What Is Rockism ?

LOL IRL

Rivers: There was this one time in Japan that was really emotional for me because this is when I was first starting to figure all this stuff out about being really aggressive. I'd been in Japan for a week and every night there were ten or fifteen girls in my room and nothing happened because I wasn't confident enough to say "Let's have sex or get out of the room." So finally, at the end of my stay there I said, "Whoever wants to stay in the room has to take their clothes off and get on the bed."and most of them left but four of them stayed. It was a very difficult step for me to take but I hadto take it. It was the truth about what I wanted.

cool story bro

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, December 12, 2018 11:19 AM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

um this is h0t as fuck lol. almost as good as some of mingus's stories

hm something tells me you didn’t make it to the end of his book. ffs that’s almost like saying “lol dude malcolm x was a badass dope dealer with an awesome conk, love those old stories !!”

also mingus’s stories are way more depraved, interesting, and far darker and more insightful than anything this idiot has to say. are you high

somehow weirdly I thought that was about Sam Rivers and was v surprised to hear he had that many groupies in Japan

lol

Actually it was Joan Rivers.

also mingus’s stories are way more depraved, interesting, and far darker and more insightful than anything this idiot has to say. are you high

― budo jeru, Saturday, December 15, 2018 8:53 PM (forty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i said 'almost'

I doubt Weezer does any roundhouse kicks to people in cowboy boots ala Dickie Betts.

um this is h0t as fuck lol. almost as good as some of mingus's stories

― esby, Saturday, December 15, 2018 8:06 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol...

looks like ilx has a new bad boy deej

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61vr%2BT2ougL._SX355_.jpg

My fantasy would be a roomful of people leaving me alone, so I can sleep for 9 hours straight.

#dadjoke #happytodoit

https://jezebel.com/the-united-states-of-bros-a-map-and-field-gide-1550563737

― aloha darkness my old friend (katherine)

this is good but "portland bro" actually lives in beaverton

10 years ago, I worked at a 7 night a week karaoke bar and there was a group of bro regulars (boat shoe and polo bros) who would come in and drink Bud Light and Jaeger and take turns night to night singing "Africa." No idea if it had permeated bro culture at that point or if it just had special meaning to them but they seemed to love it unironically.

Apparently "SNL" had a sketch about Weezer last night -- characters debating their greatest "era," etc.(?) Are they, like, "canonical" now?

The sketch doesn’t really depend on that distiction

*distinction

Right, in theory the sketch could have applied equally to people talking about Seventeen Seconds vs. Disintegration, or Fables vs. Up.

But it wasn't, because "has Weezer gone soft / sold out / jumped the shark" or whatever is a comparatively current topic (indeed, ILX discussed it at length just this summer). Other mainstream white middle-ager bands' career arcs are not - or not as much - topics of current discussion.

Tried to watch the SNL Weezer skit, but the uploader has not made this video available in my country. That's not fair, we're very concerned about rockism too.

i was also unable to watch it in my country

I just watched it, and I’m not even sure I really get what the “joke” is supposed to be... just the randomness of a big dinner-party argument over Weezer?

yea. i thought it was p funny that they'd get that niche (lmao arguing about 'Pacific Daydream' and 'Raditude')

I feel like this dude is really brimming w/personality: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/snl-weezer-rivers-cuomo-768140/

It does seem like the sketch captured something about the way some fans feel about Weezer — this intense loyalty to specific parts of the catalog. Why do you think that is?

Well, let me ask you, as an outsider, do other artists have this kind of intensely opinionated and passionate and conflicted following?

I don’t think so. I don’t hear people having the same kind of debates about, say, Pearl Jam or Radiohead that they do about your band.

