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

Oh yeah that doesn't seem to be the same guy (Donna Summer/motivational speaker), too bad

Fwiw i don't hate Girl Talk, it's just kind of amazing. I saw him around a decade and the crowd for the show was really small and not really dancing or even really all that into it, just there because he was Girl Talk and he had some buzz. And yeah at the time it felt like last gasps from electroclash not the start of some big-name festival guy. I mean, if I knew how music worked, maybe I would be in Girl Talk's place.

I don't listen to Girl Talk but I get it. Also, in interviews Gillis is surprisingly thoughtful about the process.

dude was a doctor of some sort doing this shit on the weekend if i remember correctly
and yes, I can't help but appreciate his no samples cleared freebie mixes distributed on the internet back when that was a fairly novel conceit.
plus i liked night ripper as much as the next kid with a limewire account
but much like no one coulda assumed cee-lo would be the darling of the reality show set, I don't remember anyone saying "this girl talk guy, he's a definite draw on the festival circuit for the next ten years, that's bankable money there"

Not everyone's as abreast of the musical zeitgeist as your average ILMer, not least festival audiences. That's not meant to be snobby, in fact I'm often surprised at how quickly Ilxors are ready to reject a style as being old hat when to the rest of the world it's only just kicking off. Thinking about dubstep -> EDM; minimal techno -> deep house etc... If the mashup scene feels a bit ten-years ago to us, it's bound to appeal to a broad range of people who just want to dance around to pop songs in a tent.

Hey, I never would have guessed the guy behind the low hanging fruit that was The Grey Album would quickly go on to be a principal collaborator with Cee-Lo, the dude from the Shins, Beck, U2, Black Keys, Damon Albarn and others.

in a world where this guy i've never heard of is worth 42 mil anything is possible:

http://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/richest-djs/judge-jules-net-worth/

I've never heard or heard of Judge Jules, but I suspect I would rather listen to Girl Talk.

UK trance/Ibiza stalwart. NB. not a qualified judge.

Judge Jules is still a going concern eh? That's a blast from 1999.

judge jules >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> girl talk

perpetually dumb. should have called it How Big Of A Jerk Are You?

http://www.buzzfeed.com/perpetua/how-much-of-a-music-nerd-are-you

not music writing really...just took over my facebook...

should have called it How Big Of A Jerk Are You

the title and URL already mix'n'matches 'nerd' and 'snob' so maybe they already do on the front page or something

just say no to quizzes

ugh I couldn't even get through five tickboxes of that, def should just be called "are you a dick"

And fuck all of these buzzfeed quizzes.

Failure to support our clickbait, page view, slideshow economy could spell disaster for the recovery.

http://i.lv3.hbo.com/assets/images/series/enlightened/episodes/season-01/10/burn-it-down-1024.jpg

that guy man

Jesus http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2014/04/15/301440765/why-we-fight-about-pop-music?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20140415#partthree

how is that bad

where do i start

ann powers and carl zoilus are two of the best pop critics working

i just scanned that but it read pretty fucking great actually

just because they are the best dont make that article good

We still have this spectacle of people (mostly straight white men of a certain age) angry that we treat music made with drum machines, or for dance floors, or with rapping (unless it's "political"), or by Beyoncé with the same respect and depth of thought we'd devote to anthems sung by bands of guys with guitars

Strawman City

brb getting popcorn

stale popcorn

lol

if you look at the comments on this or any similar article it'll quickly become clear it isn't a straw man at all

Plus, look at that 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll mentioned. The Washington Post comment board is often filled with such comments in regards to certain music articles.

Worst comments thread I've read, ever :(

oh yeah comments on a news article, like i'm gonna read those and learn something. not.

online comments are such bs

kinda miss the days when not every fuckin' thing on the internet was followed by line after line of hateful garbage

website guest books > comments sections

thank you for visiting my website. please sign my guestbook.

so cordial

The worst passage Wilson writes isn't the "strawmanning" thing, but the part where he weirdly opens part 4 by saying we shouldn't use "poptimism" basically because it sounds lame, but we should still use "rockism."

otherwise katherine otm, this piece has no business being in this thread. Ann Powers being thoughtful and excellent as always

1. Don't insist that pop be hip. A good chunk of mainstream music gains inspiration from more cutting-edge stuff — always has. (Remember when The Monkees went psychedelic?) But plenty of it plays by other rules: It could be rooted in Christian contemporary music, emo, or soft rock. That doesn't make it less meaningful; it just takes work to understand these other legacies. It's cool if you find John Legend corny, but respect that for millions his grounding in group harmony singing and Bacharach balladry signals sophistication. Respect values other than your own.

