent notions IMO, just what was needed.

contenderizer: "My gut feeling is that the more honest we are with ourselves about our basic tastes, the less rational, coherent and defensible they will come to seem"

Does being less rational, coherent and defensible also make them inexplicable? With yr idea of a basic, core, true taste, I'm wondering how it would come about, especially as apparently people don't have the same basic tastes and the differences often fall along demographic lines. If it's not something evolved in your environment then where does it come from? Are yr sporting allegiances from there too? Also I'm wondering if you mean you have a 'basic', 'true' opinion on every song that you've just got to be honest with yourself to find or if, as I think yr saying, there is a (small) core of stuff which exhibits those traits that you are genetically doomed to find irresistable (snare on the off beat, I-IV-V, converse shoes, cowbell, homophobic lols). If yr going for the latter then there is presumably a huge chunk of music we have no innate opinion of&I'm wondering if that's the natural domain for ppl to intellectually equivocate in, trying on different genres for size as a day out before returning back to their authentic meat and potatoes.

There's a streak of defensiveness running through this talk of sacrosanct taste that just seems paranoid, like a mob of ethnically diverse critics are going to come stage some indie sucks rally, burn Archers Of Loaf EPs by the dozen and police ipod playlists to ensure everyone's getting their five a day of music-by-womens. First they came for the pitchfork top 20... Yes the fact that you listen to some people's music and not others is politically significant, but as with yr vote it's because ppl see yr value as a listener that they challenge you. Who gets attention, acclaim and a career in music is significant enough to argue over. If you don't want to change your mind then you won't; like voting Tory if you feel guilty about it that's yr responsibility.

Though there's lots of stuff I've read that has changed the way I hear music, it can only happen if you are open to it. 'Getting' music, like all experience, is a creative exercise, (which is one of the reasons yr idea of basic taste is anathema to me) it requires you to break up and organise the sound, to follow and move with it, to focus on certain features, to anticipate and to listen for details&to build a context in which they are significant... these are all things music crit can help with, but it can't listen to it for you, and its criticisms won't have any effect if you don't find some truth in them and tie them into your own experience.

Also I generally agree with this: "My personal opinion is that if you are working as a music critic, you should be prepared to write about any type of music; you may have a specialty or comfort zone but you're not doing your job if you actively avoid wide swathes of music." Though some of the people with the most amazing way of listening to music have very limited tastes. Favourite example always Joe Bussard.

this^^^ especially the second to last paragraph

the "deep taste" contingent isn't giving enough credit to how what you read and think influence your intuitive perception of music and experience in general.

I haven't giving much credit to it because in my observation, it hasn't made much difference to my own experience of music. I stand corrected and accept that it apparently does make a big difference for others (something I should have realized a long time ago just from spending so much time around here).

I think I had the same experience with criticism of poetry, back when I was very interested in poetry (except that I tended to find critical writing on poetry more interesting than most of the music criticism I read). Ultimately I didn't find it have much impact on how I experienced what I read. (An extreme case would be L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry vs. discussion of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry. The theory initially made it seem pretty exciting, but then I kept running against the misery of actually reading the stuff.)

'Getting' music, like all experience, is a creative exercise, (which is one of the reasons yr idea of basic taste is anathema to me) it requires you to break up and organise the sound, to follow and move with it, to focus on certain features, to anticipate and to listen for details&to build a context in which they are significant... these are all things music crit can help with, but it can't listen to it for you, and its criticisms won't have any effect if you don't find some truth in them and tie them into your own experience

sure - it's not necessarily incumbent on the listener to do it either, but it is incumbent on critics to do it (point taken re: specialists w/limited tastes being amazing, but from an editorial perspective there should be relatively few of them). as for non-critics who like to discuss these things, ie all non-critics in this thread, i'd like to think you're interested enough to do this creative exercise. eg after deej and i repped for mariah's emancipation of mimi upthread, i'd like to think some people were curious enough to check it out. and yeah, "but i know i don't like mariah, oh noes her vocal technique and ability to sing" - stop and think about how much of her material you're actually familiar with, or whether you're just parroting (indie-)critical consensus!

music crit by outsiders and insiders both valuable. the former is riskier - with the latter, the worst that can happen is dull writing, but even if the critic in question is no wordsmith, the writing will usually be accurate and informative - very helpful to outsiders! thinking of grime here - 100% would take the writers of that period who knew their shit, were on the ground, could bridge the gap between the artists and the mainstream press and report the scene accurately, over the weedy white men who wibbled unhelpfully about critical theory and were all poetic and emo on the internet.

music crit by outsiders can be AMAZING but tim got it absolutely otm upthread - the outsider can't just bring their own unquestioned values and preconceptions to the criticism, you have to approach with an open mind and be respectful to whatever you find. the example i always cite is when the telegraph sent their opera critic to review björk live at covent garden opera house a few years ago - provided a real insight into how she could be perceived outside of her own converted fanbase (and indeed how an opera fan might respond to pop musicians generally). a terrific piece of writing.

tom ewing saying he's not a specialist is a red herring b/c he's a lot more knowledgeable about different genres than he says/thinks he is!! and in any case absolutely typifies the ideal outsider approach of looking at what the artist and the music value, without ever losing sight of what he values. not many outsider critics do this, to put it mildly.