I wish I knew why. It’s almost worthy of an academic study to figure out what’s going on in the psyche of these few hundred thousand people. I feel like it must come back to something in the four of us, or something in me. There’s some character flaw or some quirk of my personality that is permitting a vacuum, where a normal band leader would be projecting some kind of stronger leadership. Or maybe he’d just be a more consistent artist stylistically.

https://res.cloudinary.com/teepublic/image/private/s--tEwGNnSu--/t_Resized%20Artwork/c_fit,g_north_west,h_954,w_954/co_000000,e_outline:48/co_000000,e_outline:inner_fill:48/co_ffffff,e_outline:48/co_ffffff,e_outline:inner_fill:48/co_bbbbbb,e_outline:3:1000/c_mpad,g_center,h_1260,w_1260/b_rgb:eeeeee/c_limit,f_jpg,h_630,q_90,w_630/v1478638693/production/designs/801115_1.jpg

I don’t think so. I don’t hear people having the same kind of debates about, say, Pearl Jam or Radiohead that they do about your band.

Radiohead and Pearl Jam didn't start to totally suck like Weezer

nor have they always sucked like Weezer either

lol otm

actually wait I don't care about Radiohead or Pearl Jam either, but neither of those have been as actively offensive as Weezer

the lebowski fest of bands, total bacon

It's true, 50-75% of Radiohead's catalog wasn't seemingly ghost written by a bunch of middle schoolers.

50-75% of Radiohead's catalog isn't songs.

Thank God, few things are as boring as bands that never stretch songs until they break.

songs could be anything man, think about it

I did and it broke me.

Right. Not songs; they're cacophonous yet tranquil, experimental yet familiar, foreign yet womb-like, spacious yet visceral, textured yet vaporous, awakening yet dreamlike.

This thread has achieved escape velocity.

somehow both as smooth as the gleaming facade of a sleek new coupe and as weathered as the prematurely aged face of a train hobo

ok lol

50-75% of Radiohead's catalog isn't songs.

― Your sweetie-pie-coo-coo I love ya (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, December 19, 2018 4:39 PM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

now that's what i call rockism (TM)

or maybe poptimism

Could it be that… they're one and the same? mindblown.gif

We're sick and tired of your rockism and poptimism game
Die and go to heaven in Jesus' name, Lord
We know when we understand
Almighty God is a pop rockin'man

yeah, nobody ever debates the merits of radiohead and pearl jam

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/AjarDaringAsiaticmouflon-small.gif

Reposting (in pieces) from the "dis hyped releases" thread:

As long as we move away from reductive poptimism (the worst kind of objective wrongness, by far), all is well with the world.

― pomenitul, Sunday, December 9, 2018 9:20 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'd much rather read trying-too-hard praise for a top 40 act than for the kind of 90s indie that'd have occasioned a trip to the toilets during a 90s festival

― L'assie (Euler), Sunday, December 9, 2018 9:24 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Why not neither?

― pomenitul, Sunday, December 9, 2018 9:30 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

when pop music is good it's politics at its best. unpop(ular) indie delivers more subjective pleasures which end up being more common

― L'assie (Euler), Sunday, December 9, 2018 9:40 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Politics, whether at its best or at its worst, is the last thing I want to hear in a musical work. It's always a part of it, of course, even when kept at bay, but aesthetics is more exciting to me.

― pomenitul, Sunday, December 9, 2018 9:58 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was talking about reading about music, i.e. about the hyping of music, the subject of this thread : how we write about music is political, and thus so is how we stand on pop music. anti-pop snobbery is a sure sign that I have no time for a person: eventually they will have me also up against the wall.

― L'assie (Euler), Sunday, December 9, 2018 10:14 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't hate pop music by any stretch of the imagination, but any discourse that enshrines it above all other genres (this is what I meant by 'reductive poptimism', which is indistinguishable from rockism) is, in fact, politically violent in that it silences less populist approaches to listening and music making. The amount of music out there is more overwhelming than ever – I don't think the solution is to systematically fall back on the same melodic contours, the same simplistic rhythms, the same comfortable timbres that are tautologically popular because they are popular. I always come back to that Kafka line about how a book should be the pickaxe that shatters the icy sea within us – I want music to do the same, whether it be pop or (more often) something else entirely.

