Simon Reynolds - C or D

Yes but this is the odd thing: the big labels are presented as wicked controllers of the music system who offer our kids only pabulum AND as rank failing incompetents. You can be both I guess but it's a bit of a tightrope.

I can think of two long-term marketing triumphs for the record industry. The former possibly accidental (but probably not), the latter definitely on purpose. First is the promotion of the album as a format and the repackaging of popular music as non-disposable. Second (linked to the first) is the promotion and success of the CD format as a way to buy old music as well as new.

the chastisement of 'popists' seeming lack of interest in the mechanics of what music gets selected, marketed, promoted, and by who. (Obviously people who are critical of "commodity music" only explore this element very very selectively themselves).

Yes this nails it really, but the selectivity (hypccracy even) of the people making the critisisms doesn't excuse the exasperation about the lack of interest. Perhaps it is because in pop the mechanics are more hidden and thus more interesting.

Tom was it in discussion with you on an ILM thread long ago that I speculated about the people behind some early Will Young (or Gareth Gates?) songs and various Scandanivian pop factories? I'm sure there are lots of interesting (to me) stuff to be said about this phenomenon, even if it is rockist to consider their influences, motivations etc.

What is the selectivity you consider people critical of commodity music exhibit? (and I guess I am often critical of it myself)

you have a similar-ish thing in movies: non-hollywood product isn't half as scrutinized as studio filmmaking -- though even then the real juicy details (cf the recent 'sahara' revelations) are kept secret. but you know, "how much does juliette binoche get paid?" never comes up, while it does for jim carrey or whoever.

we must vanquish these non-existent systems post-haste!

Uh, not sure if it was clear that I mean that people are just guessing at what systems they think produces the music they're discounting, and creating stupid myths instead of making a cogent argument (best example of this is probably Before the Music Dies, the argument of which seems to be that Ashlee Simpson's fans are all stupid). I actually think a poptimist type is more likely to seek actual information about how the music is produced than non- (knowing the producers, the labels, the marketing systems)...it's what they then do with this knowledge, or what importance they put in it, that makes the difference. But if there are people who celebrate the corporate/institutional model rather than grudgingly accept it, I haven't met them.

ignore questions of social cred or whatever and just focus on a song's sonic elements

But you can do both! And (again) that's what's so great about Paris, she's the pop star that puts the person focusing solely on sonic elements in the position of unavoidably thinking about questions of social judgment etc. even when they don't want to...this sort of general feeling that just enjoying the song isn't enough.

what she seems to have done is provoked people who don't care a fig about questions of "social judgment" -- to whit, she is a smelly rich racist -- to say LALALA WHO CARES WHEN SHE HAS THESE AWESOME TUNES?!?! just to get a rise out of us sane folk. my god, if it were possible to enjoy the song then she'd slip through the net the same way other hard-to-like performing artistes do. if that makes her great then kudos!

people who don't care a fig about questions of "social judgment" -- to whit, she is a smelly rich racist -- to say LALALA WHO CARES WHEN SHE HAS THESE AWESOME TUNES?!?!

Names, plz.

you can celebrate elements of the corporate model (ie sometimes - SOMETIMES - i would trust the record company above the artist in selecting singles, songs for the album, finished mixes and so on) while disapproving of other elements of it (which i rarely do out loud because every other fucker goes on about these bits all the time innit)

"Names, plz.

-- dabug, Thursday, April 19, 2007 8:19 PM (5 minutes ago)"

um the lex?

oh for god's sake nrq this has been explained countless times, if you only decided you could like art by morally unimpeachable characters you would find yourself unable to like 99% of it - admittedly this is how you do come across but as ciara said to me "i choose to enjoy life"

she's smelly?

"And (again) that's what's so great about Paris, she's the pop star that puts the person focusing solely on sonic elements in the position of unavoidably thinking about questions of social judgment etc. even when they don't want to...this sort of general feeling that just enjoying the song isn't enough.

