What Is Rockism ?

Would any of these count?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockism_and_poptimism#References

phony poptimism has bitten the daaaaahst

http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a55035/harry-styles-is-the-next-frank-sinatra/

possibly, pomenitul, but you've got to make a bit more effort than that if you want to persuade me this is in any sense a worthwhile avenue

I suppose I'm confused as to the degree of 'extremism' these putative pieces are meant to exhibit. Are we looking for perfect, Platonic exemplars of each position (which would probably flirt would Poe's law anyhow), or does, say, Michael Hann's Quietus article already fit bill? Or Kelefa Sanneh's, for that matter?

oh man I glanced at that Saul Austerlitz article from 2014.

my rule of thumb is that no high-profile article yet written about the face-off between the two schools can have been much good, as we're still stuck at the same place

what i'm asking for is examples from each of the two schools, preferably ones which are well written -- ideally with some analysis of why their strengths are actually undermined, either by their rockism or their poptimism

I'll bite.

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/7423962/taylor-swift-feminism-impact

ok, in defense of using this as an example, part of the point is the sheer glut of this stuff and the attendant lack of quality. This is content. But the bizarre connections it makes between pop music and denuded social justice concepts, completely decontextualised, is a defining feature of a lot of this stuff that gets tossed in front of my eyeballs. I'm precisely not saying this is poptimism, or even really journalism, but there's a lot of it and it's everywhere (theguardian.com sidebar I feel is always pushing this kind of pop criticism) and I definitely think that some of its assumptions are the corrupted legacy of poptimism. By the way, I've been working in a school with autistic children and I've heard shake it off by taylor swift at least once a day, every day, since september, and part of my antipathy towards this kind of stuff comes from that.

How about this one? I've brought it up repeatedly, but no one ever deigns to touch it:

http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/what-if-you-dont-like-beyonces-album/

wait, that is not in response to mark s, my line itt is pretty unrelated to what you are saying in your last post.

it is, i'm not arguing with everyone in the thread (yet)

puzzled why you think that is well written, pomenitul -- it seems a very feeble bit of badge-polishing to me

It's not, I hadn't realized good writing is a sine qua non criterion in this little game.

It’s exhausting to be in a constant state of awe. It’s not as fun as watching the train wreck that is Miley Cyrus. Beyoncé’s sexuality is polished and sophisticated, with none of the edgy vulgarity offered by Rihanna. There’s such a thing as being too well put together, and Beyoncé briefly crossed over into that space for me.

1. I would argue that the de-hegemonization of the album as musical form is as much due to technological factors as it is to creative backlash.

2. If we define "poptimism" as an opposition to the "authenticity" narrative, does this make THEESatisfaction, who openly flaunt their authenticity, rockist?

3. Poptimism is not populism.

4. The difference between "rockism" and "poptimism" is not a matter of critical approach, which is nearly always too sophisticated to fall into either camp, but refers primarily to the tribal affinities of music listeners.

If you don’t like the new Beyoncé album, reevaluate what you want out of music

This shit is what drives me crazy. The idea, basically, that there is no music but Big Pop. If pop music criticism could exalt the virtues of well-done pop while allowing for the idea that other, very different types of music do exist and are also very good on their own terms, that might be something I'd be interested in reading. Say, if someone analyzed a Beyoncé record alongside an Ambrose Akinmusire record as two contemporaneous facets of 21st century African-American music. But who's doing that besides, say, Greg Tate?

that statement, while it is prima facie idiotic, isn't actually exclusionary in the sense that you read it - it doesn't say that one can _only_ like beyonce, but that one _has_ to like beyonce. it's ridiculous hyperbole, which is well established as part of the critical tradition.

4. The difference between "rockism" and "poptimism" is not a matter of critical approach, which is nearly always too sophisticated to fall into either camp, but refers primarily to the tribal affinities of music listeners.

This is not how I've heard almost anyone use these terms, nor how they are primarily definedhere or even in the Sanneh. In all of these cases, people are mostly talking about critics, not about Wimmels's uncle.

I think the name poptimism is itself very clever, and speaks to some sort of magpie aspect of poptimisms outlook, finding something recuperable out of the ruinous pop landscape of talent-show rejects, reality-stars vanity projects and novelty songs.

Isn't "you MUST like this music" just a hallmark of bad music writing rather than of any particular ideological stance?

Why not both?

it's pretty clearly just "bad writing is bad"

If you don’t like the new Beyoncé album, reevaluate what you want out of music, because she’s giving us the exact type of commitment we so often demand of our artists.

It's the final clause that makes it rockist

This is not how I've heard almost anyone use these terms, nor how they are primarily definedhere or even in the Sanneh. In all of these cases, people are mostly talking about critics, not about Wimmels's uncle.

― My Body's Made of Crushed Little Evening Stars (Sund4r)

honestly i mean no offence by this but the only people i've ever heard talk about rock critics are other rock critics.

Isn't the entire article the confession of someone who feels forced to reevaluate what they want out of music so as not to appear out of touch with the Zeitgeist? Sounds ideological to me.

I mean maybe my take on this is not right, I feel like "rockism" vs "poptimism" is not so much about whether guitars are involved, it's about whether you think "for a pop song to merit serious criticism we have to see it as a work of art produced by a genius who stands above their peers" vs "one way to think about pop songs is as massively multi-authored industrial products which we can admire and write criticism about just as we would a really fucking amazing toaster"

Valuing or demanding authenticity, commitment, 'real talent', making statements, great works of art - none of these things began with rock music or rock criticism. At one time, they were often used against rock. If "rockism" means anything useful at all (which I have doubts about), it has to mean something more than this.

And yes, that piece is also rockist in the broadest sense of the term.