― pomenitul, Sunday, December 9, 2018 10:27 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

We will spare philosophy PhDs (but not critical theorists) when it is time for the cull. xp

― Locked in silent monologue, in silent scream (Sund4r), Sunday, December 9, 2018 10:29 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I agree with pomenitul. The idea you touched on before euler—that the “subjective” pleasures of indie are worse politically than the pleasures of the masses—seemed really sinister to me.

― Trϵϵship, Sunday, December 9, 2018 10:29 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Systematically favouring works that are short and earwormy (loosely speaking) is an impoverished way of looking at music imho.

xps

― pomenitul, Sunday, December 9, 2018 10:30 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Like, I love that experience, but I can't imagine wanting it more than everything else music has to offer.

― pomenitul, Sunday, December 9, 2018 10:32 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

pop's always been a way for me to square my alienation with the world as it is. to turn away from it is to turn away from the masses, and that not a politics I want any part of.

― L'assie (Euler), Sunday, December 9, 2018 10:35 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i’ve skipped over the reductive poptimism convo bc it reeks of “this SOUNDS like a real thing that no one actually practices”

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Sunday, December 9, 2018 10:55 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i do disagree with almost everything euler said though

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Sunday, December 9, 2018 10:57 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

pop's always been a way for me to square my alienation with the world as it is. to turn away from it is to turn away from the masses, and that not a politics I want any part of.
― L'assie (Euler), Sunday, December 9, 2018 10:35 AM (twenty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuTMWgOduFM

― Trϵϵship, Sunday, December 9, 2018 11:04 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tbh treeship the zing hits the mark, I can't deny

brad in my world of overeducated people I hear things like pomenitul is saying all the time, which is why I like coming here, rather than talking to those people, about music

― L'assie (Euler), Sunday, December 9, 2018 11:18 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

pop's always been a way for me to square my alienation with the world as it is. to turn away from it is to turn away from the masses, and that not a politics I want any part of.
I get what you're saying, and that's why I'll never disengage from pop music completely, but its triumphant prevalence can and does often preclude aesthetic diversity from seeping through. Basically, pop seeks to maintain the status quo, i.e. the fact that, genre-wise, the top 1% dominates 99% of the musical market. Sure, the analogy is flawed, in that it's not just about concentration of capital but also about concentration of collective affect, yet insofar as ears don't come with lids, we are so used to having certain sounds thrust upon us in public spaces that I can't help but feel like we've been 'groomed' to dislike anything that diverges from the Earworm God. If anything, there's a political point to be made (not that it hasn't been, but I feel like it's less audible in our current century) that exposure to un-pop music attunes us to other ways of listening, which is a potentially ethical act.

― pomenitul, Sunday, December 9, 2018 11:20 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

By the way, I have also gotten into such arguments with stuffy (mostly French) academic types who in reality care very little for music, and I tend to adopt a stance similar to yours, Euler, but I'm no less wary of overcorrection, which I encounter far more often in the English-speaking world.

― pomenitul, Sunday, December 9, 2018 11:22 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah I get that; ILM has never seemed to me to be a home for pop-as-status-quo, so these discussion are different than when I'm talking with someone sneering at anything written during the twentieth century, which is more like the people I spend my life with

― L'assie (Euler), Sunday, December 9, 2018 11:27 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I feel you, those are the absolute worst. They usually care more for the prestige that ostensibly comes with such an opinion than the music itself, which they don't even listen to anyway.

― pomenitul, Sunday, December 9, 2018 11:32 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you guys really need to read more late 20th century rock crit if you don’t get why poptimism became a thing in the first place. raging against the 1/99 split of pop and everything else while denigrating an ideology that came up *because* of a similar elitism (from the ruling class within media) is... ironic? utterly white dude?

