2. I agree with Mark that Mitch overstated the us/them distinction a little bit. I'm sure there are plenty of people who consume music thoughtfully who don't write about their thoughtfulness in online discussion forums. But there are people who consume music thoughtlessly. This is more or less a premise of the article we're supposedly discussing, which in a sense sets out to defend thoughtlessness as a listening strategy.
3. Also, I wasn't trying to make a detailed case here that anything is better than anything else. It's another premise of the article that there's a difference between pop and some music that isn't pop. I'm objecting to Tom's claim that pop ought to be exempt from the kind of criticism applied to every other kind of music. I think about Roxette the same way I think about Low. That is, the same questions apply, even if they're answered differently. Tom's argument implies, among other things, I think, that your (Tim Hopkins') question about whether any music treats its audience better than pop does is one of many that can't be answered, because pop is immune to the kind of analysis that would be required to make sense of the topic. I think it shouldn't be. (And I think it's pretty certain that if the kind of pop Tom is talking about gets subjected to the same analysis used on Radiohead, it will not come off very well. And I think Tom knows that, so I wonder to what extent this article's argument amounts to "I can't defend pop, so I'll have to argue that it can't be attacked.")
― glenn mcdonald, Sunday, 24 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
I'd argue that different critical approaches are more appropriate to different musics, yes.
In terms of how I listen, it generally works like this. I hear something, I react to it, I try to analyse and verbalise my reaction. Inasmuch as this involves actually thinking about the music, this analysis will involve the music. As I understand it, Glenn's listening process, (or his listening-for-writing process), is a bit different, in that he has an end in mind, a 'review' which will present a value judgment of the thing.
― Tom, Sunday, 24 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Oh, and my reviews often do not involve value judgments. People sometimes complain that they don't...
Part of the point re so-called "mindlessness" is that in machine-pop a HUGE AMOUNT OF MIND (as in choices and techno-resources) goes eg into things like rhythm-pattern or basslines or texture, yet the EASILY READABLE element in these is indeed pretty fugitive, as Mitch pointed out. But to jump from there to "meaningless" is clearly nonsense: the meaning derives — same as ALL meaning, actually — from the interaction between performer and performed at, and from which meanings get noticed and cemented and reused as overt dialogue, and from which ones fly low and free, appreciated yet unremarked. A lot of otherwise intelligent unpop [ps not a Momus ref] gains its somewhat pompous narrowness from the artist's assumption that he's meant to be more in control of "total communication" than (a) he's competent to be, (b) anyone remotely wants him to be. Most "machinepop" is collectively created, with diff. aspects delegated to diff.teams, with result that it's dense with tensions and even contradictions more apparent to outsiders than insiders. This makes it i.exciting, ii. a much more valuable guide to the present — where most things wor like this — than eg novels or poems, where the author is believed to have TOTAL CONTROL and COMMUNICATIVE RESPONSIBILITY.
Latter = a dud also, because more of WRITTEN communication is pre-fab than pop communication? (Do I believe this?)
― mark s, Sunday, 24 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Josh, Sunday, 24 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Mitch Lastnamewithheld, Sunday, 24 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
The moment of worry and of death-by-self- doubt came — didn't it!? admit it!?!? you all laughed at me back then!?!?!?!?!?!? — when Myleene the high-graduating classical music student treated Hear'Say's #1 as the Oscar speech chance to condemn the merely airbrushed and pitch-adjusted within boyband zone, and to raise the issue of MEASURABLE MUSICAL TALENT!! (ie an objective craft-skill she demonstrably has...) *That's* criticism; that was a stinging aesthetic challenge from within the territory, by the REAL new kids on t'block. POPSTARS changed the pop landscape (largely thanks to Kym Marsh), by shifting the locus of value and potential communicative meaning.
(Beside, Mitch, the answer is actually NO: this isn't the early 60s, when popsters had no perspective on WHAT ROCK MIGHT BE... Ronan can read Mojo as capably as you or me; it's just NOT a one-way viewing portal...)
