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

This question can be a superb segue to a conversation about a genre or artist, but also I get to size up the depth of a person’s music knowledge and the quality of his or her tastes. If the friend replies “Britney Spears’ wedding to K-Fed,” I know I need to be more selective about who I spend time with.

I feel the same way about writers who make a K-Fed joke in 2014

Around 30 years ago I saw my first real DJ — the scratchy-scratch kind — and began to understand what music selection and turntable talent and rocking a party was all about.

http://mic.com/articles/98310/scientists-prove-what-we-all-secretly-think-about-people-who-love-pop-music

Oh, so creativity is a quantitative measure.

Each summer, it’s like we dive into the pool in May and never clean the water from our ears. The Song of the Summer almost always sucks (except that one summer when, miraculously, Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love” beat out “Magic Stick” by 50 Cent and “Unwell” by Matchbox 20 to take the title); and yet we keep on breathlessly anticipating the Song of the Summer, as though by some miracle it will be made by Deerhunter this year.

Pro tip: Most people aren’t going to play Deerhunter at their kids’ pool party.

think you can be done for child abuse if you do

I pity this "we"

But what really got people going nuts over Ryan’s sets was that he was playing songs from all these new bands that were emerging at the time. Most of these groups were coming out of the electroclash and NYC indie rock scenes, and many of them had “The” in their name. This prefix was how you could distinguish the cool new bands with the edgy new sound.

The Strokes, The Postal Service, The Hives, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The White Stripes, The Stills. The list goes on.

those are some alarmingly bad sentences; also there's no "the" in front of yeah yeah yeahs.

"the cool new bands with the edgy new sound"

The List Goes On were so overlooked

The GAPDYs

The List Goes On - Etcetera (Rough Trade, 2002)

Right around that time, there was a local band that was making noise in town. A friend who wrote in my high school ‘zine, Hey, Hipster, happened to play bass in the band, and Ryan was buddies with them too. Word was that they had been picked up by a big record label and they were going to do some shows in Europe. So we asked them if they would do one free show at our party before they left town. They agreed, and packed the house strictly through word of mouth, as for some reason we were not allowed to promote the appearance.

They entered the building already dressed like famous rock stars, wearing tightly-fitted sportcoats, black jeans with white belts and Reservoir Dogs’-esque skinny ties. They hit the stage and proceeded to rock the house, and shortly thereafter were quickly whisked away on a plane to the UK. The next time I saw them, it was on television.

That band was The Killers.

and that's....

the rest

of the story

GOOD DAY

and that little boy who nobody liked...

...was brandon flowers.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/03/-sp-in-defence-of-iggy-azalea-on-racism-naivety-and-a-twisted-cluster-of-exploitation

"Further, the interplay between gender and race occurring here only makes sense when you view it through the lens of neoliberal capitalism. Azalea thinks she is making art; TI, and the various producers and heavyweights who are behind her may legitimately appreciate her performance and her songwriting, but they also know they’re making money."

even worse than that pretty bad piece is seeing the uk liberal media class honking about how no one's allowed to make jokes any more like some harrumphingly unselfaware latter-day "pc gone mad" brigade

Hey if you want to weigh in on my Facebook thread please do. Aren't you in the UK liberal media class?

Lex, I think the dominant theme of that Facebook thread is not "PC is stopping us making jokes" but "If you're going to write a think piece, display some evidence of having thought about the subject in hand."

Although I'm now at the point where all the think pieces tossed off in 10 mins at some editor's behest – some of which I've written, some of which I've commissioned, some of which I've resisted (including a request for one this week that I outright refused on the grounds it would be the equivalent of writing 1800 about Agadoo in 1984) – have blended into one endless stream of Miley-Thicke-Twerking-Allen-Nudity-Rihanna-Sex-Azalea-Porn-Race in my mind.