― maura, Sunday, December 9, 2018 11:55 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

market poptimism, which is uncritical and rooted in the hope that an artist retweets praise and lifts the social media profiles of the writer/publication, is closer to the straw man against whom you’re railing

― maura, Sunday, December 9, 2018 11:56 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm not exactly defending rockism here. If anything, it's a tired debate – there are so many genres that get little to no attention at all.

― pomenitul, Sunday, December 9, 2018 12:03 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Incidentally, my (French) wife has far, far less patience for poptimism than I do. The whole 'lol white dude' thing is so clichéd and American-centric.

― pomenitul, Sunday, December 9, 2018 12:07 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and yet it isn’t untrue if you actually go back and read old music writing and look at the bylines

― maura, Sunday, December 9, 2018 12:08 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sorry to annoy your lady with facts

― maura, Sunday, December 9, 2018 12:09 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't really get what you're arguing tbh. That the diversity I'm clamouring for is wrong because pop deserves its continued revenge on rockism?

― pomenitul, Sunday, December 9, 2018 12:12 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I mean theres no such thing as apolitical music - every choice and every sound is the result of a political positioning, whether it's avant-garde experimental sounds or heteronormative pop love songs. Your relation to a piece of music is informed by the interplay between your own beliefs and how they integrate with the aesthetic choices made

― boxedjoy, Sunday, December 9, 2018 12:17 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I mean theres no such thing as apolitical music - every choice and every sound is the result of a political positioning, whether it's avant-garde experimental sounds or heteronormative pop love songs. Your relation to a piece of music is informed by the interplay between your own beliefs and how they integrate with the aesthetic choices made

i agree with this! it absolutely feeds into phenomena like white rappers having an easier time of it on pop radio than their black counterparts, and rap breaks being shoehorned into songs by women in order to appease men

my argument earlier was that “poptimism” has become as empty a term as “fake news” and that railing against it mows over the conditions that led to it becoming a thing
― maura, Sunday, December 9, 2018 12:20 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also, generally I find that people who claim they have no time/interest for politics are people who have the privilege to switch off from it and not constantly be engaged - lucky you if that's the case but as a gay man in a world still populated by huge numbers of people who literally dont want me to exist I can't afford that luxury. That permeates everything I do even if its on the tiniest level and to pretend it doesn't is disingenuous

― boxedjoy, Sunday, December 9, 2018 12:20 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZYHP6IBoac

― Locked in silent monologue, in silent scream (Sund4r), Sunday, December 9, 2018 12:22 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I mean the finer points of poptimism are there for debate if you like but I really get my back up when people think it's easy to seperate aesthetics from politics and wilfully disengage with their own positions of power and privilege as a listener and consumer

― boxedjoy, Sunday, December 9, 2018 12:23 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My position is that music is ever political but that it doesn't boil down to politics.

As for poptimism, of course the history of the term matters, but if anything, it didn't go far enough. So many sounds are still excluded.

― pomenitul, Sunday, December 9, 2018 12:32 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

progtimism

― imago, Sunday, December 9, 2018 12:34 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Poptimism refers to like a really specific opposition to a boring and homogenous canon that rock critics had built up in the US and UK. And I am for it—there was no small amount of misogyny and homophobia underneath the “disco sucks” attitude of the 70s and how that filtered down to critical consensus in the 90s. I’m proud of ILM to the extent that ILM helped undermine this specific kind of aesthetic bigotry.

However, as a general attitude, “poptimism” is a disaster because popular taste more often than not props up popular prejudices. Is anyone here a poptimist of sitcoms? Of cable news? Of course not. Even like, with pop music, it’s idiotic to say the highest charting stuff is the best out of democratic solidarity is dumb. All this music might tell you is what the common denominators are among a vast swath of listeners. It doesn’t tell you much about what really drives any one of these listeners, because “the masses,” to quote another poster, is just an abstraction. Championing “the masses” seems at odds with being interested in people, even.

