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

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

― posi riot (some dude), Tuesday, April 15, 2014 1:45 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah back when these things were being hashed out it seemed to be one variety of non/anti-rockism, alongside, idk, dissensus, reynolds, marcello's blog, k-punk (but he wrote more about politics and theory eventually), the voice music page in toto. and none of them got along!

wow that's a pretty anglo list isn't it.

to say nothing of the huge range of rap crit and the writers that came out of that

I can't even with discussions of "rockism" and "popism" in 2014...

Pretty much every critic under 35 just sees pop and rock as two acceptable types of music that you get emails in your inbox about and then turn into content for traffic. The identity politics stuff about "ROCK BANDS PLAYING REAL ROCK MUSIC" is for comment section people and olds. No one gives a fuck about this crap anymore

editors who are aiming for the conflict=pageviews thing do
how quickly you forget young skywalker

"anymore"

like, i saw maura's NYT is fulla shit article passed around a lot in the past week or so and, while it's a well written piece, i think the main draw for virality there is FITE

I'm back from lunch. What'd I miss? Problem solved?

yeah, forks, nyt really scoring a slam dunk by riling up the 100 people in the rock critic jerk. deft use of noisey's editorial strategy. david carr is rap game mr burns wringing his hands and saying excellent that he got a katherine st asaph tumblr post and a @maura twitter rant, the sound of cash registers ricocheting in the background

its so disheartening to see people even READING, let alone ENGAGING with the NYT article. It's a 10-year-old argument about a thing that doesn't even exist w/r/t all the working critics who know how to use the internet, i.e., the ones who will still have a job in 5 years

Going back to that strawmanning thing, I understand the general sentiment Wilson's expressing here:

"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.")

But I think that painting with such a broad brush doesn't do his argument any favors rhetorically, and actually overlooks a specific facet of "rockism." Which is this: rockist critics ALWAYS had time for a handful of R&B/pop/hip-hop artists, whether it was Motown in the late 60s or Timbaland in the late 90s. But that didn't mean that these genres or the artists who worked in them were getting anywhere near the critical analysis in mainstream publications that they deserved.

But when Wilson or whoever describes rockist types as only liking rock music, it makes it super-easy for people like Austerlitz to counter with, "Here's a list of dance-floor friendly things I'm on the record as liking!"

i haven't thought this through in detail, but is the insipid thing in that piece not just that it takes up the ethical aspect of the rockism/poptimism/etc. debates in the same post-neoliberal-web-academic-privilege-questioning framework that everything (esp. at npr) is taken up into now? which is tiresome in connection with rockism/poptimism because it fritters away the artistic/aesthetic core of those ideas and supposes that they're really just coded moral postures that need a good dose of genteel thoughtfulness to be suitably broadened, to dissipate the conflicts about them.

i feel like there's an almost compulsive re-framing going on throughout too.

there'll be jobs in five years?

mostly making quizzes about what grimes songs are you

or how rockist you are

or, you know, aggregating things

Also, from upthread and otm:

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.

― What is wrong with songs? Absolutely nothing. Songs are great. (DL), Monday, April 7, 2014 1:42 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

How Rockist are you? quiz would get smoe clicks. Somebody oughta get on that.

I'll delete the post. Sorry I said anything.

there, deleted. please let me know what is and is not acceptable as a topic to write about on my blog in my spare time.

oh come on, k, your post was great

katherine that was one of my favorite things i've read about music criticism ever

crazy xposts hooboy whiney i think you of all folks would get that conflict, regardless of investment in either side of the argument, draws attention outside of rock critania.
questions about whether this stuff MEANS anything, well i dunno. the argument one way or another about crusty rock vs. glitterpop are pretty meaningless to me as a listener and as a publicist, most of the people I know who like the most kawaii k-pop are also scandimetal nerds. as a principled argument, i'm against purism and segregation as a point of faith.

i'm against purism and segregation as a point of faith.

haha so are most accused of being rockists

its so disheartening to see people even READING, let alone ENGAGING with the NYT article

Pretty much every critic under 35 just sees pop and rock as two acceptable types of music that you get emails in your inbox about and then turn into content for traffic. The identity politics stuff about "ROCK BANDS PLAYING REAL ROCK MUSIC" is for comment section people and olds. No one gives a fuck about this crap anymore

mmm pretty sure there's a very popular Lorde song specifically about this crap

put your piece back up, katherine, #noshots

katherine you always bring the real shit

i haven't thought this through in detail, but is the insipid thing in that piece not just that it takes up the ethical aspect of the rockism/poptimism/etc. debates in the same post-neoliberal-web-academic-privilege-questioning framework that everything (esp. at npr) is taken up into now? which is tiresome in connection with rockism/poptimism because it fritters away the artistic/aesthetic core of those ideas and supposes that they're really just coded moral postures that need a good dose of genteel thoughtfulness to be suitably broadened, to dissipate the conflicts about them.

i feel like there's an almost compulsive re-framing going on throughout too.

