Taylor Swift - RED - October 22

comparing Taylor Swift to other female pop performers, or citing her male songwriters

the problem is that it isn't this, it's female pop performers who are "trash" and male songwriters who are "a-listers"

(I know him a bit too--definitely a good guy.)

nope guys, sorry, its not possible. he wrote a really boneheaded, sexist article so there is no possible way for him to be anything other than a terrible human being.

xpost I think the dialectic is troubling, but it's also I think a product of poor choice of words. I think he's defining the performers as disposable - even though some of them were A-listers, too!

(Haven't read his article yet.) xpost

And per Maura's fish-in-barrel retort

Really sucks that Maura is shooting at misogynist fish in a privilege barrel

Who called it a defense? I just know him and think he is a good guy. So fucking what? Just saying he's not some fly by night bombthrower asshole, wrongheaded though he may or may not be.

this is irrelevant to the discussion. no one is flaming him personally yet the reason maura preemptively said that is because when someone writes something offense people often immediately rush to clarify that no he's a great person. but it doesn't matter.

Sorry I guess I'm conflating a lot of the externals here, because SFJ did rip on him personally, and Maura's reponse does patronizingly tip toe around that territory.

But that is well within their rights.

i think Maura's post was fine except for that weird, accusatory strawmanning about "Since U Been Gone".

man why are all these chicks so patronizing to men, right?

I've read the article now, won't defend it, except to give the context that it comes from what feels to me like a 90s-alt perspective of authenticity and selling out, and the analysis remind me of the dicey-ness around Liz Phair et al at that time.

(around criticism of Liz Phair et al at that time, I should say)

c'mon josh, you're not really dealing with what is on the printed page here

I think it's definitely fair to say that Mark's writing is frequently imbued with a 90s-alt perspective of authenticity and selling out,

Personally, I think tons of music writing (almost all?) is innately sexist. I was thinking of Kate Bush the other day - and not in a sexist way! - and I was considering the countless male acts who listen to her and must be influenced by her. And yet the only acts that get compared to Kate Bush are female acts, though surely there are male acts who could be compared to Kate Bush, too. Dunno. Just something I was thinking about.

I dunno, maybe my outrage bar is just set pretty low. I can read that piece and think, man, I would never write that, and here are many reasons why. But I also come across far, far worse stuff than it on a regular basis, which isn't a defense so much as perspective, I suppose.

josh in chicago just thinking out loud here

Which again is admittedly me reacting a lot more to the vitriol around the piece and not as much to the piece itself, which I'm pretty sure I've repeatedly said is problematic at best.

True, really. I was killing time while my Trader Joe's frozen falafel heated up. Verdict: not good!

xpost

I am in line at an airport but I just want to say two things. One, I know a lot of "nice" people (men and women!) who
have misogynist tendencies. Two, reeling off a list of related artists from
Spotify, which that list pretty much is, so all over the map is it in terms of micro-era and importance and so on, is the opposite of research.

Should have hit the rock encyclopedia!

(LOL research)

I mean Jesus "nice guy" these days is like Reddit code for "burgeoning MRA" too. Just ugh

Yeah, fuck nice guys.

>:(

well I mean if you're going to spout off you should at least know what you're taking about? but I guess cheap shots at trashy sluts get the word count job done.

Nah, not nice guy so much as I went into the article having seem his involvement in campaigns, issues, etc., over the past decade. Not the New Criticism approach, but that's not one I see in music criticism anyway.

I should read the piece again, but did he call them trashy sluts? Because that would have been pretty sexist.

why don't you go reread the piece again

Done. Still problematic!

(I've repped for Hopper in an overall way when she's written dicey criticism, for very similar reasons.)

yeah i would say mark's writing is pretty Dice-y

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/236071/Andrew+Dice+Clay.jpg

Bam!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shiroibasketshoes/

now there's a nice guy :-)

that salon article is really really stupid

The sexism is one thing, but the pointless shoehorning Taylor Swift's career into an airy discussion of the last ten years of the US economy made me want to smash myself into little pieces of gore.

RIGHT?

yes but how can you map Swift's career and Australia

whiney otm--too many fucking music writers

it is important to remember, i guess, that a lot of nastily pervasive sexism does come from people you'd recognise as "good guys" and not from "bombthrower assholes", and it's the fact that these "good guys" are the ones maintaining their sexist line with a blithe lack of self-recognition that makes it so nastily pervasive.

― of course you end up shazaming yourself (c sharp major), Monday, November 12, 2012 6:04 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

like w/ any other kind of casual prejudice! i mean, i'm a nice enough person and i've done and said things that were offensive/awful/wrong, and I have the choice to either say "because i recognise myself as a nice person it is impossible that what i said was offensive" or "because i want to continue recognising myself as a nice person i should recognise when i am being offensive and learn to quit it"

― of course you end up shazaming yourself (c sharp major), Monday, November 12, 2012 6:07 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

TRUTH BOMBS

yes but how can you map Swift's career and Australia

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, November 12, 2012 8:03 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well naturally Taylor's persistent search for a redemptive relationship with a man who won't let her down resonate with Australia's attempts to negotiate non-exploitative free trade agreements with more powerful countries after having pre-emptively abandoned our emotional defences, I mean trade tariffs.

lol

Taylor Swift ft. Ira Davies - "Trade Tariffs"

She taxes agriculture, I tax t-shirts

2 Chaaaaaaaaainz

i KNEW you WERE troublewhenyouwalkedinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn <3

unsurprisingly, it's the next single

if its out before end of year it might top my pazz n jop singles ballot

it was already released as a standalone promo single ahead of the album, don't see why that wouldn't count