-- dabug, Thursday, April 19, 2007 8:14 PM (10 minutes ago)"

names plz of these people who are so up their arses they 'focus solely on somic elements'? what is this, bloomsbury circa 1912?

1% of all art is a ton, lex. but i said that if the music was good then people would let her slip through the way they do with other dickhead musicians. your thing wasn't to attempt that but to say she was actively lovely and good, and that's just mad.

my thing was to praise both the music and the personality conveyed in the music, both of which are lovely. if real life paris isn't, the fact that she manages to convince as lovely in her songs surely makes her a better artist.

HM, I wouldn't say that I "focus solely on sonic elements" but I do privilege them.

names plz of these people who are so up their arses they 'focus solely on sonic elements'?

*waves hello*

my thing was to praise both the music and the personality conveyed in the music, both of which are lovely.

since when was narcissism 'lovely' rather than nauseating?

since 'Rapper's Delight'

sorry. must have missed that meeting.

since "Bo Diddley"

"if real life paris isn't, the fact that she manages to convince as lovely in her songs surely makes her a better artist.

-- lex pretend, Thursday, April 19, 2007 8:30 PM (3 minutes ago)"

that's interesting. obv i disagree -- up to a point i think honesty and self-revelation aren't bad things in pop. that doesn't mean i only like leonard cohen and fiona apple or anything.

i think honesty and self-revelation can be great in pop (i like leonard cohen AND fiona apple), i think the theatrical/performative side (intentional or not) can also be great. oddly i think both cohen and apple can fall more into the latter category.

the thing with perceived honesty and self-revelation is that...ultimately how do you know? how do you know that some random cat power song is FROM HER HEART or something she made up while feeling bored one day or something she wants to pretend she is or something she wishes she was? does it matter as long as she convinces (or if she makes it obvious she's acting, but in an appealing way) (or if she tries to convince but fails in an appealing way)?

and doesn't it depend on so many other factors? do you expect an artist to spill their emotional guts on stage every day of a tour? some nights they might be a bit too happy to be really honest singing a sad song - but if they're a good enough actor they'll still convince their audience.

well no shit lex, performers perform, news at 11

the thing is, EVERYTHING counts, every intra- AND extra-musical little bit of data is out there, hitting you, me, everyone, and it all interacts or gets sorted as people want it to, or even how they don't want it to.

it's not about puritanically not listening to people who don't fit some moral/political angelic model. it's that sometimes, certain bits of problem data loom larger or aren't excused by whatever positive bits there are. i'm sure there are other rich racists i've given my money to but in Paris' case the record (which didn't grab me with anywhere near the urgency has half a billion other things) came AFTER a huge cache of blisteringly negative information was already inescapable. So, sorry!

inconsistency is good

"When I self-identify as pop-ist (which I do sometimes) I want to chastise other people who self-identify as pro-pop for this, because it's largely what I complain about anti-pop people doing as well. i.e. everyone wants to be blind to the mechanisms of selection and sorting because it means confessing to what structures (NB: NOT determines) their own choices. But both sides are also quite resistant to talking about what structures their ways of talking about music too. "

I always liked the neatness of k-punk's line about rockism vs popism being about "a romantics of production vs a romantics of reception".

I don't think he carries it through though: a "romantics of production" is really about reception, or more specifically the reception of production. So when a popist/anti-rockist insists that reception has to be the starting point, it might be due to a "romantics of reception" or it might be a more broader point that is epistemological rather than ontological: when we're talking about music, our understanding is always affected (infected) by our enjoyment. So to even hope of getting to the kind of structural, scientific diagnostic critical position in the Althusserian sense that k-punk seems to advocate, you sort of have to traverse your own enjoyment, work out as near as possible what it is that is structuring your own enjoyment, in terms of both production and reception (what is the music's baggage, what is my baggage), rather than assume (per Althusser) that you alone have uncovered the scientific formulation for divining the difference between 'mere' enjoyment and something more real. Of course, the awful truth is that you never get to that point, it's a point of infinite regress. This is why every critic is a popist, they just don't necessarily know it yet.

