OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

he doesn't care
he loves it

lol

I am a proud expert on every subject i discuss on ilx

lol

My guess is he thinks Sky and Haim "transcend" pop through craft and emotion, whereas the others are generic or mercenary or shallow or something.

hey likes frank ocean too so it can't just be guitars

This pop, R&B and hip hop is fine but that stuff, oh dear me no, I need to write a NYT essay about the cultural poison of people who like that.

Ok this article was kind of bad but you guys are strawmanning the shit out of it.

Like I don't think he's taking issue with any particular artist being written about/voted for, he's just arguing the balance overall has shifted in a direction he doesn't exactly like.

It's not strawmanning. I'm genuinely confused by it. If critics of mainstream pop were giving it a free pass or neglecting other kinds of music - music's equivalent to The Great Beauty - he would have a case but they're not, and Rolling Stone/MOJO/Uncut still exist to celebrate the rock canon, as do commenters like this:

Unfortunately since May 12, 1972, the release date of Exile on Main Street, there has been precious little music in the rock genre that would qualify as art, London Calling and Nevermind being glorious exceptions.

Or this guy:

more like ploptimism

As with all polemics it only makes sense if you name names instead of blaming some nebulous army of poptimists (especially confusing as he respects arch-poptimist Jody Rosen)

I'm confused wrt his mention of The National, who're about as far from a "serious rock band" as I can imagine, neither serious-as-in-academic nor rock (I think of them as a pop band with rock signifiers, like Interpol, and, as I mentioned on Facebook, the National fans I know are or would-also-be fans of Haim and Sky).

I mean if it was all a preamble to a base-hit for Zs I wouldn't feel the same confusion/horror

looks like an old fashioned case of someone's very specific personal opinion being assumed to have universal pertinence. The pile of (by NYT Mag standards) semi-obscure band namedropping in the final dozen-or-so paragraphs strikes me as a sign of an author that may have realized the idea wasn't standing fully erect by essay's end.

Don't the National have the super earnest U2 thing going on though?

I think The Naitonal is definitely serious-as-in=academic. Bryce Dessner composes for the Kronos Quartet, among many other contemporary classical things

From wikipedia: "Most recently the brothers played with the Copenhagen Philharmonic in a concert billed as 'Sixty Minutes Of The Dessners.'"

Also, they may be a pop band, but they're a pop band whose tone is primarily serious. Like them or not, I don't think their music is particularly light or sunny.

Various other-projects does not make their music any more-or-less "pop". Do you hear any contemporary classical influence in the music of The National? I don't.

They're definitely a pop band; I wasn't denying that. And there's definitely Steve Reich in their music, say, in Fake Empire

For the record, here's the man himself, from the NYT a few years ago:

One early admirer of “Sorrow” is Steve Reich. (Bryce sometimes sends him songs.) Reich says the National combines “a classic rock ’n’ roll sound using repeated bass lines and pulses that have cropped up more recently. They’re the latest incarnation of a classic rock ’n’ roll band.” Speaking of “Sorrow” and “Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks,” another cut Reich likes on the new album, he said: “A major is their gold key. The melody note will be repeated but the bass and harmony will change. You’ll find it all over my music, a lot in the ‘Mother Goose’ of Ravel, and as far back as Bach. It works very well.”

You can totally take that with a grain of salt, or as a cheap appeal to authority. It kind of is! But I do think you can hear this stuff in their music, and that they can still be a pop band.

a pop band with an overwhelming tone of "seriousness," I might add.

I've been thinking about the Austerlitz essay for the last two days.

An uninformed reader would not be blamed for interpreting Austerlitz's points as these:

1) Music critics these days prefer pop to other genres.
2) Such "poptimist" critics are not discerning about the pop they like, as long as it's popular.
3) This is truer now than it used to be.

However, none of these really hold up.

