What's the future of the music industry?

I'm endlessly fascinated by bog butter.

i bet you are

Did ppl complain about "careerism" in rock even in the pre-punk era, or did that ethos only start around then?

Like were there bands on ESP-Disk sniffing about the Velvet Underground – "Wonder how they got on Verve, with Warhol as their 'manager'... must be nice"

oh in jazz that was def. a thing

There were artists who weren't on ESP-Disk who thought some of the ESP artists had a whiff (or more) of careerism about them.

I prefer logstandard indie btw, which takes its inspiration from Kate & Anna McGarrigle's "Log Driver's Waltz".

Didn't folk aficionados think Dylan was selling out by going electric? I do wonder about rock bands feeling that way about other rock bands, though.

I always love this story Archie Shepp told me when I interviewed him in 2014:

What was your relationship like with John Coltrane? You played on A Love Supreme, though the tracks weren’t released until later, and you were on Ascension, and you recorded his songs on Four for Trane. Was there a sense from Impulse! that you were being groomed as the next man in line?

Oh, I don’t think so. What eventually happened was rather fortuitous for me, in the sense that I had the chance to meet John Coltrane and it was he who was the intermediary for me, in connecting me with Bob Thiele and Impulse! Records. In fact, Bob was totally negative in terms of doing that recording [Four for Trane]. I had been calling him for months, trying to get him on the phone, and his secretary always told me he was either out to lunch or he was gone for the day. [laughs]

But by this time I had met John Coltrane, and John’s always been a hero to me, and was certainly very helpful in my career. I spoke to him personally and told him that I’d been trying to reach Bob, and I never could get him, and so he told me – the way he would answer was, he wouldn’t say he’d do it, he said, “I’ll see what I can do.” And the next day, after months of calling Bob Thiele, I called him again, and his secretary Lillian, whom I got to know rather well after some time, she said, “Well, Bob’s out to lunch, but he’ll be back in an hour.” [laughs]

there is nothing wrong with the bogstandard. the bog has a very reasonable standard and we of the bog strive to uphold it proudly. haven't heard wet leg but wanted to say a word on behalf of the bog

― J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi)

if someone's coming out of the bog with a wet leg i don't want to use the bog after them

Unless you've just changed your togs in the bog. Then it would make sense that you might have a wet leg.

Didn't folk aficionados think Dylan was selling out by going electric? I do wonder about rock bands feeling that way about other rock bands, though.

― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r)

lol, i just recently wrote an essay saying bob dylan sold out by going electric

https://www.alanauch.org/wtob/2022/07/26/being-there/

yes, i know the stuff i say there is _very very debatable_ and if you try to debate me on it, i'll just agree with you, fair warning haha

Adopting a pop-centred framework for looking at all music doesn't strike me as particularly beneficial, empowering, or enlightening.

well, when you put it that way

I actually interpreted that statement from imago as calling into question this pop-centric thing where non-pop "doesn't count" because it's invisible, it only exists to be appropriated by pop or "underground" pop. I can't be sure what he actually had in mind (and his follow up post isn't all that illuminating). But making pop music seems fundamentally impossible, at this point- and I suspect he's trying to address that.

What would a "pop-centred framework" even look like? The only thing i can think of is the spectacle of money and the kind of scaffolding it creates.

And then there's this other thing, where OG "poptimism" has given way to an attitude that we all have to disown our quirky roots and show what good, unpretentious consumers we can be. Fuck that.

I'm not at all sure what poptimism meant 20 years ago. Wasn't it at least partly a recognition that futurist ideals prevalent in "underground rock" were better realized through the mainstream pop of the time?

I thought it was just the idea that the Rolling Stone style canon of serious rock music (mostly white and male) v. non-serious pop/dance music (often POC and female) needed to be upended and replaced with a canon that valued all music (including and especially pop music) with the same serious critical approach.

wasn't it also challenging the criteria *of* that critical approach? like pointing out that the things rockism centered and cared about were just one possible way of looking at music? in that light i can understand the "treat all music as pop" gesture as a kind of deliberate reversal, meant to highlight the way rockism discourse treats pop music as bad because it fails rockist criteria etc etc

to be clear though I wasn't there and got this secondhand from later ILX, Singles Jukebox and freakytrigger posts.

What would a "pop-centred framework" even look like?