Sund4r OTM

honestly i mean no offence by this but the only people i've ever heard talk about rock critics are other rock critics.

I'm not offended at all, especially given that I'm not a rock critic, but these are also the only people I've heard talk about rockism and poptimism.

I think a trite confused term is fine for a quick summary dismissal of a trite confused attitude

Ha, I guess my last post is self-contradictory.

the more might be this, sund4r: not those ideals so much as the the importing of all of those ideals into discussions of a pop form -- rock! -- which was most interesting because at first it seemed to it challenge or complicate or refuse them, for example

(it originally had the same relationship sexism had to sex, it wasn't anti-rock at all: just anti some ways of talking about it)

If you don’t like the new Beyoncé album, reevaluate what you want out of music, because she’s giving us the exact type of commitment we so often demand of our artists.

It's the final clause that makes it rockist

It's the word "we" in the final clause that makes it rockist! :)

"rockism", as a derogatory term, seems to me an indictment of whatever the interlocutor feels are the toxic qualities of rock. which vary from person to person. so for instance i'm unimpressed with the singer-songwriter cult and rock's deification of the white male, but others may find different qualities, such as its embrace of "authenticity", to criticize.

it seems that a term which has never attained a generally-agreed-upon definition would be useless, but here we are.

we will never agree on anything as we agreed on elvis. so i won't bother saying goodbye to his corpse. i will say goodbye to you

It's the word "we" in the final clause that makes it rockist! :)

― Tim

"is that the royal we or the schizophrenic we", my dad always used to say.

elvis is dead?

Every time this topic comes up it feels like a dialogue of the deaf. About music, no less.

well at least it's not about architecture

we will never agree on anything again than when we agreed that Elvis is dead.

I think mark s is asking for something which might not exist: "well-written" pieces undermined by their rockism or poptimism.

Does anyone really mind a think piece steeped in rockist (or poptimist) that is thoughtful, nuanced, insightful (i.e. well-written) as regards its subject matter? I certainly don't. Rockism is often quite a useful frame for thinking about music if the writer/thinker writes well.

The issue for me back in the day was always that ideological slanting encouraged or at least permitted bad writing and gave it a platform so long as it was consistent with certain shared assumptions between the platform and its audience. I could still pull up any number of truly awful Pitchfork reviews of pop and dance albums from 1999 to 2001 if it was necessary - but they're not "well-written", they're intellectual lazy.

The main difference now perhaps is that clickbait culture encourages writers to be intellectually lazy about everything. So, yes, there's a lot of bad writing that looks like "poptimism", but I think the badness of the writing is symptomatic of a much bigger than problem than "so who ultimately won the rockism wars?"

The reason there is no good piece on this is because no human being who doesn't have an ILX account gives a shit about any of this, which is why every single piece has to begin with a Nolan Ryan fucking windup "IN 2004 ROCK CRITIC KELEFAH SANNEH SAID BEEP BOOP MEEP MOOP"

Never forget the time notoriously head-up-the-internet's-ass content sluice the Fader commissioned the worst infographic in the history of time for their take on poptimism

http://thefader-res.cloudinary.com/images/w_2400,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:best/poptimism-other-means_xobkl6/poptimism-kelefa-sanneh-interview.jpg

A 'shame' this subreddit no longer exists:

https://www.reddit.com/r/realmusicmasterrace/

I think at least we can all agree that "Wimmels's uncle" should be adopted as a new synonym for "man on the street" "John Q Public" etc.

Heh, I'm reminded of this Morton Feldman anecdote:

My teacher Stefan Wolpe was a Marxist and he felt my music was too esoteric at the time. And he had his studio on a proletarian street, on Fourteenth Street and Sixth Avenue. . . . He was on the second floor and we were looking out the window, and he said, "What about the man on the street?" At that moment . . . Jackson Pollock was crossing the street.

lol

"The main difference now perhaps is that clickbait culture encourages writers to be intellectually lazy about everything."

^^^^^

Like the problem is that the imperative to create capital-C Content has forced critical writing (whether good or bad) to rub up against dipshitty SEO-baiting pieces that usually are barely worthy of Bustle, and that are drenched in celebrity-press breathlessness and cynical attempts to mimic whatever slang is big on the internet at that moment. This could be another effect of print's diminishment; lots of magazines ran both, but they were delinated by section (and even at times design). Now the flattening of Content and the way people source and surface news means that everything looks the same, so of course lowest-common-denominator stuff wins out, because it's easier to produce and has a higher ROI.

Also it really sucks that every music citation in that Wiki post upthread is from a piece written by a man, although I guess it also speaks to the overarching binary that results in this discussion inevitably tripping into a mud pit of at best unexamined, at worst bad-faith arguments nearly every time.

And finally I'm going to push back on Whiney upthread and say that poptimist critics shouldn't "ride for" the Chainsmokers et al, because that's just a perpetuation of the celeb-press ideal. But they should examine their music and take it seriously, and not shove off any surprising reactions they might have to their songs.

(Full disclosure: Whiney assigned me that two-star Chainsmokers review I wrote a few weeks back.)

I felt like this comment on the NYT John Mayer interview from a few weeks ago was a great indictment of the root causes of rockism:

"If he were a woman, someone would have told him already if he wants to stay popular, just shut up, sing and look pretty. That interviewers keep going to John Mayer for deep thoughts is perfect example of white male privilege. We don't expect deep thoughts from Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Usher, Selena Gomez. We expect to entertained. Interviewers need to stop trying to make John Mayer seem like a philosopher. Describe what he's wearing, what he ate for dinner, how he gets his hair to look so great. Would make for a better read."

Like think about how many shitty male artists get the "secret genius" pass, and how women who have similar worldviews are treated like ditzes. Etc.