Since Austerlitz himself uses Pazz & Jop as symbolic of the state of music criticism, let's take a look at last year's albums list. Four albums in the top 20 (Kanye West, Daft Punk, Beyonce, Drake) have generated hits that have landed in the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100. That's the exact same number that did so in 2003 (OutKast, Fountains of Wayne, Jay-Z, 50 Cent). While other albums high on the 2013 P&J list have had modest commercial success and have received airplay on commercial radio (Vampire Weekend, Kacey Musgraves), others are decidedly outside the mainstream (Savages, Deafheaven). What's more, there are plenty of 2013 albums that went platinum and generated chart hits that Pazz and Jop voters barely acknowledged (One Direction, Imagine Dragons, Luke Bryan).

I definitely think that there's been a shift in critics' outlooks within the past decade that's a direct result of the rockism/poptimism debates of the early '00s, but Austerlitz dumbly simplifies that to "everyone now prefers anything popular to anything else."

Actually, that in itself is a dumb simplification of his argument. But in places, that's how it reads.

Yeah, hurting 2 is otm about the article being about unhappiness with general direction more than individual acts.

My feeling is that, previously, the most coverage and actual critical passion in the music press was devoted to "serious" rock, with "the best" of other genres cherry-picked for coverage. That's definitely the way it felt when I was a teenager 20 years ago reading Rolling Stone and the like.

Agree with jaymc about the shift. Now instead of occasional articles about "pop" focused purely on the consensus "best," there's a lot more coverage of a wide variety of artists. That's what bothers Austerlitz.

Of course "the best" of other genres was often based on a particular rock dude viewpoint, which is how you get Arrested Development winning Pazz n Jop

Obviously a major problem with his piece is choice of barometer of "music criticism" -- lots of people ITT have already pointed out "hello, pitchfork?"

Wait; Interpol are a pop band? Does that make it OK for me to like them, then?

My problem is thinking of pop as a "genre."

More of an "intent"?

"Pop" is in 3 different senses, a genre, and a methodology/intent and a space to be occupied.

Discussions of "Pop" should clarify which sense(s) are meant!

He doesn't seem to consider the methodology aspect. You can have a rockist reading of Beyonce or a poptimist reading of the Strokes. To SA, poptimism = liking mainstream pop.

Wrote this on fb earlier today; goes along w/ what jaymc says above:

Calling "poptimism" the "reigning style of music criticism today” would be deluded -- if not a blatant lie -- even if poptimism actually existed. That NYT writer's favorite album last year, by the National, placed #20 in Pazz & Jop; Queens Of The Stone Age, who he pretends he's so out of fashion for liking, finished #21. (He had the 68th most typical ballot in the poll, out of 453 voters, according to Glenn Mcdonald's math -- not exactly out in left field somewhere!) Some artists who finished even higher: Deafheaven, Jason Isbell, David Bowie, Arcade Fire, Disclosure, Savages, Neko Case, Kurt Vile, My Bloody Valentine, Chance The Rapper -- one of a few hip-hop artists up there -- and, at #2, Vampire Weekend. In the top 20 the year before: Japandroids, Tame Impala, Swans, Grimes, Beach House, Dirty Projectors, Jack White, Cloud Nothings, Father John Misty, Bruce Springsteen, Alabama Shakes, Sharon Von Etten, for starters. Whose definition of "reigning" "poptimism" do those artists fit, exactly? How exactly are Taylor Swift and Ke$ha dominating over them, critic-appraisal-wise, any more than, say, Madonna dominated over the Mekons or Husker Du or whoever back in the day? The argument here seems to be that critics shouldn’t write about a certain kind of hitmaker *at all*. Which, sorry, is ridiculous.

listening to "sorrow" now on headphones. it's pretty!

the lyrics are terrible though

Danny Bowes OTM

http://blogs.indiewire.com/criticwire/criticwire-survey-groupthink

i keep forgetting to ask if the nyt guy has ever actually written about music before. all i hear about is the sitcom book.

i've never really witnessed the sort of pile-ons those film critics talk about in music criticism. it's actually sort of odd that so few music crit beefs are actually about specific opinions about specific releases, there's very much a chacun à son gout mentality.

which isn't to say some forms of groupthink don't exist but it's less to do with critical assessment and more to do with "neutral" attention (sites reporting news about certain artists but not others), and it's nothing to do with poptimism or pop-leaning critics. (i assume this has been said, but just because megastars like beyoncé and t-swift get critical attention - though by no means consensus critical love! - this doesn't mean that pop as a genre is respected, let alone celebrated! pop artists beneath a certain level of success and/or without certain "credibility" dog whistle signifiers get absolutely no respect, and all the old rockist arguments get trotted out. for example, like taylor swift among uk critics prior to her latest album.)