1. "...like debilitatingly superficial and conformist propaganda aimed at precisely the most impressionable. I can see all sorts of socially- encouraging, self-awareness-inducing, self-image-improving things ...[in]... Shampoo and Kenickie and Alanis ... I haven't been able to discern any such potential value in Christina Aguilera or O- Town ... This is pop going nowhere, targeted at people in exactly the life-stage where they have to start deciding where to go. It's soma, poured into the water supply of a city that needs to wake up..." [Apologies for chopping chunks of the para. for brevity]
If you don't think that's mentioning politics, then we understand the word 'politics' very differently. If, as I suppose is possible, you mean the 'city' needs to wake up to a state of critical music litening, then we are also working with two different meanings of the word 'need'. I understood you to be saying that 'the city' 'needs' to become more aware of issues of social importance ("socially- encouraging" etc) which, it seems clear to me, is all about politics.
2. I assumed your comment that specifically "this sort of pop" treats its audience as an undifferentiated mass implied that some other sorts of pop didn't. Apologies if I misunderstood. If I didn't misunderstand, I'd like to know which sorts don't.
― Tim, Sunday, 24 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Meanwhile: appreciation of 'art' possibly requires communication (I don't think it does actually but this is another bigger question). Appreciation however need not work as part of an artistic dialogue - when we look at and appreciate a cloud, the only communication is between us and whatever part of ourselves we want to project onto that cloud.
Now of course I'm not calling Pop a natural phenomenon (and of course our appreciation of nature is totally mediated) but in its diffusion of artistic autonomy it perhaps becomes possible to appreciate pop more in this fashion, more 'directly' maybe (and open up perhaps fruitful lines of listening to more 'communicative' music forms, too).
(The corporatisation that makes this possible also makes pop ubiquitous, and I'd agree that this isn't a good thing at all, but it's the fact of the ubiquity that's bad, not the specific products that have become ubiquitous.)
― Kim, Sunday, 24 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Ah, I thought you meant politics politics, as in governments, my mistake. To re-respond to your point, then, it's not that I'm saying critical music-listening is synonymous with these positive awarenesses (self-, social-, philosophical-), nor that it's necessary or always sufficient, but it's one route. To live an examined life, you have to start examining something. I happen to believe that music is one of the most powerful and accessible art forms, and thus one of the most obvious candidates, and that's why it seems like such a loss to me if we, or they, or anybody, passes up the opportunity to take music seriously and demand, at least some of the time, that it be more than just entertainment.
And yes, I do think that there is plenty of music that doesn't treat its listeners like a potential-consumption blob, it just wasn't part of my response to Tom's piece to explain what, since I think it's a point of agreement between us. I think a lot of my weekly column is effectively devoted to examining what kind of reactions different kinds of music are prepared to produce, but here are three quick examples of what I mean:
- Mark Kozelek's "Ruth Marie", my favorite song from last year, is (oversimplifying) a first-person portrait of an invalid old woman's willingness to die. It is long, slow, repetitive and quiet; there is no way you'd ever mistake it for a fight song, and I suspect very few people would manage to appreciate it without paying attention to the lyrics, because there's not that much music to distract from them. And because the text is emotionally complex, and Kozelek does not provide any interpretation of his own, you are left as a listener to figure out your own reaction to it, a reaction that will probably have an emotional character.
- Low's "Violence" has potentially interesting lyrics, but they're much less narrative than "Ruth Marie"'s, and not as much the focal point of the arrangement. But the song is so disconcertingly spare, by most people's pop standards, that it immediately raises some interesting questions about the nature and boundaries of pop and rock. It's fairly hard to imagine that Low had any illusions of it becoming a chart hit, so arguably one way of treating your audience as individuals is to make art that quite clearly seeks a limited audience, rather than aspiring to ubiquity.