I'm getting to the point where I never want to read the word 'Popism' ever again. None of the definitions here actually make sense - with the possible exception of Tim F I can't think of a single person on this thread who has never held an irrational prejudice against an artist or dismissed them out of hand. Whether it's Paris Hilton or the Arctic Monkeys or whoever.

Everyone has music they don't want to like before they even hear it. Harmless irrational prejudices are fun, admit it.

wow, that matt dc point ^^^^^ seriously OTM

Tim, I doubt that Simon has any idea that I like the Paris album (or that I'm one of those generalists who listens to country). I also think it's so obvious that when he talks about "popists" he's going after straw men that we really don't need to discuss it. If he's an interesting enough figure for such a long thread, it seems a waste to focus on his lazy and stupid statements. Of course, when someone intelligent resorts to laziness and stupidity, there's probably something going on inside him, but unless he's willing to explore what's really at issue for him (and what the "popist" bugbear is standing in for in his mind), I just don't see that we have anywhere to go with it. But I do have Simon's email address. It seems to me that if those of you most concerned with Simon's jabs at "popism" - Tom, Alex, Lex, Dave - do want to take it further - if it's still bugging you - then you should write him and tell him that he's going after a straw men and ask him if he's willing to engage with you on your actual ideas. Or do you think he's so far off the deep end on this issue that there's no reeling him in?

Tim, Paris's third single, "Nothing In This World," is the best Dr. Luke track since "4ever"; also, it's the only one that avoids what's becoming a really annoying trend in Dr. Luke, his tendency to pump up the sound so much that it's grotesquely musclebound: giant FUN hooks, BIG drums, HARD-ROCKING guitars. Whereas "Nothing In The World" goes for a gorgeous glide. Maybe Paris forced him to take down the sound, or maybe, given that she's not a belt-it-out diva, he really had no choice.

are you willing to explore what's really at issue with you, paedo?

I've e-mailed Simon on this topic before Frank (although I know I've lost his e-mail address because I wanted to e-mail him about Studio, I think he would really like them).

And it's a function of such communication that everyone's position seems (and ultimately becomes) much more reasonable - really Simon and Mark and Matt Woebot are 99% perfectly reasonable about such issues, and only get a bit dodgy when caught in a feedback loop with each other.

But it's not really the popism strawmen that concern me, it's more me trying to work out exactly where I stand in relation to what he calls "nu-rockism" i.e. his theory for his own taste. Of course because nu-rockism is explicitly defined against "popism" the two issues collapse into one another very quickly.

Simon has said before that "nu-rockism" is kind of a critical mapping of his taste, an attempt to devise a formula for what is good and bad in music based on what empirically he is into or not into (when set against the allegedly over-experiential popism this becomes something of a contradiction, but I'll leave that aside for now). I'm dubious about the notion of having a set formula for what works and what doesn't in music (both whether it's even possible and whether it's a good idea) but that doesn't mean that I don't spend a lot of time consciously or unconsciously trying to devise one, or relying on some half-articulated one that is most likely a combination of my own tastes and received wisdom. So I can't help but ask myself "if I had such a formula, what would it look like?" I think this is what makes this whole topic interesting to me: some sort of secret Oedipal process by which at the end of this thread (or all the others on this topic and related ones) I will have discovered the formula.

Ultimately i think a big part of one's position on these issues is how you perceive the current development of your tastes. I'm still at an age where it feels like I'm changing more than the music around me is - by which I mean, that my sense of music being good or bad has much more to do with how I'm developing interests in some styles/areas/artists/approaches and losing interest in others, and less to do with how music as a whole (or in specific areas) is changing from year to year. Such a position tendentially leads to a "popist" position I think, because I feel my reactions to be less reliable (because subject to change) but also more interesting (because subject to change).