The good ones have taken the time to be more than think pieces, they've done reporting too – like Dorian's outstanding Blurred Lines piece. But so many do no more than say THIS IS WRONG. They do not debate or engage, they simply rage censoriously. They shut down debate by saying that if you disagree with the thesis you are yourself an oppressor, forgetting that the best way to oppress is not to say things, but to prevent things being said.

oh i'm behind on my ilx usernames, didn't realise who re-make was. i did type a contribution to that thread but prob best for all involved that i deleted it.

on the one hand, thinkpiece culture is awful and even more than the tossed-off-in-10-mins pure reaction element, it really suffers from general cultural commentators wading in who neither know nor care about an artist's history or genre. how many of the endless miley/sinéad pieces last year mentioned either woman's music? (at least this piece seems to have attempted some legwork - i appreciated the bit about the political climate of '90s australia bc everything i've read about iggy focuses on where she doesn't come from but v little talks about where she does come from.)

on the other this isn't the first time i've seen british cultural commentators mock the very idea of taking a serious or political approach to pop culture and whinge about how they hate phrases like "check your privilege" and "problematic". i resent the idea that cultural commentators should aim to be light and jokey and never ever rock the boat. yay let's all become stuart fucking heritage (cf https://twitter.com/stuheritage/status/501651538562269184).

at times like this i very much feel like i'm not part of the uk liberal media class...

That's an entirely false opposition. Glib whimsy is not the only alternative to humourless, quasi-academic writing which shows no appreciation for the music it's discussing. Nor was anyone in that thread dismissing the idea of discussing pop culture seriously, far from it, only doing so with dead language and lazy second-hand ideas.

Personally, I wouldn't care if that piece was humourless as long as it was clued-up, rigorous and contained at least one decent line.

"dead language and second-hand ideas" could just as easily apply to half the jokey/let's-not-take-anything-seriously articles that slide past on a daily basis. "second-hand ideas" is pretty much the entire currency of most "funny" writing

Lex, I don't think anyone's saying bad funny writing is better than bad serious writing. Bad writing is bad writing.

Yes. Let me make it clear. I am against bad writing. It is bad.

Glibness and pomposity are the two things I hate most of all in writing. If you can combine the two in one essay, oh boy.

no one's explicitly saying that, but there is SO MUCH bad funny/light writing around atm and hardly any of it gets called out in this way by that section of the uk media. (eg that terrible telegraph writer michael hogan, or indeed heritage.) yet bad writing that's attempting a political critique => ohhhh boy the floodgates of whinging about "check your privilege" open. (not just this thread, this is far from the first time i've seen these sentiments.) plus ofc the overall vibe i get is that funny writing is inherently superior to earnest writing.

Of course bad writing that offers a political critique is held to a higher standard than glib filler, because it's assuming the moral high ground and often making serious allegations. A protest song done badly gets more flak than a love song done badly.

Was writing this just as the above post was posted …

One reason for that, Lex, might be that no one expects a tossed off, unfunny piece to be important, and no one presents it as such. It's just a piece of crap, and people accept it as that (though Michael Hogan's pieces have had plenty of flak here, which is full of the UK media types who apparently don't criticise Michael Hogan). But a piece that presents itself as being serious and important deserves to be ripped apart if it's a piece of crap. In the same way that a shitty album from Jay-Z or Radiohead or whoever deserves to be ripped apart more than than a shitty album from Pigeon Detectives or the Courteeners.

But none of this gets away from the essential point that an awful lot of these think pieces are about shutting conversations down – "You have no right to say these things on this topic" – than about opening them up.

it's often the casual, tossed-off stuff (whether entire pieces or just wannabe-funny asides) that really reinforces poisonous ideas and received wisdom tho.

i don't really think many pieces are saying "you have no right to think x/y/z". people have every right to think what they want, no one is going to arrest them for it. critiquing a song or artist for elements of racism or sexism isn't the same thing at all.

Not think, Lex - but plenty saying you have no right to say or do.

