What Is Rockism ?

ha tim

and the rockism/poptimism debate is inherently about criticism.

i agree w/this you probably have to know who robert christgau is to be really invested in the debate

well glad we had our bi-annual shitting on pop critics

siding with UMS on this one for the most part. and with that ilx post quoted in that comment. (didn't actually read the article but i'm assuming it made some decent points clumsily)

(didn't actually read the article but i'm assuming it made some decent points clumsily)

It did not.

The thing is, the argument this article, and about a million virtually identically tepid takes beforehand, make is actually dated now. Something changed/broke with the Sheeranocalypse a couple of months ago and mass clowning on the biggest pop star in the country is positively encouraged now.

never let a little nuance get in the way of confirming your biases

xp

I mean it's not as if Ed Sheeran and Drake were not respectively a) clowned on from day one b) at least, like, one to two years into a backlash

i would have put my house on my pnj ballot if it had 20 spots. few songs last year gave me as much of a sugar rush. also i like mike posner :(

it's never Twenty-One Pilots, DJ Khaled, the Chainsmokers, and Posner who get grief from pieces like this – it's Swift and Beyonce.

it goes back to the celebrity thing -- these people's real problem is with celebrity journalism, not with poptimism, but they don't see or make a distinction.

i think that's probably true

21 Pilots grew on me.

and goodness what about those Kendrick essay commissioned in 2015 (not many this year). Is The Quietus offended by those?

it's absolutely true. and the choice of targets is even more striking given the way women don't really exist in the hot 100's upper echelons right now. like, what are you arguing against here?

"you" = writers of these pieces

Help me understand this then: http://www.billboard.com/charts/year-end/2016/top-billboard-200-albums

― pomenitul, Thursday, May 11, 2017 12:15 PM (two minutes ago)

what's most interesting about this list is that a lot of these albums are successful despite LACK OF support from the segments of the industry that prop up 'pop'/top 40 music. looking at the top 10 on the list:

- 3 generated zero major hits in the top 40 sphere (hamilton, chris stapleton, lemonade)
- 3 were from artists whose songs were crossing over to, not breaking at, pop radio (drake, rihanna, 21 pilots). drake and rihanna also managed to get major hits that charted well despite being largely ignored by top 40 radio ("needed me", "controlla"). it's interesting and somewhat telling imo that rihanna, who has been a straight-ahead top 40 artist for the vast majority of her career, opted for the urban-crossover route this time around.
- 1 album was by an artist delivering pop hits and crossover r&b hits in roughly equal measure (the weeknd)
- 3 are straightforward top 40 albums (bieber, one direction, adele -- who's actually an adult contemporary artist, but sure)

3 non-crossover pop albums out of the top 10 and 3 albums with no pop radio hits at all does not exactly speak to the hegemony of pop. and the scales are going to tip even further away from pop as the dominant commercial force in the coming years, to be displaced by more edm and 'urban' (i hate that euphemism) music. just watch!

well, streaming... complicates that

it does. tbh i would be excitedly cheering along the incoming shifts if they weren't also damaging to women artists.

it's never Twenty-One Pilots, DJ Khaled, the Chainsmokers, and Posner who get grief from pieces like this – it's Swift and Beyonce.

― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, May 11, 2017 2:44 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

BTW: I literally googles "Chainsmokers bad" and there seems to actually be quite a few articles about them sucking including one that comes up w/the dreaded Nickelback comparison

https://www.google.com/search?q=chainsmokers+bad&rlz=1C1NHXL_enUS736US736&oq=chainsmokers+bad&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.2145j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

what's most interesting about this list is that a lot of these albums are successful despite LACK OF support from the segments of the industry that prop up 'pop'/top 40 music. looking at the top 10 on the list:

- 3 generated zero major hits in the top 40 sphere (hamilton, chris stapleton, lemonade)
- 3 were from artists whose songs were crossing over to, not breaking at, pop radio (drake, rihanna, 21 pilots). drake and rihanna also managed to get major hits that charted well despite being largely ignored by top 40 radio ("needed me", "controlla"). it's interesting and somewhat telling imo that rihanna, who has been a straight-ahead top 40 artist for the vast majority of her career, opted for the urban-crossover route this time around.
- 1 album was by an artist delivering pop hits and crossover r&b hits in roughly equal measure (the weeknd)
- 3 are straightforward top 40 albums (bieber, one direction, adele -- who's actually an adult contemporary artist, but sure)

3 non-crossover pop albums out of the top 10 and 3 albums with no pop radio hits at all does not exactly speak to the hegemony of pop. and the scales are going to tip even further away from pop as the dominant commercial force in the coming years, to be displaced by more edm and 'urban' (i hate that euphemism) music. just watch!