― Trϵϵship, Sunday, December 9, 2018 12:51 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Agree with everything Pomeniful said, and some others as well. Sorry to continue that conversation / tired debate (indeed) but:
Have people come up with a term for the belief that all things hip hop (pop rap, trap etc) are the rightful cultural compass and center of all musical dynamism ? Because I hear that a lot, while Poptimism seems to have reduced to a narrow obsession over a few exaggerated / delirious / ecstatic pop qualities (that can only be found on records that explicitly go for them and which seem forced to me).

― Nabozo, Sunday, December 9, 2018 1:24 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

However, as a general attitude, “poptimism” is a disaster because popular taste more often than not props up popular prejudices. Is anyone here a poptimist of sitcoms? Of cable news? Of course not. Even like, with pop music, it’s idiotic to say the highest charting stuff is the best out of democratic solidarity is dumb. All this music might tell you is what the common denominators are among a vast swath of listeners. It doesn’t tell you much about what really drives any one of these listeners, because “the masses,” to quote another poster, is just an abstraction. Championing “the masses” seems at odds with being interested in people, even.

― Trϵϵship, Sunday, December 9, 2018 5:51 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

gonna ignore all the silly strawmanning upthread but the reference to TV here is interesting because TV is probably more like music than at any time in the past owing to the sheer explosion of content on streaming networks, meaning that rockism/poptimism ideas possibly "map" onto TV better now than they used to. I mean, they always did to some extent, but I think that the increase in choice between cultural products has meant that the dynamics of stratification, popularity and critical consensus are more similar now.

And you do see "poptimism of sitcoms" - see e.g. this piece on The Good Place: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/04/magazine/good-place-michael-schur-philosophy.html. "Poptimism of sitcoms" is not saying "this sitcom is the most popular and therefore is the best" or "sitcoms are popular therefore we should talk about them and not Scandanavian crime dramas", it's saying "this sitcom is doing things that are worth paying attention to, and part of that is about the rules and functions of the sitcom format and how the show utilises them in new and interesting ways."

― Tim F, Sunday, December 9, 2018 8:52 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Good sitcoms have always been worth taking/writing about, same with pop music, what’s different now?

― underqualified backing vocalist (morrisp), Sunday, December 9, 2018 9:00 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I agree, the only difference is that industry-wide comparisons between popular music and popular television are probably easier to make without necessitating so many wildly misleading conflations and analogies.

― Tim F, Sunday, December 9, 2018 10:05 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"this sitcom is the most popular and therefore is the best" or "sitcoms are popular therefore we should talk about them and not Scandanavian crime dramas"

i feel like we've been slacking and now the idiot strawman poptimism is the definition of poptimism to a new generation

― flopson, Sunday, December 9, 2018 10:33 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

disappointed in Treeship for falling for it

― flopson, Sunday, December 9, 2018 10:35 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he’s definitely not the only one

― maura, Sunday, December 9, 2018 10:42 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean i also said this

Poptimism refers to like a really specific opposition to a boring and homogenous canon that rock critics had built up in the US and UK. And I am for it—there was no small amount of misogyny and homophobia underneath the “disco sucks” attitude of the 70s and how that filtered down to critical consensus in the 90s. I’m proud of ILM to the extent that ILM helped undermine this specific kind of aesthetic bigotry.
if poptimism means keepings an open mind and not falling for facile "high/art low art" or "serious/trivial" binaries, then i definitely support it. but i think most people support this view. that is, unless you're someone who is all in for the avant garde, but then again, this kind of person wouldn't be a "rockist" in the first place. if i understand it correctly, the rockists were incurious chauvinists who had a very banal understanding of what "greatness" was.

in the field of sitcoms you don't need a poptimism because there is no dominant rockism of sitcom criticism. the critical consensus in the world of sitcoms is that "the good place" is good. in this field, if you were to talk about "poptimism" it just sounds like populism--championing the viewers over the critics.

