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

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.

*against the dying of the write* xp

the rolling link to the tweets at the bottom is a treat

@COCACOLACO
Facebook COO @sherylsandberg empowers & encourages female Coke employees during recent visit: http://t.co/buAZcdN7Vs #CokeUnbottled ^MP

age age

xps the iggy azalea article seemed so unremarkable, I remain curious what ideas you'd need to esteem in order for it to seem heinous

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-ms-becky-g-essay-20141006-story.html

"When is that last time you heard a new female rapper break through in the vein of, say, Kendrick Lamar or Frank Ocean?"

If that's the timeframe you're using, Nicki Minaj. Otherwise, this is more of a rap crossover problem than a female rapper problem, but Angel Haze? Shit, despite how much she generally sucks Iggy Azalea would probably qualify, though this article slots her into "empty calories" on grounds of... well, of something.

"What about high-profile female rockers competing with the Black Keys or Jack White?"

The rock charts are not exactly a bastion of female artists (well, they are until they get retconned out, like Lorde and Tove Lo), but: The Pretty Reckless was No. 1 on the Mainstream Rock chart and currently have a single in the Top 20. Before them were Dead Sara. Really, you could slot half a Vampire Diaries soundtrack into this question. Or Alabama Shakes.

"Surely there are Ed Sheeran types, girl singer-songwriters chasing him up the charts?"

Sara Bareilles? Ingrid Michaelson? Christina Perri? Just because everyone forgets this genre exists (and charts) doesn't make it stop existing.

probably could toss into that last category Colbie Caillat and gee I don't know TAYLOR SWIFT, although I guess she stops qualifying now

"When is that last time you heard a new female rapper break through in the vein of, say, Kendrick Lamar or Frank Ocean?"

just like rapper Frank Ocean

late to the party but i don't get the point of that iggy article, it just seems arbitrary to say "iggy is just a pawn being used by TI, the true villain" like why stop there, why go up one rung of the ladder to TI (with this sort-of implication that he's selling out his race) when TI is pretty far down the ladder himself? "we all hate iggy... but someone else is profiting off of her act!" iggy is also profiting off of it. she was already doing it before TI picked her up. there are "root problems" here and they go far beyond TI and the covery has no interest in actually talking about them directly

"the covery" = "convery" idek

http://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4148321-kaleidoscopic-love--dis-meets-caribou

So this isn't a 'bad' piece of music journalism - it's pretty bog-standard stuff, not especially insightful, not particularly well written, but it's not insane or offensive or anything dreadful.

But it is littered with typos and errors and just clumsy sentences like this: "Someone who lists ‘crate-digging’ under their their list of hobbies"

And maybe it's the fact that I'm 35 and manage publications for a living and look after a style guide for an institution etc etc, but stuff like that just makes me feel sad now. I read stuff by 23-year-olds (including old stuff by 23-year-old me) and sigh and think "fgs worry less about metaphors and crazy adjectives and more about understandable subordinate clauses and not making errors and being understandable".

#old

Drowned in Sound has always been pretty sloppy, hasn't it? I don't expect any degree of competence from it. The reviews are pure junk writing.

I thought the AV Club Hateclub thing with Mary Timony was good, but the new one, with some comedian, talking about "Pink Houses," is so full of stupid. It's not my favorite song, but her reading of it is totally wrong and she gets all sorts of stuff wrong, especially silly since it's really just a poor man's death of the dream "Born in the USA." Like, she claims right-wingers use it in rallies, and blames the Coug, but the Coug has always told them to cut that shit out. And then the writer and comedian both think the pink house in the song is some sign of individuality, and not, like, a crappy pink house. And then the comedian rips on "Do They Know Its Christmas," which is a fair and easy target, but she does it all wrong, by claiming it's an example of Americans (?!) being up their own asses, even though it's overwhelmingly UK. And then she cites Bono's - who she notes is not American! - blurted "Tonight, thank God it’s them instead of you" as only quasi-ironic. I mean, it's a dumb line, but it's *entirely* sarcastic. And so on.

I never heard that line as sarcasm

maybe mid-80s Bono wasn't the right dude to give your ironic line to

Yeah, that's the totally fair criticism (or any criticism of Bono, really). But do people really hear his "tonight, thank god it's them instead of you!" blurt as an earnest, phew, at least we aren't starving in Ethiopia! I always heard it as Bono sarcastically accusing people of selfishly ignoring the famine as something happening to someone else somewhere else.

its obviously completely sarcastic. and it's it a 100% uk/irish recording?

Except for Kool and the Gang!

I wouldn't call that line sarcastic. It's basically another way of saying "There but for the grace of God go I."

Well, he does say "God."

I just read that Bono and Geldof fought about the line as Bono thought it would be misinterpreted

to be honest I never listened to the lyrics of that song closely. I just kind of hear Bono's voice as signifier for mid-80s hypersincerity.

http://www.liketotally80s.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/best-christmas-song-photostrip.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrdAI3kwIbU

lol yet another article calling frank ocean a rapper

also "shower" is pretty distinctive for a dr. luke production -- and it's wonderful besides.

I am deeply suspicious of poetry professors who own albums by Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/magazine/streaming-music-has-left-me-adrift.html?referrer=

it's little pink houses, plural, for you and me (yeah), how could that be a sign of individuality?

let's just skip that one, please

That article is shit

I am stunned that the opening sentence "It’s hard to imagine now, but there once was a time when you could not play any song ever recorded, instantly, from your phone" appeared on an editor's desk and did not immediately cause the piece to be spiked.

To be fair it could have been worded that way to be a joke.

could we really just not do this

It's not that hard to imagine a time like that

A lot of discussion of this article already on the Millennials Ask Old-Timers thread

http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2014/oct/15/playlist-world-eek-islam-chipsy-souad-abdullah-maurice-louca-faycal-azizi
(The first blurb)

?

Really it was just this line:

The tightly syncopated rhythmical assault is in a lot of ways analogous to carnival or marching musical forms such as soca, New Orleans second-line drumming, dancehall and calypso.