Lindsay Zolandz's recent Tumblr post about critics and audiences made me realise that I'm glad that music critics engage in less navel-gazing than film critics and UK ones less than US ones. As a critic I love reading this stuff but it's irrelevant to all but a handful of readers.

I think the narrative voice in, say, The Wire's interviews is about as navel-gazing as anything, although with a bit of a stuffy academic air

I don't know, I don't think the film critic world is that much more "navel-gazing" than the music critic world at all. I think they both have certain insularities that will always look like "navel-gazing" to people outside that realm..

I mean, for example, in my experience, you're definitely more likely to find a pointless personal story in a music review than in a film review. Or a really moving personal story! But still.

how are we defining "navel gazing" -- staring at lint until you glean insights?

yeah, it's maybe not really worth me starting an argument about. But having read a lot of music and film criticism, neither really seems "more 'navel-gazing'" to me, and I couldn't quite understand the blanket statement that music-critics engage in less navel-gazing.

By navel-gazing I mean interactions between critics and talk of a critical community, as in Lindsay's piece, not the tone of reviews. There's no way that music critics, at least British ones, would be asked to offer their insights into the response to a review like the EW Under the Skin one which sparked the Indiewire post. We'd just bitch about it on Facebook.

I definitely think that there's been a shift in critics' outlooks within the past decade that's a direct result of the rockism/poptimism debates of the early '00s, but Austerlitz dumbly simplifies that to "everyone now prefers anything popular to anything else."

― jaymc, Monday, April 7, 2014 8:13 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think what has had a bigger impact than those debates is social media (and more broadly internet publishing), which has increased critics' exposure to one another's work/tastes in a manner that has made it a lot harder for critics to doggedly plough their furrow and assume everyone else is wrong. In general, there's a lot more tolerance for the idea that, even if you don't like X, someone else doing so is just fine (I can think of notable exceptions to this rule, but that's what they are - exceptions). I don't think this was predominantly caused by the rise of "poptimism" but the more pragmatic matter of being connected to, and friends (or "friends") with, other writers who are talking about X. At a more basic level, everyone using social media is faced with these tastes divergences regularly - after you've realised that X friend is actually ideologically totally opposite to you, liking slightly different music seems like a minor point.

This is in contrast to when both critics and readers could more effectively self-select the kinds (and topics) of music criticism they would be regularly exposed to. And the less you actually read a type of criticism, the easier it is to assume the worst of it.

(kinda ironic given that in other ways the internet has facilitated so much self-selection - political news being an obvious case in point)

There's a reason this has been written by a relative "outsider" (a tv/film critic) - as much as we might say "hello, pitchfork", no pitchfork writer today would express the opinions contained in this piece.

I think there was a similar dynamic with the jazz guy's article - only someone who was in fact totally oblivious of popular music coverage 90% of the time could then airily put it all in the same box.

xp I don't really know how one Indiewire piece, one that was really more about the idea of "groupthink" or "pile-on" reactions to critical writings in the internet age, is somehow evidence of the vast scope of film critic navel-gazing. It's not like there aren't plenty of reaction pieces, blogposts, or forum posts about controversial or misguided pieces of music criticism.

Honestly that's not really even unique to arts criticism at all, people are always talking about the way the internet changes the way people interact and react to written content (see Tim F's good point above). Don't know if that's really navel gazing.

good *points*, I mean

hi i wrote a piece about all this
http://noisey.vice.com/blog/the-new-york-times-sucks-poptimism