- And to pick one example of a very different sort, I don't know if you ever saw the video for Vai's "Deep Down Into the Pain", with Devin Townsend's berserker vocal performance, but coming at a time when musical aggression levels and macabre imagery were not yet nearly as common as they've become in the eight years since, I thought the song, and especially the video, were pretty bracing, thought-provoking in much the same way that punk initially was. And unlike with Marilyn Manson, later, I didn't think the song tried to dictate the terms of anybody's reaction to it. If you like Marilyn Manson, or like liking Marilyn Manson, it's pretty clear what you're supposed to do about it, how you're supposed to dress, what you're supposed to claim to be interested in or not. If you liked "Deep Down Into the Pain", I don't think it was at all obvious how you were expected to express it.
We could argue about these examples, of course, but I hope we won't. I'm just trying to give you an idea of some of the kinds of things I don't find in "I Want It That Way" or "Genie in a Bottle".
― Mitch Lastnamewithheld, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― mark s, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
There are some reasons why this way of thinking can seems convincing and plausible. There are some reasons why it can seem unhealthy and unfair. But from my POV, the simplest reason why I suspect it doesn't work is that I don't agree with 'You', so I am not part of 'Us'. I mean, I think loads of you are terribly intelligent, and some of you are very charming, but we don't share enough views about pop music to be a 'We'. And possibly this goes for many other people on ILM and elsewhere, too.
― the pinefox, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Also, disagreement doesn't invalidate us-vs-thems. The point of that exercise is to look for commonalities of viewpoint among groups that share characteristics, not to stipulate them.
― glenn mcdonald, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Tom's article is great, BTW, and while parts of it surprised me I found myself agreeing with it. Like most other styles of music, Pop (and "Pop", for that matter) fails when it attempts to second-guess itself. Similarly, the more clearly defined the critical discourse surrounding a given field of music, the more tightly constrained the rules dictating its creative development become. Which is why the surprising consensus in the Focus Group is vaguely disquieting rather than cause for celebration: machine pop has been characterised by its very unpredictability these past few years - the yawning gap between the product and a critical context in which to place it. Obviously therefore, it's a sense of excitement that exists in an inverse proportion to the field of music's critical rehabilitation (a euphemism for the entrenchment of critical orthodoxy).
― Tim, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Don't think I agree with Glenn M about commonalities. Not sure I understand his point about 'stipulation' vs 'searching'. I could find some common ground with some people on ILM (or at Goodison Park, or in the House of Commons), and some non-common (uncommon?) ground. The 'we' that might be produced in the process would be at best pragmatic, provisional and strategic, and could easily be undermined if we decided to start talking about what divided us rather than what united us.
― Nick, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
[I think this is an interesting discussion, but I do sometimes feel like it's the victim of the Zenotic Method, which consists of demanding clarification of every term in a point, and then demanding clarification of every term in the clarification, etc.]
2. Glenn, I don’t agree when you say that Tom’s argument is that ‘the usual critical questions are irrelevant to pop’: he seems to me to be saying one route of criticism – a direct link between artist named on cover and content on record - is foxed by the way this pop is produced and consumed. I can’t see him saying any other of the ‘usual’ critical questions (whatever they may be) aren’t relevant. This may be my poor reading of the article.
3. Glenn: I've known so many people with fabulous art-critical abilities and terrible critical ability as far as their own lives or the lives of others are concerned. You may argue that thinking about what you [/I /they] are listening to is a start, better than nothing, but I could equally argue it's a stopping point, ‘soma’ of a sort for too many, and not very 'socially encouraging' at all.
4. Glenn (again, sorry!) I understand that you engage intellectually and emotionally with the records you mention above (I've no desire to argue about them, or your enjoyment of them which is your own business and of course completely valid... and very eloquently put, if I may say so). I don't, however, buy that those records treat you any differently than they treat me, or anyone else. We might react very differently, but then it sounds to me as though we would react very differently to Destiny's Child, or Elephant Man, or Sizzla. If (say) Mark Kozalek were to leave me cold and Destiny's Child were to move me to thought and / or motion, then should I still believe that MK's record was made *as if I were a critical individual* while DC's wasn't?