^^ 100% OTM.

What I really like about Tom's writing is that he displays sensitivity to the music in question, even if he doesn't like it much. So when he does introduce unusual or personal stuff to what he's writing about, both sides (the music's "interests", his interests) are illuminated. I thought his piece on "Elanor Rigby" and the forgotten people of the 60s (for Popular) was an excellent example of this.

Even a lot of really enthusiastic criticism often doesn't show that sensitivity, it's more like a mechanistic application of rote critical buzzwords and compliments to prc-conceived qualities in the music.

on a grumpier note i have to say that 90% of the "outsider perspective" criticism i read nowadays is fucking terrible and makes me want to shoot people in the face. ESPECIALLY people who constantly go on about "pop", and constantly whine whenever a song doesn't have a huge galumphing electro beat or immediate one-listen hook or obvious mainstream appeal.

"respectful and open-minded" i think is the main thing here, but that's also edging closer and closer towards just saying "good writing." writing respectfully and open-mindedly well this is how everyone wants to write and it's not until someone more knowledgeable than you is calling you out on some stupid shit that you'd realize you've got it wrong. there's also a balancing act going on, for the outsider, between respectful, honest and interesting. are these pop whiners just being too honest and letting their first impressions on the page? as outsiders they probably just don't get the genre and no amount of respect or open-mindedness will correct that until they do. i can relate to this; in genres i have no knowledge of, often the only songs i can relate to are those with instant hooks. that's just because the majority of it's charms are knit into its generic code which i've yet to figure out.

Yeah kind of think sensitivity is the key, the outsider tag I would only really use for ppl writing about music where there's a pretty distinct core of listeners they don't belong to. Like me writing about Hindustani music. I think most vaguely popular stuff bleeds together a lot more and it's too nebulous to have obvious cores (or they're tiny and yr insider specialism is extremely narrow) and its part of the job of the listener/critic to tie things together&map out connections in useful ways, not nec. always down the usual lines. Someone trying to write authoritatively about an entire area they don't know much about nearly always bad news though.

"the weedy white men who wibbled unhelpfully about critical theory and were all poetic and emo on the internet" < I thought you all liked that kode9 interview?

on a grumpier note i have to say that 90% of the "outsider perspective" criticism i read nowadays is fucking terrible and makes me want to shoot people in the face. ESPECIALLY people who constantly go on about "pop", and constantly whine whenever a song doesn't have a huge galumphing electro beat or immediate one-listen hook or obvious mainstream appeal.

Are these outsiders though or just popjustice/G.A.Y. fans?

There are negative qualities to insider writing just as there are to outsider writing: insularity, the arcane nature of acquired tastes, defensiveness and/or scene boosting, unquestioned aesthetic assumptions, a tendency to take basic familiarity for granted, an attachment to minutia that can occlude the big picture, etc., etc. Nevertheless, all other things being equal, I'll grant that expertise is almost always an asset.

*** *** ***

In response to a few x-posts, I'm not saying that all taste is "deep taste", or that thinking and talking about one's taste has no value. I'm saying that taste is complicated, and it's hard to clearly distinguish between one's ideas about art and one's atavistic responses to it. Therefore, I'm not inclined to question or criticize straightforward expressions of taste on (for instance) political grounds. I happily grant that tastes change over time, and that we can easily expand our tastes simply by being open to new things. But none of that really subverts what I'm trying to say.

I started out defending the indie-centric narrowness of Pitchfork's decade list (not its gender imbalance; see below). I saw the narrowness of the list as an expression of a house aesthetic, an indie aesthetic -- as an expression of Pitchfork's collective taste. Pitchfork's expressions of taste are successful, influential and (to its audience) seemingly useful. They are therefore defensible, even in some sense "good". I don't see the point in arguing that the Pitchfork list should be less indie or more inclusive of other genres. If Pitchfork's taste were markedly different, it would likely be less successful, influential and useful to its audience. That is, I see Pitchfork's success as largely dependent on an audience's interest in and respect for its specific, indie-centric taste.