Whereas clearly in the discourse of Mark and Simon, there's a really clear sense of them believing that it's less their tastes changing now than it is the world of music "out there" (outside their heads) changing. Especially when this particular change is negative, i.e. you're finding less music exciting each year, it would seem equally irresistible to drift towards a position where you want to impose some level of fixity or determination ("standards") upon questions of goodness/badness etc. based on your own tastes, because to recover that excitement you want the world of music to change in a different direction (often to "return" to a point [x]) to come into alignment with your reliable tastes. Simultaneously to your tastes becoming more reliable (because less subject to change), they also become less interesting as a site of enquiry (because less subject to change) - hence a further critical transposition away from asking "what is it about my experience of this music that makes me experience it this way" and to focus more exclusively on asking "what is it about the production (in the general, not sonic sense) of this music that makes me experience it this way".

Using literary crit language - isn't finding objective definitions for quality equivalent to New Criticism and critiquing music non-ideologically equivalent to something like New Historicism? There's a reason New Criticism is considered less useful now - because it is such a poorly reasoned critical theory. New Historicism or Stanley Fish's Reader Response (or whatever is in vogue in that area) may be flawed, but at least they admit their flaws up front. Ie: I like Paris Hilton, and I admit that's because my likes have to do with me. Or, Paris Hilton fits into the 2006 landscape of music and culture like this, this and this. But saying: "Paris Hilton is objectively great," or "Objectively bad," is intellectually dishonest.

So what's going on here that I'm missing?

I think Mark especially would consider what he does more in the vein of Marxist literary criticism, which did have pretensions toward being scientific, and hence objective.

My professors, and I guess that got passed to me, always maintained that idealogical criticisms - like Marxist literary criticism - work best in conjunction with other things. Because they are always going to give one-dimensional responses to the piece of work. You're stuck seeing it through the Marx-colored glasses. So you don't get to consider its other possibilities and meanings.

(Was Mark making the moral argument in another thread about condemning sexist hip-hop artists? Or was that someone else?)

Anyway, I just had dinner with Simon. Cool guy! (Donut Bitch says, "Yes, Ned is right.")

Also, I've always thought of Poptomism (or however you spell it) as an attempt to refute Derrida's hierarchical structures. God - Man. Man - Woman. Master - Slave. The Clash - Paris Hilton. Etc. JD's reading of Paradise Lost heavily relies upon the dissolving of those distinctions IIRC. But if Poptomism just means: I like Pop music - then it kinda loses it's philosophical implications.

I say Simon is OK... He is upper 1% of "music journalists".

Did K-Punk invent the phrase "a romantics of"? It's horrible.

Mordy, the thing is, poptimists are actual people who hang out at a livejournal community, and there's no reason to assume that they have an overriding purpose or a shared ideology or a similar taste, anymore than people who hang out at a particular bar have an overriding purpose or a shared ideology or a similar taste. Which doesn't mean they don't have a lot in common, just as people at a bar do - and of course the fact that Tom decided to call the community "poptimists" isn't meaningless either. But the poptimists are mainly there for the gab and the games. As for breaking down hierarchical structures, I don't know... is "People who break down hierarchical structures are better than people who don't break down hierarchical structures" a hierarchical structure itself? Or is it just an opinion? Are "the Clash are better than Paris" and "Paris is better than the Clash" hierarchical structures or just opinions? If they're structures, what are they structures of?