2. Understand that selling records is the point. The major players in creating mainstream pop don't care about integrity, in the restrictive sense. They're collaborators, and they're interested in making money. So yes, Dr. Luke encourages his ingénue protégés to trade in feminine stereotypes (sometimes in highly questionable ways), and Avicii goes for obvious beats. Great pop sneaks in subtleties to enrich and even sometimes undermine the obvious elements that make a song pop out of the radio. Appreciating that requires an adjustment of one's aesthetics. Recognize the value in familiarity and big gestures.

3. Acknowledge that the assembly line is a cornerstone of pop. Since the days of Tin Pan Alley, pop's spirit has been one of energizing collaboration and seat-by-the-pants innovation. There's little room in this game for purist notions of artistic integrity. "We Can't Stop" has seven writers and was originally intended for Rihanna. What's interesting about the song is how it transformed in the process of becoming Miley Cyrus's signature. Know the limits of this kind of production while also noticing where the soul can slip in.

4. Physically connect with the mainstream, but don't presume you know what its different corners are all about. Lindsay Zoladz recently wrote on her Tumblr about attending a Miley concert and realizing that — at least sometimes — she wanted to write for the Bangerz, Miley's devotees, not for her fellow Pitchfork nerds. I applaud her insistence that music obsessives need to look outside the confines of their own tribe and learn from non-fetishists. But the desire to identify can sometimes obscure that "otherness" you mention, even for poptimists. As enriching as it is to feel good in a crowd of strangers, it's equally useful to go where things are less comfortable. For every charming fan you might meet at a non-hipster show, there's a drunk one, and one whose political views are really different than your own, and one who (if you go see Kirk Franklin or Mary J. Blige) might ask you to pray with them. As you've said, encountering the other can be difficult — for poptimists too. It should be difficult. Insight comes from wrestling with the awkwardness.

5. Go beyond Beyonce. I think we all need to acknowledge that King Bey is not your average diva-bear, and that putting her on a best-list is not an adventurous move. Assignment for all poptimists: have an opinion about the Jason DeRulo album that drops today.

I've rambled on with my unsolicited advice, and now there's no room to talk about rock! I hope we can take that up in the next round. One thought: in his excellent feature on EMA — whose album The Future's Void is one of my 2014 faves — Sasha Frere-Jones almost calls her music rock, but instead says it's a "hairy, occasionally digital beast." I like that phrase. It sounds like what Jimi Hendrix would play now. In other words, to trace where rock went, we have to agree on what it is. And that isn't easy.

Enlighten me,

AKP

I think this is good, but at the same time I feel a kind of paradox in it, in that it prescribes a very detached and above-it-all style of engagement with music that is almost exclusively going to be the domain of critics, and hence detached from the way most people, even "music fans", engage with music. It also doesn't really leave room for an ideological position against pretty much anything at all in music, which in turn just leaves you with voracious consumerism as the default ideology.

But yeah, it's certainly not "worst music writing" it's quite good -- both of them are quite good.

hot garbage

"Wrestling with the awkwardness" and respecting non-hip values brings me back to another few thoughts about shame, music and identity. Perhaps it's because music as an art form is so fundamentally abstract — a vibration in the air that produces a sound in the brain, rising almost like a thought — that it makes us feel so tentative and unsure about its status and its meanings. So it gets surrounded with visible signs like fashion and photographs, ranked by charts every week and annual lists, straining to make a form so ineffably mobile to hold still.

you guys can say something is "good" but that doesn't make it good

are you in character right now or what

oh no music makes me tentative and unsure

*rubs hands together, sobs*

waterface making us all realize the emperor has no clothes

*takes off his bathrobe*

thinking "rockism" is a valid concept to discuss doesn't instantly validate "poptimism" any more than "racism" validates the idea of "reverse racism"

i always thought of 'poptimism' as a tongue-in-cheek ILM/freaky trigger joke and find it mildly horrifying to see that become the official branded term for not being rockist or w/e

i find the popism/rockism debate kind of stifling and restrictive so i have no stakes in that article, but waterface you are basically offering no argument besides saying "this sucks." i'm guilty of doing that often enough but i just wanted to point that out.

If music makes people tentative and unsure in it's meanings, b/c it's so abstract, maybe we should spend less time trying to understand what it all means through long boring articles and more time enjoying it. charts and lists trying to "make" music hold still is totally a silly and stupid concept. you're not making it hold still by ranking your favorite albums.