- Yes, by "the usual critical questions" I meant the ones that assume there's an author responsible, "usual" used in the same way Tom says "most criticism of the teenpop boom". You're right that eliminating the author doesn't eliminate all critical approaches, but a) it sure undermines a lot of them, and b) some of the ones that are left, like musical innovation or independent lyrical invention, aren't often machine pop's strong points. Except for a point about "physical onomatopaeia" that sounded intriguing but I couldn't follow it, I don't see where Tom, or anybody else here, has offered what I would call a "critical approach" to machine pop, other than "I just like it" or "It's more exciting this way", which I think are equivalent. How, other than just comparing how happy we say these songs make us, can we talk about non-autonomous-author, non- self-defeatingly-self-reflective machine-pop? What are the valid questions to ask about "...Baby One More Time"? I don't mean this rhetorically; what are, in your opinion, the valid questions to ask about it?
- I agree that exaggerated critical abilities don't necessarily correlate to any other life skill. Nor do extreme math skills, massive historical knowledge or much of anything else. But you've got to learn to think by thinking about something. And music's advantage over math and history is that if you learn to think about music you implicitly learn that thinking isn't something you just do in school. If you think thinking about music is more likely to turn people into socially-maladjusted geeks, then well, that was exactly the point of soma in Brave New World, wasn't it, discouraging people from developing unbalancing passions?
- The point about how music treats its listeners is a bit slippery, I grant you. But I think there's something important there, closely related to the rest of this discussion, about whether art is primarily aiming for ubiquity or primarily trying to communicate something. But I'm an admitted elitist. To me dumbed-down culture like "...Baby One More Time" and Bay/Bruckheimer films and prime-time sitcoms are insulting, and the fact that so many people seem to enjoy them is no excuse at all.
And one other point, because I'm wearying of circling around and around on these:
- It's hard for me to credit an account of pop's death that doesn't address its birth. Tom says pop has had a short, glorious life, but as far as I can tell pop in the last four years hasn't been notably different from pop in the decades before that. Weren't the Village People, Shawn Cassidy, Leif Garrett, Paula Abdul, Mariah Carey, En Vogue, Tiffany and Debbie Gibson, at least, just as much "pop" as anything today? What about all those Holland/Dozier/Holland Supremes songs? Seems to me that if pop survived Diana Ross going solo and Alanis graduating from _Alanis_ to _Jagged Little Pill_, a little NSync petulance is hardly going to be its death.
I mean, literally. Go here to see other people discussing this same article (reprinted on another site)in some sort of parallel universe:
http://www. plastic.com/music/01/06/25/1517209.shtml
― masonic boom, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Tom, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
2. I agree with Mark S that we cannot so easily be sure re. what is 'critical engagement'. I don't think that Glenn M, or Mark S, or Ally garance, or DJ Martian, or Ned Raggett, or whoever, are all pursuing the same grand project as me (or, for all I know, each other). I don't imagine that those people would be at all happy to be grouped with me, either. I imagine that they'd be appalled and horrified. That's to say: posting sometimes to ILM doesn't mean you're part of a group besides People On ILM.
3. To be Zenotic (??!): this phrase 'the autonomous author' is now getting a lot of unquestioned currency, like we are all sure what we mean by it. It's strange, because I always used to think that *no* author was 'autonomous'.
[Also: "Zenotic Method", neologized from Socratic Method and Zeno's paradox (in which you can never get more than halfway to anywhere).]
― Josh, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Why do I like it? What is it doing to and for me, and my enjoyment of everything else?
This is no different than for non-machine-pop.
That sounds like a criticism - but I don't think it should be: because one of the jobs of a critic might, possibly, be to 'invent their object' in such a way. If so, it might be that Tom E was doing that job very well (he does lots of critical jobs well, I have often suggested).
