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

"Tumblr&b"

lol at thinking music journalism is important in any way and that people actually care about it

imagine caring about "poptimism" or "rockism" and actually thinking that those ideas mean anything to anyone in the world outside of ILX.

Lex, the argument doesn't need to be made. People have enough to worry about already in their lives without the pressure of having to think "oooh, I dismissed a pop record, am I evil"

everyone's a critic critic

it wasn't even really a thought experiment, it is literally just what happens when you tell people in the real world, say people you might meet at a party or in a bar or at work, that you write about pop music (or listen to pop music in non-ironic fashion, for the "music writing doesn't matter" crowd.) obviously this is heavily self-selecting but it is self-selecting for anyone who thinks these people who will then judge you hard are strawmen. if miley isn't a good example justin bieber would work, or katy perry, or gaga. (beyonce isn't a great example, since her album is the "call me maybe" of its year -- i.e. major pop monocultural event that even the snobbiest of music snobs won't fault you for earnestly liking.)

beyoncé's also reached that point where she's enough of a cultural behemoth AND has been around long enough to have "paid her dues" such that, like kylie in the uk, most people just accept her presence

lol at thinking music journalism is important in any way and that people actually care about it

― online hardman, Wednesday, April 16, 2014 7:25 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

weren't you stressing on here a while back about whether ppl liked your music writing and whether you'd be able to start getting paid off it

well, yeah, it'd be nice to get paid for something I do in my spare time. I don't expect anyone IRL to actually care about it though.

Btw, my ire is aimed at thinkpiecy stuff

lol at thinking music journalism is important in any way and that people actually care about it

― online hardman, Wednesday, April 16, 2014 7:25 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

weren't you stressing on here a while back about whether ppl liked your music writing and whether you'd be able to start getting paid off it

Thank you for the reveal

Katherine, what do you care what these dumbass ppl think?

because they're not "dumbass people" but they're friends, relatives, coworkers, smart people, average people, all sorts of people, at least some of whose opinions probably matter to you?

Sorry I didn't mean we shouldn't talk about miley, and she's probably a bad example of what I meant because she's so unique, and reactions to her (on all sides) cannot be reduced to "manufactured pop, would you kick with y/n" She's pretty fascinating of her own accord, as are reactions to her.

My point was more that acting as this debate is solely about chart pop vs authentic rock presents the issue only at its most extreme, ossified form. I would like to see examinations of these issues in more subtle settings where these ideas are impregnated but not explicated.

Which leads me to:

also have you actually seen anything that defends tumblr&b-as-tumblr&b? because i have not. only seen an endless stream of individual acts hyped up but little that defends the sound or scene above, say, blue-collar r&b.

No I haven't! Exactly! It's just implied by the hype without being stated. Which is why I think it's worth unpacking.

That said Lex you're right that the moment specific artists are named it becomes about the artist rather than the thought process. Which is precisely my point: there are so many reasons to like or dislike a specific artist (see Boney Joan Rule) that it's misleading and ultimately not useful to make the argument about the artist per se - what needs to be addressed are the terms in which things are celebrated or dismissed, that's where the specificity of thought is.

because they're not "dumbass people" but they're friends, relatives, coworkers, smart people, average people, all sorts of people, at least some of whose opinions probably matter to you?

― katherine, Wednesday, April 16, 2014 5:21 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The question remains, do we really need a New York Times thinkpiece so we can handle ourselves in situations where "The Black Keys fucking suck, bruh" would work just fine?

basically ppl holding up bores like the black keys as some ideal of real music and ppl write about some crappy miley song like it's fuckin ulysses are both equally annoying

yup

Except one, as succinctly demonstrated above, is treated with far more vitriol and hyperbole than the other, so any pretence at parity immediately goes out the window.

y'all need some lessons on being smug

http://media.timeout.com/images/resizeBestFit/100267107/660/370/image.jpg

That's the expression I've mastered whenever people I know claim that Great Art is what lasts forever. One of our worst qualities as a culture is seriousness, which often scans as strained attempts at seriousness. To say "I don't care whether I like this song next week" is a signal to these people that You're Not Serious.

what is the nytimes piece and responses that everybody is talking about anyway? it's lost way above the fold.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/magazine/the-pernicious-rise-of-poptimism.html?_r=0

Btw it's twice now I've seen professing to like Bangerz as a gesture of whatever, which raises Alfred to "I don't care if I like this at all" and is p irritating tbh

huh?

Sorry. Like: saying I don't care if I like something next week is one thing, saying I like something irrespective of whether I actually do or not is another. A couple of times, counting upthread, ppl've used "liking" Bangerz as a tool to say "Hi I love pop, so there." Seems oddly specific

I'm doing that at all. I'm citing one of the more pernicious anti-pop arguments used by the people katherine describes.

Yeah I didn't think you were

*I'm NOT doing that all

Except one, as succinctly demonstrated above, is treated with far more vitriol and hyperbole than the other, so any pretence at parity immediately goes out the window.