The idea that taste might be "sacrosanct" came up in response to a different set of complaints about the Pitchfork list. These complaints were more political in nature and revolved around Pitchfork's apparently decided preference for male artists. Personal taste can certainly reflect social conditions, but I don't think that it's appropriate to treat expressions of taste as a form of political speech. This approach only invites reductive reactions, as though we should always be on guard to ensure that our tastes are demographically proportional. Worse yet, if successful, this approach eases a visible symptom in a manner that only camouflages the underlying conditions. Music criticism is boy's club. It isn't the expression of taste that's the problem -- the problem is that we only privilege certain voices to express themselves in this manner.

in genres i have no knowledge of, often the only songs i can relate to are those with instant hooks. that's just because the majority of it's charms are knit into its generic code which i've yet to figure out.

― samosa gibreel

The appreciation of the hidden charms you speak of, however, can lead to just the sort of insularity I was talking about. It's hard to think of many important, enduring, broadly popular pieces of music that don't display instant hooks. This is true of folk music, children's & holiday songs, classical music, jazz & pop. It's true of almost every pop sub-genre, too. The reason that certain disco and metal songs become widely-known and beloved mainstream classics almost always boils down to a simple combination of easy accessibility and massive hooks. (Plus timing, luck, promo money, etc., but the point still stands.)

If one is primarily interested in this sort of instant accessibility, and if one is speaking to a general audience, then genre-specific expertise becomes much less important, perhaps even a hindrance. One need only understand the genre well enough to know what stands the best chance of succeeding outside its confines.

i don't know, anyone who is satisfied just skimming the tops of genres for their most accessible and insantly affecting hits... kind of a loser imo. do these people also listens to albums once and then delete all the songs they didn't like first shot? but i do know what you mean about these songs being an important bridge to communicating with other uneducated shmoes.

everyone is discussion musicwrite as it pertains to music, but not as it pertains to writing. if the aim is to be funny, provocative, interesting, and true -- i.e. good from the standpoint of writing -- then everything follows. if that gets displaced by another agenda (to promote a genre, to be proper, to be outrageous, to be authoritative, to be inoffensive, to find a big thing, to be smart) then that's where the trouble is. so we shouldn't be fighting over what agenda crits set themselves. we should take issue with the idea that crits need an agenda, and maybe open ourselves to the idea that its having an agenda -- trying to hard to matter -- that makes things the most inconsequential.

xpost to samosa:

There has to be a less sneeringly self-righteous way to put that idea across. I mean, isn't that what pop is and does (both as a genre and as a form of cultural memory)? It just skims the top of everything for the hits, for the good parts. In fact, I think that's what we ALL do with regard to the seemingly infinite mass of music that exists in the world. We trawl through it in search of our own personal "hits", sometimes in an educated fashion, sometimes not. And there's nothing wrong with that, either way, so long as we find value in what we bring home. We could always be more educated, or less.

I mean, I have nothing against you personally, SG, but that post exemplifies everything that bugs me about criticizing other people's taste.

everyone is discussion musicwrite as it pertains to music, but not as it pertains to writing. if the aim is to be funny, provocative, interesting, and true -- i.e. good from the standpoint of writing -- then everything follows. if that gets displaced by another agenda (to promote a genre, to be proper, to be outrageous, to be authoritative, to be inoffensive, to find a big thing, to be smart) then that's where the trouble is. so we shouldn't be fighting over what agenda crits set themselves. we should take issue with the idea that crits need an agenda, and maybe open ourselves to the idea that its having an agenda -- trying to hard to matter -- that makes things the most inconsequential.

Hi Sterling, how are you distinguishing between these two groups of aims? i.e to be provocative w/r/t writing vs to be outrageous w/r/t the music? I mean I can see ho wn article might be one and not the other but in many cases you achieve one through the other. "True" writing about music is synonymous (though not identical) with writing that is "true" to the music, I would have thought?

i don't know, anyone who is satisfied just skimming the tops of genres for their most accessible and insantly affecting hits...

..etc...

To all the 'genres' that you do not care for, but can appreciate parts of.

I mean, I was never much for HMetal, but someone tried to get me into it via 'accessible' stuff like, I dunno, Journey, Styx, um etc.. When I told them I thought Motorhead were OK, he went Oh.

Wow, Ogmor's big post totally OTM.

There's been a lot banging around in my head on this subject in the past few days, but they still haven't percolated into cogent form. Something Contenderizer wrote on this subject on another thread really really REALLY rubbed me the wrong way and I'm trying to get past my kneejerk reaction of ARGH to put it into words.