Off the top of my head, I would think it would privilege: the recorded medium, consumer formats and passive listening; individual tracks over larger works; song-based structures, studio production; beats, hooks, and immediacy - the earworm. It could certainly also have to do with spectacle and mass appeal but I don't think that's what was meant in a context where it is applied to all (or most) music.

I'll let imago explain what he exactly had in mind, though.

And tbc this isn't about imago - I do think a lot of newer music in a lot of genres, and a lot of music discourse, does seem like it privileges those things these days (you could add loop-based structures) and I do find it limiting.

Rolling Stone style canon of serious rock music (mostly white and male) v. non-serious pop/dance music (often POC and female) needed to be upended and replaced with a canon that valued all music (including and especially pop music) with the same serious critical approach.

wasn't it also challenging the criteria *of* that critical approach? like pointing out that the things rockism centered and cared about were just one possible way of looking at music?

I know, but I mean 20 years ago. The UK weekly music press had been divided along these lines since... at least the early 1980's? They had this out every issue p much, but were united in futurism. Like, it seems important that Ewing/FT is coming from that background and not America/RS?

passive listening; individual tracks over larger works; song-based structures, studio production; beats, hooks, and immediacy - the earworm.

oh ok- it occurred to me that maybe this is what you meant, but I did not get that from what imago wrote at all , I thought he was talking more about inventing some spectacle for yourself as a listener.

I do get at least some of that from what I quote below but if poptimism actually means that you close your eyes and imagine a 1975 Alice Cooper-style stage show when you hear a Balinese gamelan, I am fully on board:

It only has to succeed as songs, really
Any song that one might call a banger, lol
The song is at the heart of pop
The album is a more classical format in a sense, imo
More literary, less immediate

lol, you're right, it's in there. I either missed that part or forgot about it.

if poptimism actually means that you close your eyes and imagine a 1975 Alice Cooper-style stage show when you hear a Balinese gamelan, I am fully on board

All I'm sayin :D

Bozhe moi.

But also, like, I think imago is coming from that same UK weekly-influenced futurist background e.g. he thinks Wet Leg suck because they lack formal innovation.

(i think Wet Leg suck too ftr)

I also was thinking 20 years ago, or I guess like 17 years. What came through most clearly to my own brain/memory is the critique of rockism and a sense of exhaustion with its pretenses and its gatekeeping preoccupation with things like 'originality,' 'authenticity,' 'writes their own songs,' 'plays their own instruments,' 'deep' 'important' 'serious, the idea of an artist evolving and progressing over their career to become deeper and more important and more serious,.... etc. The way these things overlap with the social construction of masculinity, and the tendency of rock to be coded masculine and pop to be coded feminine dovetails with the idea of reclaiming and championing a huge range of listening and music-loving experiences that the rockist canon didn't take as seriously.

But I'm definitely not an expert, nor am I saying this in order to take a stand one way or the other on Wet Leg or this article... just following the tangent of 'what was/is poptimism,' and perhaps hoping to be corrected if I've had this wrong in my head all this time!

I was thinking a couple of hours ago that it might be a useful distinction if we thought of the assembly of pop acts as like casting a musical...somebody writes (substitute "creates" given how modern pop is as dependent on sounds as much as if not more than traditional melody/harmony/rhythm) the songs, and now it's time to find people to perform them. I loathe musicals, but that doesn't mean they're not a legit art form.

Now that Wet Leg have showed up on Barack Obama's summer playlist we can all stop talking about them, btw.

xp I guess you could frame it that way if you want to give all the agency to the songwriters, and none to the performers/artists

But also, like, I think imago is coming from that same UK weekly-influenced futurist background e.g. he thinks Wet Leg suck because they lack formal innovation.

― The 25 Best Songs Ever Ranked In Order (Deflatormouse), Tuesday, 26 July 2022 18:40 (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Nah. Before I embraced poptimism this is what I used to say. But now I say that their lack of formal innovation merely makes them not to my taste (or at least, not likely to be to my taste, given how I do occasionally root for basic stuff done well if it has that nebulous 'something about it').

What makes them suck is the hype, the coverage, the adulation. That is all that ever makes music suck. And the more that people go crazy about something, the higher a bar it has to clear to not suck. Why do you think I was laying into Bad Bunny earlier? It's harmless reggaeton in isolation. Wet Leg are perfectly serviceable indie - that one song (Angelica?) is kinda good even. But in both cases they're playing a formula that I don't think is particularly interesting, and people are going nuts for them. So, to me, they suck. It can only ever be subjective and I can only ever argue the case as I see it. I don't discount that others like these acts. But I'm allowed to not like them, and although it increasingly seems that ILM disapproves of such conduct, I'm allowed to say I don't like them.