― dyl, Thursday, May 11, 2017 3:50 PM (twenty seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That makes sense to some extent but I think my definition of 'pop' encompasses more subgenres than yours. To be fair, I also tend to think of rock as pop, so in and of itself the rockist/popist divide strikes me as moot to begin with.

Ultimately I'm more interested in the antagonism between 'pop(ular) vs. less popular' music.

their music is awful, the singer is a cute douche, and commercially they're a much bigger deal than Beyonce.

i take your word for it they suck! i'm just saying the press does seem to target them too

ok, i see what you mean then. again i think critics tend to treat those subgenres differently but i might be wrong b/c i don't really pay that much attention to the critical sphere.

xp

like I said upthread, they're viewed as more disposable because they're not celebrities, they just make music, which is some very weird through-the-looking-glass stuff. (it doesn't help that EDM artists only have a 50-50 shot of crediting their vocalists, who are a) the up-and-coming pop stars who are supposed to be boosted by these collaborations b) women)

commercially they're a much bigger deal than Beyonce.

― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, May 11, 2017 3:56 PM (six minutes ago)

Is this really true? Maybe I'm not looking in the right places but I can't find anything to corroborate that.

To be fair, I also tend to think of rock as pop, so in and of itself the rockist/popist divide strikes me as moot to begin with.

OTM. Need to go back to when music was real, with musicians who could actually read playing real unamplified instruments under the direction of conductors who were really feeling it.

Is this really true? Maybe I'm not looking in the right places but I can't find anything to corroborate that.

― pomenitul, Thursday, May 11, 2017 4:03 PM

check out Beyonce's streaming and single sales of Lemonade compared to Drake and the Chainsmokers.

God awmighty if the R word upsets you you're the problem irrespective of technical stupidity

OTM. Need to go back to when music was real, with musicians who could actually read playing real unamplified instruments under the direction of conductors who were really feeling it.

― My Body's Made of Crushed Little Evening Stars (Sund4r), Thursday, May 11, 2017 4:08 PM (forty-one seconds ago)

Not good enough. If your flute isn't a hand-carved femur, I don't want to hear it.

Based on presentations in my music tech classes, Chainsmokers are definitely a big deal.

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--fEBZZaDe--/c_fill,fl_progressive,g_center,h_900,q_80,w_1600/c8ciauhwifa2djnf5coq.jpg

it's never Twenty-One Pilots, DJ Khaled, the Chainsmokers, and Posner who get grief from pieces like this – it's Swift and Beyonce.

because the perception is that pop critics don't rep for these musicians like they do Taylor Swift & Beyonce. it's almost as though Taylor Swift & Beyonce have, like, star power or something

yeah this is kind of my point, the bros of summer, who got to where they are because of halsey and phoebe ryan and emily warren

(the latter of whose PR sends me about two emails a week pleading with me to acknowledge her existence, because the chainsmokers barely are)

Not good enough. If your flute isn't a hand-carved femur, I don't want to hear it.

Neanderthalist

that billboard cover is horrifying

Take sides: Neanderthalism or Australopithecism?

how has m@tt never posted on ILG before aren't you a professional nerd?

how has m@tt never posted on ILG before aren't you a professional nerd?

― flopson, Thursday, May 11, 2017 3:28 PM (two seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i guess i could now cuz i'm not anymore but i didn't want to leave a "paper trail" for reddit weirdos or neogaf junior gaming journalism sleuths to dig up because i tend to jest a lot on ilx

also i guess i felt like if i had thoughts abt games i should have written them for the site or mag

I don't post on ILG either, I mean

lol gamers

whiney OTM that the strain of poptimism currently in vogue is a rockist abomination of the poptimistic ideal of a race-to-the-bottom to contraristan for the lowest common denom pop trash.

call it 'market poptimism' because that's what it is — a response to the internet allowing the market's id to turn into a dictator

imo it's a 'teach a man to fish' type of thing. poptimists eight years ago were like 'it's okay to like Beyoncé!!!' but instead of internalizing the more general lesson of openmindedness to the beauty and craft of lcd pop and awareness of our bias against it, ppl just became rockists who also like Beyoncé now

who?

or are you paraphrasing the article?

OTM. Need to go back to when music was real, with musicians who could actually read playing real unamplified instruments under the direction of conductors who were really feeling it.

joking but true. there was a time when music only existed on paper, when every house had a piano, when you could get a job in a local orchestra, when pop music culture intertwined with folk culture and family traditions. recorded music killed so much.

a time when songs were alive, dynamic, constantly morphing, taking in regional differences, changing with the times. now songs are dead, a deceased corpse legally defined and restricted to one official version and only officially-approved variations