― Trϵϵship, Sunday, December 9, 2018 11:35 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

poptimism needs a corresponding rockism to make sense as a concept, imo.

― Trϵϵship, Sunday, December 9, 2018 11:38 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

poptimism means keepings an open mind and not falling for facile "high/art low art" or "serious/trivial" binaries

imo this is p much it

― flopson, Sunday, December 9, 2018 11:40 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

poptimism needs a corresponding rockism to make sense as a concept, imo.

― Trϵϵship, Sunday, December 9, 2018 11:38 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

why? just define poptimism as above, then define rockism as the opposite of that

― flopson, Sunday, December 9, 2018 11:41 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bc what is the "pop" in poptimism if it doesn't mean affirming popular taste over the critics? in the instance of early 2000s music criticism, this was the progressive attitude. it's not always.

― Trϵϵship, Sunday, December 9, 2018 11:42 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's not progressive and probably never was (and that was never the point anyway), it's just correct

― flopson, Sunday, December 9, 2018 11:48 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There is no dominant rockism of "sitcom" criticism because there isn't really a discourse of sitcom criticism as a standalone thing, but there certainly is / has been a dominant rockism of tv criticism, and the "poptimism" of tv criticism would be e.g. critics who point out that we shouldn't automatically assume that the "prestige" television shows are more important or more worthy of consideration than, say, a trashy sitcom or drama.

A more on-point example (though not relating to sitcoms) would be this Nussbaum piece on why she prefers (preferred?) 'Scandal' to 'House of Cards': https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/02/25/shark-week

― Tim F, Sunday, December 9, 2018 11:49 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's a fair point

― Trϵϵship, Sunday, December 9, 2018 11:51 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the "poptimism" of tv criticism would be e.g. critics who point out that we shouldn't automatically assume that the "prestige" television shows are more important or more worthy of consideration than, say, a trashy sitcom or drama.

Any critic who would think or practice the *opposite* POV is a v poor TV critic... just sayin’.

― underqualified backing vocalist (morrisp), Sunday, December 9, 2018 11:52 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

rockism of sitcoms is like, knee-jerkedly asserting that the british version is better or something

― flopson, Sunday, December 9, 2018 11:54 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i guess so. that doesn't seem like a privileged position though, just an ignorant one. i don't feel like it's oppressive in any way.

― Trϵϵship, Sunday, December 9, 2018 11:57 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

whereas as a high school student i definitely felt like there was some kind of hazy consensus that pink floyd was important in a way madonna wasn't, or whatever. so that kind of attitude was worth challenging.

― Trϵϵship, Sunday, December 9, 2018 11:58 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I listen to a podcast where the guys are sort of sitcom “rockists”; they make fun of The Golden Girls (of all things) and think that Married With Children was “dumb, lowbrow” humor, or something.

― underqualified backing vocalist (morrisp), Monday, December 10, 2018 12:00 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

To return the topic: in high school, I read the NY Times Arts & Leisure section religiously; and I feel like Pareles and that crew treated the big new pop releases just as “seriously” as they did rock releases. Maybe it’s a newspaper thing in general (as opposed to the “music press”), but they definitely didn’t “privilege” rock, from what I can remember.

― underqualified backing vocalist (morrisp), Monday, December 10, 2018 12:03 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bc what is the "pop" in poptimism if it doesn't mean affirming popular taste over the critics? in the instance of early 2000s music criticism, this was the progressive attitude. it's not always.

FFS this was never what poptimism was about.

Please read the following articles from the Poptimist column before condescending to explain to everyone what the term means:

https://pitchfork.com/features/poptimist/6608-poptimist-4/

https://pitchfork.com/features/poptimist/6772-poptimist-11/

https://pitchfork.com/features/poptimist/7189-poptimist-18/

https://pitchfork.com/features/poptimist/7549-poptimist-19/

https://pitchfork.com/features/poptimist/7681-poptimist-23/

https://pitchfork.com/features/poptimist/7760-poptimist-25/

https://pitchfork.com/features/poptimist/7836-poptimist-31/

https://pitchfork.com/features/poptimist/7848-poptimist-32/

https://pitchfork.com/features/poptimist/8724-take-me-to-the-river/

Read all of them actually (and as much of 'Popular' as you can) but these are the ones that provide the broadest sense of what I would consider a 'poptimist' approach to music taste from the critic who arguably best exemplified the approach.