What do you make of the fact that most poptimist discussions occur on threads that are structured (or something) around games where some songs are rated better than others, or some players' songs are rated better than other players' songs? I wouldn't call this "hierarchical," but there is sure a lot of time devoted to saying that some things are better than other things. For some people (usually more people vote than discuss), the value judgment is the principal way they participate in the community.

all i really have to say is i think no matter how much music is a huge part of my life, in some way it seems clear that reynolds et al care more about music and so want more from it than i do. an ugly way of looking at it is those nasty stages of a bad break-up but they never end, where you keep talking through what you think you used to feel and why it isn't there anymore and asking for more and maybe not getting it, or even not getting it becuz its so desperate to beg for it and you know it, but still, there's the satisfaction of trying to hurt, which is also a way of showing affection and deep down you think it is this *other person* that is going to somehow heal *your* rifts because somewhere way back when they were foolish enough to promise it to you. nonetheless, it gives a structure to your emotions, even if an ugly one, and you feel that to abandon that would leave you adrift entirely. and your buddy sez to you "why does it have to be meaningful like that? maybe that isn't really it, and your partner can date someone else, and you can date someone else, and dating people is nice, but c'mon, do you really believe in the *one*? i mean, look at me, i love em and leave em and no feelings are hurt and maybe one day i'll find someone to settle down with and maybe i won't." and you look at your buddy with mute incomprehension and think to yourself "asshole."

so maybe its something like that.

Most of the games though are ones where the mass opinion of a song (within the very limited sample that is the Poptimists community) outweighs the individual's opinion. In fact the League Of Pop is the first time we haven't done this (which makes it more interesting, there's a lot more at stake in terms of a player having to justify their choices - in the mass poll-based games it's easier to hide behind an anonymous ticky box).

I'm not sure that SR (and others) care more (or less) about music, or that it is even about caring. I think its more a sense of...needing context..to validate. Without that validation its not as important, and the crux of this is that it has to matter

its kind of a weird paradox in a way, and perhaps his current feeling is his way out of the paradox

a) street/real/consensus music DOES matter...clearly..it has a social place, a function, a role..outside the original. scenes/cultures/groups...social glue

b) that very functionalism..theoretically negates it..inbuilt obsolescence, someone said. its role is the here and now. songs and tracks come and go..relentless pace. the music matters but the songs dont, or rather they do but only for a short period

constant continuity-regeneration. endless records that sound the same (not a criticism...the best music all sounds exactly the same). a racetrack for the critic...

...where can it all be pieced together...im reading in SR a desire for an end, a completion, a resolution. without it...things matter less. and hes not the kind of guy to write about bop or skiffle..

kind of related to the old and oft-proved-wrong idea that bubblegum music wouldnt stand test of time whereas classics would..but whereas classics (by their nature...or their reception anyway) often sound the same as when they were released...pop/bubblegum away from its time/context can sound disembodied and untethered, pure even

^^^ theres his hauntology right there if he wants it

What I don't get in that model is why the critic exists - what's the purpose of criticism there? The risks - of allowing interlopers and outsiders and eclecticists and dilettantes into the street-loop by exposing it to them - surely outweigh the benefits.

I don't really think its anything to do with risks or benefits!

OK, that's a crude way of putting it, but the question remains: if SR validates music through its social glue and sense of purpose, what's his role in the system?

I'm applying this specifically to how im reading SRs take on things...someone who has backed away from genres in recent years. the risks/benefits for him, for his approach...i'd say he's not in a place to care about that angle right now

as for others..i dont think there are any risks. there are benefits, theoretically, but...are there really? other than specialist critics? Where are the benefits for Norteno?

wrong way round! i dont think SR validates music! i think SR has always needed context/role in order for him to consider music valid! and maybe hes kind of realigning his position on that
i dont think he has a role, really

That is what I meant - this validated verb confuses me clearly.

oh i see. i think it has confused me also. that makes things different..but also the same. i dont think he has a role...except you are asking what is the role of the critic..rather than the role of SR specifically?

i dont have an answer

perhaps to bridge between subcultures and mainstream cultures. to open the door

but..i dont see this happening much..

Hi all. I just wanted to show you this, which appeared in today's Guardian and which says a lot of the same things Simon does in that interview. Rock as jazz - check. Classic values of revolution and transgression no longer part of pop's core brief - check. It's called "Meet the future of pop music".

http://music.guardian.co.uk/pop/story/0,,2060953,00.html