― tsrobodo, Wednesday, 16 April 2014 11:41 (1 hour ago) Permalink

Well tbf one of them is almost inescapable and the other one is highly escapable.

lol at the thought that miley is anywhere remotely near 'unescapable'

back maybe 16 years ago britney was sort of the same cultural signifier miley is today. i'll rep for brit's stuff as more straight ahead enjoyable, but the same sort of discourse was going on, where unironic, nonpervy enjoyment of brit's music _as such_ was a really divisive thing to profess. and it was exactly this odd specificity, because so many, in general, cultural anxieties about art and taste were all projected into this one flashpoint of debate.

so if i said "i don't like britney, of course, but xtina has some real pipes" that would be an acceptable opinion. or if i said "mandy moore has some surprisingly good songwriting" that would be ok too (because for the most part she didn't [still rep for "wanna be with you" tho], but nobody i was talking to would know that!). but you couldn't just say "...baby one more time" was a great song without inspiring livid outrage.

lol at the thought that miley is anywhere remotely near 'unescapable'

― balls, Wednesday, April 16, 2014 9:46 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well people in the office lunchroom talk about her, she's in the free subway newspapers all the time, magazines, tv, etc. I can't even remember what the Black Keys look like. I can't remember the melody of a single Black Keys song.

I get facebook or youtube suggestions every few days about the latest parody-of-a-parody of wrecking ball

Look Hurting if you choose to engage w/current culture at all that's on you

yeah just don't sit with those people in the lunchroom if you don't wanna talk about bangerz

thx

Well people in the office lunchroom talk about her, she's in the free subway newspapers all the time, magazines, tv, etc. I can't even remember what the Black Keys look like. I can't remember the melody of a single Black Keys song.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/why-do-all-these-homosexuals-keep-sucking-my-cock,11150/

I've done a pretty good job escaping both Miley and Black Keys with very little effort/intent. And I still haven't heard a note from the latest Beyonce; did it get radio play? However, I can't escape Katy Perry, Pink, Lorde, Rihanna and Lady Gaga's "Applause." These are the top 40 acts I hear everywhere, whether I want to or not.

Well yeah if you want to get specific, Miley was more inescapable around the time of that VMA thing, less so right now.

I can't escape people talking about people talking about people talking about Miley, though.

everyone's a critic critic

― estela, Wednesday, April 16, 2014 2:29 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

in 2014 if you're 'overexposed' to any kind of media it's a result of yr own choices, everything is very very avoidable, ed sullivan died a long time ago

I can't escape people talking about people talking about people talking about Miley, though.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, April 16, 2014 10:14 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i feel like nothing is really inescapable today!

i think that's part of why this debate goes on a lot because it's mostly critics/writers writing for other writers and for so many years a lot of pop and culture writing was based around this idea that there was a large scale pop culture that everyone embraced...but that's all gone. i work with ppl about 10-15 years younger than me quite a bit because of the business i work in, and i find they don't seem to largely have a lot of these ideas of pop vs rock...like one guy was into amon amarth a lot and then he was into queen but now he's into some kind of subgenre of electronic music that kind of sounds like 80s tangerine dream that's called "OutRun" music (there's a subreddit)....and one woman that's only 25 i think responded when i tweeted about the new mazzy star how they were one of her favorites of all time! she was so little when even among the swan came out! i know she likes amanda palmer and beyonce, but she wears a The Who t-shirt to work too...

i dunno, just random.....there's nothing like how, say, thriller was back when i was a kid...i mean people might think that beyonce or taylor swift is really culturally huge but it's peanuts....my friend bought an imitation Beat It jacket at the JC Penny in my town of 3,500 ppl in the middle of nowhere....

So I guess I feel like Whiney's right the whole popism vs rockism thing is pretty much irrelevant anymore because there's not really mass scale pop or mass scale rock anymore

i feel like everyone that's arguing about it now are just the pop culture writer version of civil war reenacters, on some old battlefield that's grown over with weeds

I have never, to the best of my knowledge, heard a Miley Cyrus song. And I had never heard Lorde until that Nirvana thing the other day. And the only Black Keys I've heard was a TV commercial? I think? Everything is escapable.

but that idea that "this thing is more relevant than another" or "this music is really the next wave of where music is going and this other music is way retrograde and not where it's at" is hard to give up....but it's not true anymore...because everything is going everywhere and nowhere....

i'm listening to the one MGMT song that I like (Kids) and a minute ago I was listening to some old pre-war blues, all on Spotify... it's crazy

So I guess I feel like Whiney's right the whole popism vs rockism thing is pretty much irrelevant anymore because there's not really mass scale pop or mass scale rock anymore

but it was never about pop vs rock, and even among this brave new utopia you describe, old assumptions are still pretty pervasive

i mean it would be logical to think that the internet etc breaking down walls would mean that old hidebound values also get thrown out but it's interesting that this isn't happening

The question I guess is if being popular alone is enough to make something "relevant." I say no.

The question I guess is if being popular alone is enough to make something "relevant." I say no.

i say no as well, but it's a hard line to draw, and there are plenty of critics who aren't so much poptimists as just straight populists - if something's at #1, then it's relevant.

I think old hide bound values are totally being thrown away by ppl all the time, fratty type dudes that would have never gone to a rave are going to huge EDM shows in the US now...they don't give a fuck about hidebound anything

yeah, it's questions of context and marketing
those same dudes will also do rodrigo y gabriela as fast as they'll do girl talk