But I don't know whether to think that there has been a 'recent run' distinct from anything else, or not. On the one hand, I would like to say, Yes - there are all those records that I hate, all conveniently bundled up in that recent run. On the other hand, I am not sure that I could draw a convincing line between that run and earlier records that I hate.
"Seems to me pop's been just like this for at least 40 years."
― Tracer Hand, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Patrick, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Some - possibly Tom - might argue that the British version of pop these last few years (Spice Girls, Steps, S Club 7, Hear'say etc.) should also be included, for monolithic coverage alone, but I've always allocated it a different place in my brain.
As for "second-guessing" - I meant pop second-guessing itself for the purpose of critical validation. N'Sync (and now Britney, apparently) drafting in BT to make their music more appealling to the non-pop masses was almost a foregone conclusion the moment people started to (for the umpteenth time) realise that there was something in pop music for people other than teenage girls. Second guessing for the purpose of mass commercial success I have no problem with - it's pop's job.
As for "thrilling futuristic music coupled with a sense of indestructible self-confidence and inevitability", how does this not describe, say, "Funkytown", "Crush on You" or "Gonna Make You Sweat"?
What I think defines the music we're talking about is that for the first time in a while a futurist musical approach was explicitly associated with pop in and of itself - not the pop end of another genre. By drawing disparate examples from all over the shop, you can quite rightly demonstrate that the ideas circulating were hardly new, but that doesn't disprove the novelty of this sort of thing as a movement. Otherwise by the same token we could say that Britpop is stylistically indistinguishable from any other dominant stage in British music, simply because other bands in a similar mould had existed for thirty years prior.
― Tim, Tuesday, 26 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Diff. between Bay City Rollers and N'SYNC: Rollers are in a slightly different tradition, along with the Monkees. They are presented as a 'rock band' with defined instrumental roles. So the do-they don't- they play their instruments / actually *do* anything becomes part of the presentation. This is a totally interesting pop model but it hardly surfaces today and when it does - BBMak, Dimestars - nobody seems to want it. It feels slightly out of date I suppose.
Difference between early 60s girl-group pop and N'SYNC: not much except I wonder in terms of presentation....was artistic autonomy even an issue in pop, pre-Beatles and Dylan? (Pre-criticism, in fact).
(Of course there are massive massive sonic differences between NSYNC and all of the above, which should not be discarded)
But sonics aside these are nuances rather than actual differences. Pop continues. As Josh has suggested, "dead" in the article is rhetorical exaggeration (and intentional too). So what I'm saying - so far - is that this particular machine pop moment is coming to an end. When did it start? (I'm not sure this is relevant, but it's been asked.) Musically I can't think of anything pre NKOTB which combines mechanised music with a singer-dancer focus. The rash of hits I mentioned at the start of the article weren't intended to mean 'the start of machine pop', but were flagged up as the point at which machine pop started to be aesthetically interesting to me, i.e. when I realised I liked it. The public seemed to agree, since those hits also helped start the recent period of complete commercial dominance for the style.
And yes, none of this is new. I mention this even, at the end. If you can find it, take a look at Nik Cohn's Awopbopaloobopawopbamboom for an early sixties perspective on what he calls 'Superpop'.
― Tom, Tuesday, 26 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Surely not being pop is Daft Punk's only salvation: If their music sounds like that because it's just them talking to themselves in their private language, then fair enough, but if they're shovelling on the irony in an attempt to shift units, then they should be dragged from their cars and beaten. This doesn't apply to other artists: just Daft Punk.
Mitch: "There's nothing wrong with Radiohead making a record about their last record, while pop most certainly shouldn't."
This also has the problem that it fails the Backstreet's Back test.
Wow. Have none of you ever sat down and talked with people who don't "get" music, but still buy a lot? They do exist, (hence the success of Travis, hohoho) and they're very scary.
Also, my respect for Tom (already very high) goes up several notches due to the news that he also contributes to Barbelith. Also fascinating to see the difference in slant that they immediately pick up and run with.
― Andrew Farrell, Tuesday, 26 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link