Whatever is not expressly forbidden is allowed.

Blasting Wet Leg right now.

Off the top of my head, I would think it would privilege: the recorded medium, consumer formats and passive listening; individual tracks over larger works; song-based structures, studio production; beats, hooks, and immediacy - the earworm. It could certainly also have to do with spectacle and mass appeal but I don't think that's what was meant in a context where it is applied to all (or most) music.

― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Tuesday, 26 July 2022 17:49 (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This doesn't quite describe the sort of pop-centred framework I'm talking about.

Recorded format: yes. Passive listening? No way. Passive listening doesn't make you a poptimist, it makes you a regular human. All music nerds need to listen actively and well. At least, when they're being nerds. Individual tracks? Yeah, but albums too - it's a different sort of focus, but I think it's fair to say that albums are also subject to the tenets of responsible pop listening: willingness to meet the artist at least halfway, openness to yield to sensation while temporarily suspending judgement (beyond: 'this bangs!'), and above all never dismissing something out of hand because of what it is (yes, widespread adulation makes the bar much higher for me, but pop artists I regard as truly great will clear it effortlessly - the key is to not dismiss in advance NO MATTER WHAT IT IS) (certain exceptions apply in the case of evildoers). It doesn't have so much to do with hooks or immediacy. I've listened to the new Imperial Triumphant - avant jazz-metal - today. Not so much in the way of immediacy there (there is some!) but I wouldn't say the experience was fundamentally different to listening to a, say, Dawn Richard album and noting the profusion of bangers and general enjoyment

w/r/t bad bunny, there's no such thing as consuming an artist that big "in isolation," and idk what gives you (or any one single listener) the right to say what kind of music should be that popular instead

I mean, if you just want to advocate for open-mindedness, I'm not going to oppose that, although after a point I might question why you're naming it after one kind of music (and why you would still privilege recorded music in this case).xp

I'm not saying it shouldn't be that popular! Let people like what they like. I'll probably call them basics tho

I name it after pop because most of the music I like comes from the popular music tradition, or is hitched to it by dint of being a recorded product

part of being a responsible pop listener is knowing where the boundaries of your expertise begin and end. that's why people got annoyed with you in the bad bunny thread.

But I'm allowed to not like them, and although it increasingly seems that ILM disapproves of such conduct

I think it’s the calling other posters “basics” that rubs the wrong way

(I also doubt you’ve listened to the album? You only seem to know the singles, like a true basic)

I think it’s the calling other posters “basics” that rubs the wrong way

Surely not

Formal innovation, ewwww, go listen to some prog

Yes. Will do.

Blasting Wet Leg right now

TMI

(I also doubt you’ve listened to the album? You only seem to know the singles, like a true basic)

― slide into my KMFDMs (morrisp)

I'd cop to being pretty basic.

My very first unsophisticated thought re: Wet Leg is there's a haughtiness about them that rubs me the wrong way, in particular because they're not quite canny enough to pull it off ("I went to school and I got the big D" = red card). That aloofness and detachment is also what gives them their power, though, which is I guess the part that ties into the article that ppl in this thread were talking about & that i still haven't read. You're not going to get anywhere by working hard and touring, there's a big corporate machine controlling everything that everyone is desperate to become absorbed by, and that has to be bought and paid for. Wet Leg aren't showing you any desperation, they give the impression of 'oh, whatever, sure, we'll just go along with this, it seems easy enough.'

I can't *quite* wrap my head around 'the thing that makes music bad is other people liking it, now that i'm a poptimist,' i must be misreading that.

Not being sarcastic as i seem to always misread everything

Well there’s a ton of music that lots of people like that doesn’t end up winning ILM polls

one obvious post-punk precursor is the Flying Lizards, fwiw,

KABOOM! This had been bugging me since i first heard them but i couldn't place it and is absolutely spot on. it seems so obvious in hindsight.

Yes. Whenever someone says "Flying Lizards" I think "monkey banana kitchen" but unfortunately that is pretty seldom what they mean, usually it's "Money" which is obv the case in this case