For example, at the most basic level, a lot of the pieces about twerking videos have taken as their starting point that you, Lily Allen, have no right as white woman to engage with this; or you, Mastodon, as white men have no right to engage with this. I personally think both those videos are crass and miss the mark and would have been better unmade. But why do Lily Allen and Mastodon have no right to engage? That's the shutting down of the conversation.

that would be a pretty silly thing to argue as lily allen has been fully exercising her right to "engage" with twerking videos, and she is free to continue to do so, but consumers and critics also have the right to call that engagement racist. i don't think talking about structural racism or misogyny constitutes shutting down the conversation.

what's ppl's beef with the iggy azalea article exactly?

Far more people are going to see the Lily Allen video than are going to read articles that attempt to shut down the conversation she's supposedly starting

My beef with the Iggy article is that it doesn't understand the history of pop, the industry of pop or the pleasures of pop, and does so with ponderous, lifeless prose. The bit where she holds up that daft TI/Iggy interview as a smoking gun, while obviously not realising that Ignorant Art was the name of Iggy's debut mixtape, is the nadir. No wait, the bit where she reveals, at length, that rappers like making money is the nadir. It's one long nadir.

There are good articles about Iggy and racial politics out there but this isn't one of them.

none of the articles criticising lily allen had the slightest chance of *stopping* her from doing anything. the ppl who actually had the capacity to shut down conversations are, like...her record label, commissioning editors, the ppl with the actual power, not a random bunch of social justice-leaning bloggers and freelance writers

fwiw, I agree with Lex re: shutting conversation down. If Blurred Lines proved anything, it's that all the online outrage in the world can't stop a record being colossally popular. Interviewed someone recently (not an alleged racist) who said that when he shuts the laptop and goes outside, all the blog venom effectively ceases to exist, which is true.

xxp

if I had yr tripartite understanding of pop (whatever that is) would the article suddenly leave a bad taste in my mouth? I have no idea what relevance the mixtape title has other than to corroborate the point, or what shortcoming is demonstrated by drawing attention to the money. yr criticisms only make sense for a reader who already knows what you think & agrees with it.

For example, at the most basic level, a lot of the pieces about twerking videos have taken as their starting point that you, Lily Allen, have no right as white woman to engage with this; or you, Mastodon, as white men have no right to engage with this. I personally think both those videos are crass and miss the mark and would have been better unmade. But why do Lily Allen and Mastodon have no right to engage? That's the shutting down of the conversation.

...

But so many do no more than say THIS IS WRONG. They do not debate or engage, they simply rage censoriously. They shut down debate by saying that if you disagree with the thesis you are yourself an oppressor, forgetting that the best way to oppress is not to say things, but to prevent things being said.

umm. no. even the worst of such pieces do more than 'rage censoriously,' like at minimum they tend to explain why such art falls directly in line with a racist legacy and why it should be in the best interest of those who are serious about not perpetuating racism to avoid doing such things. the suggestion that such criticism, however poorly written, is THE REAL OPPRESSION is patently ridiculous but unfortunately a very common idea that tends to fill the comments sections of such articles without fail.

xp Not fussed about changing your mind. If you think it's a good idea to quote three lyrics in order to break the news that rappers are often interested in money, then good luck to you, happy reading.

why drop a link if you're not interested in making a case against it?

I did and then you dismissed my case and I don't really care enough to get a dossier together.

your honour I move to have this article removed from the thread

Denied.

An editor should have shortened that 3 quote rappers making money section.

A editor should also have pointed out that a reference to a mixtape title is not an emphatic confession of ignorance about race.

*rages censoriously*

http://www.coca-colacompany.com/coca-cola-music/magazines-blogs-or-both-preserving-the-craft-of-music-journalism-in-the-digital-era

Yet from the 60s and even through the 90s, rock journalists were stars in their own right. Music fans followed their favorite writers and knew them by name, as much as they knew their musical heroes' names. Critics walked side by side with the gods, and we relied on them to tell the story. Publications like Rolling Stone, Spin, Creem, and Mojo were sacred texts; they taught us about the true heroes of rock. The men and women who wrote these pieces were their translators, and the gospel is what they wrote.