― j., Tuesday, April 15, 2014 3:42 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Just wanna say I think this is a good post and describes something pretty well that I haven't been able to put my finger on. In a slightly oblique way it reminds me of that article I read about how the Google execs handled a disruptive protest calmly through "mindfulness" techniques.

well, if you expect any NPR writer to tell its audience it's full of shit it ain't happening

just a guess but isn't that compulsive reframing symptomatic of the culture shifting? same way that articles written a decade or more ago have a tendency to look far more sexist or classist or racist than they were intended as? tho i suppose there's a fair bit of "fuckin hell can't i just like led zep and call it (c)rap; what else do they want to pry from my cold dead hands" always going on

could be, i was noticing it more as a concomitant of the deliberately point-free 'convo' format, like a constant will to sweep idea-oids into the maw of the content-feed out of avoidance of actually just saying a thing as themselves, in their voices, not in the auto-distancing npr 'we' voice

j.'s post is really interesting. Curious as to what is meant by "post-neoliberal" in this context. I've previously heard "neoliberal" mainly used to describe laissez-faire economic policies; I think theres a specific cultural definition or context I don't understand here. Obviously arts/culture and economics are closely linked, just a little unclear on the specific meaning here.

my kneejerk reaction to neoliberalism is "Democratic sellout."

xp ah, you mean the "i'm not saying but i hear people are saying" method that keeps the 24 hour news cycle humming until something happens to a rich person

no, everyone is right, it was wrong for me to get sucked in

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.

Seriously does "this spectacle" exist?
It seems more like a self-satisfied dig at mostly imaginary squares... and even if they do exist, isn't a music critics primary job not to give a fuck what that kind of person would think?

they exist

like the Republicans they hate they're dying too.

I can't even with discussions of "rockism" and "popism" in 2014...

Pretty much every critic under 35 just sees pop and rock as two acceptable types of music that you get emails in your inbox about and then turn into content for traffic. The identity politics stuff about "ROCK BANDS PLAYING REAL ROCK MUSIC" is for comment section people and olds. No one gives a fuck about this crap anymore

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Tuesday, April 15, 2014 3:35 PM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

xpost

but who cares if they exist? it's like a visual art critic spending forever debating the "my 5 year old could do that" people.

in my experience if you talk to people -- i was gonna say educated people of a certain age, but really it's anybody -- about what should be valued in music and you get a lot of romantic talk about authenticity and truth and realness and the test of time. it's like a reflex almost.

on the other hand i think most people who hold these views hold them pretty lightly. it's a majority view but only a small chunk of them are cluttering up youtube comment boxes in anger about it.

it's like a visual art critic spending forever debating the "my 5 year old could do that" people.

i suppose, but art critics write in a narrow sense with gallerists and curators and broadly to people who go see art and pick up art publications; that's a pretty tight focus.

music critics talk to a general public, the same public that listens to the radio, hears songs on commercials and tv, sees the super bowl halftime show. i think the 'base' opinion just looms larger in the whole deal.

write in a narrow sense *to gallerists etc, i mean

i do agree that i wish critics would exercise a little hegemonic muscle and just write about whatever as if the question was settled, but as long as my parents are alive, having the argument is going to catch eyes.

intheblanks, i don't know what i mean (i would like to understand 'neoliberal', as a term of critique/abuse, better than i do). something like, the recognition that marketification of society, privatization of everything possible, is an untenable solution to social problems...

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/neoliberalism-and-higher-education/

but more than that, the icky post-internet last-ditch efforts to do something about those problems by, like, doubling down. incorporating a healthy dose of… hep branding, crisp design on the cheap, fee structuring, intonations about the perplexities of identity, chuckling about the all-too-human need to make a dollar, an entrepreneurial perspective on ethics and culture combined with an opinion-page passivity about politics and a whole-foods presumptiveness about who 'we' are and what's important to us…

i don't know, like i said, i haven't thought about this, just skimming that 'convo' makes me feel gross. but i think the important thing is the core that's barely touched by a lot of what they were talking about, which i'm summing up tendentiously w/ 'post-neoliberal' (and the word 'npr' heh). and that's the aesthetico-ethical valence of those ideas about music and criticism, which it seems is reduced to almost nothing.

I just don't buy that there's a "spectacle" of angry old white dudes worried about drum machines, rap, and Beyonce in 2014. The vast majority of people who might be angry about any of this stuff do not care enough to get angry about any of this stuff anymore.

Also maybe some people spout the same old golden age of authenticity test of time stuff - but that now includes drum machines, rap, and Beyonce for many

xp Thanks for the response, definitely gives me a better understanding of what you meant

hmmm....the way I understand neoliberalism as practiced by American Democrats since the 1980s is a diluted form of Republicanism that takes for granted that unions destroy industry, Wall Street should be respected, and market forces to be encouraged so long as abortion rights and gays are protected.

"music isn't as good as when I was 16" is not a thing that will ever go away - but I don't think it's a critical stance worth debating any more than "I want a painting that matches my couch"

parachuting into this thread to say that i think it's important to lay out counterarguments to things in the nyt, given that when i get the inevitable 'so what do you do' question from people not in the ilx hivemind i can have something to point to that *isn't* in the paper of record

(also forks clearly you didn't read to the piece's last graf, which sums up the 'fite' aspect imo)

also david carr had nothing to do with that piece

music critics talk to a general public, the same public that listens to the radio, hears songs on commercials and tv, sees the super bowl halftime show. i think the 'base' opinion just looms larger in the whole deal.

Nah; music critics talk to each other, and to music geeks (who would be music critics if they could type a coherent sentence). Normal people don't give a shit. They listen to the radio, they buy CDs at Target or Walmart or from Amazon, and they don't give a fuck about a review or a thinkpiece. The crucial task of the music critic right now is to get normal people to give a shit, because that's the path to turning music criticism back into a paying gig.