― Tim F, Monday, December 10, 2018 12:07 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Tom's column was really the best thing ever wasn't it

― flopson, Monday, December 10, 2018 12:17 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i guess so. that doesn't seem like a privileged position though, just an ignorant one. i don't feel like it's oppressive in any way.

― Trϵϵship, Sunday, December 9, 2018 11:57 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's not about "oppressive" though. i feel like ur anachronistically trying to re-write history where poptimism is a direct precedent to late '10s online woketivism, when it really wasn't about that and there's no direct line to be drawn between the two

― flopson, Monday, December 10, 2018 12:21 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

feels inconceivable that something at the level of quality of Tom and Nabisco's columns a decade ago could exist on the internet today, when they were for largely taken for granted at the time

― flopson, Monday, December 10, 2018 12:25 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I wish Tom Ewing had never stopped writing those.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Monday, December 10, 2018 12:26 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Does he write any variation of that column nowadays? I think he retired from music criticism a long time ago but I’m not sure.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Monday, December 10, 2018 12:27 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's not about "oppressive" though. i feel like ur anachronistically trying to re-write history where poptimism is a direct precedent to late '10s online woketivism, when it really wasn't about that and there's no direct line to be drawn between the two
― flopson, Monday, December 10, 2018 12:21 AM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm not saying that, but definitely for its advocates poptimism was a more cosmopolitan attitude and it was supposed to shake off the scleroticism of how people had been thinking about music and culture. so it targeted a certain set of critical prejudices.

it just seems like it's a concept that makes sense within a particular dialectic and outside of that things get messy

― Trϵϵship, Monday, December 10, 2018 12:33 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'll read some of those tom ewing columns. i have enjoyed his writing in the past but it's been a while since i read his work.

― Trϵϵship, Monday, December 10, 2018 12:35 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I agree with flopson.

The other important thing to note about woketivism is that in a lot of poptimism vs rockism debates it's arguably more on the side of rockism than poptimism.

Although of course there's also non-woke current music writing which is basically just celebrity gossip or stanning.

But the important thing about all three trends is that, for the most part, they signify at least in part a focus on the "real" personality of the pop star, whereas a certain throughline of poptimist criticism was that, to the extent personality mattered, it was largely imagined personality as signified by records and music videos.

Like, if you wanted to find the very opposite of current trends (and which also sheds some interesting light on what's changed in the last 18 years) it would be this earlier and quite-difficult-to-track-down Ewing piece on Jessica Simpson:

https://web.archive.org/web/20010411132451/http://www.netcomuk.co.uk:80/~tewing/jessica.html

― Tim F, Monday, December 10, 2018 12:51 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The other important thing to note about woketivism is that in a lot of poptimism vs rockism debates it's arguably more on the side of rockism than poptimism.

i think that's what this thread by Whiney was about thread to track Poptimism 2.0

― flopson, Monday, December 10, 2018 1:05 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that whiney thread is the only time i've seen someone seriously argue in favour of the strawman poptimism of "poptimism should mean liking things because they're popular" everyone was complaining about earlier

― ufo, Monday, December 10, 2018 1:11 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

xpost yep totally.

― Tim F, Monday, December 10, 2018 1:12 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also I would like to point out that I was OTM in that thread.

― Tim F, Monday, December 10, 2018 1:55 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Another "founding text" for me:

https://web.archive.org/web/20010419013349/http://www.netcomuk.co.uk:80/~tewing/realfake.html

― Tim F, Monday, December 10, 2018 2:06 AM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink