Rolling Teenpop 2007 Thread

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Reason Number 6,500 that I wish people would stop using the word "rockist": the idea of being daring and different and going too far saturates popular culture of the last 100 years and preceded rock onto the planet. Also, I don't get the linkage between classicist and rockist (or is "classicist" shorthand for "going too far" and "being daring and different and innovative" etc.?).

― Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 19:14 (nineteen years ago)

Lex, the references in "Girlfriend" have been cited on this thread (Toni Basil's "Hey Mickey," Rubinoos' "Boyfriend," Ramones' "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend," Rolling Stones' "Get Off Of My Cloud"), but I think you're asking more about the sound: I wouldn't say it's referential but I do think it's similar to and owes a lot to the toonful-oonful wing of early '70s glam rock: Sweet, Slade, Gary Glitter, Suzi Quatro, the Runaways, maybe some neo-glam from several years after that by Joan Jett and Girlschool. Maybe some Bay City Rollers, though I never paid them much attention so don't remember what they sounded like. And I think most of that was too cloddy and clompy as well (exception being Slade, who came on cloddy and clompy but actually had their rhythm down), though I like the best of glam way more than I like "Girlfriend." And the melodic source of toonful-oonful glam was the real poppy rock 'n' roll of the early '60s, such as Little Eva's "Locomotion" and the Angels' "My Boyfriend's Back" and Little Peggy March's "I Will Follow Him" and Lesley Gore's "Maybe I Know" and the Crystals' "Da Doo Ron Ron" and the Shangri-Las' "Give Him A Great Big Kiss" and the Marvelettes' "Please Mr. Postman" and thousands more. I'm listing all those because that era of bubblegum rock 'n' roll absolutely crushes any subsequent bubblegum that rock has ever given us, including the late '60s Archies and Ohio Express era that got called bubblegum (a lot of which was pretty good but made itself worse by reducing itself to being "fun" rather than just being fun in the context of being passionately committed pop songs). There is some disco and postdisco and Europop bubblegum that can occasionally compete with the early '60s, but this souped-up pop rock can't. (Unless you want to count "Since U Been Gone," which I think is something else, and even there I'm feeling something forced in comparison to easy and free-sounding stuff like Bob B. Soxx And The Blue Jeans' "Not Too Young to Get Married" (which was heavily produced and I'm sure highly calculated but which lived and breathed more naturally in its world).)

― Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 20:14 (nineteen years ago)

Gwen only dreams of writing something as good as Konichiwa Bitches.

― Matt Armstrong, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 20:36 (nineteen years ago)

OK Tim I see your linking "rockism" more to "legitimation" than to "classicism." Still, I don't see what anyone gains by calling the impulse towards legitimation "rockism." "Impulse towards legitimation" is a perfectly good phrase in itself, and the impulse is hardly limited to rock fans, nor is it avoided by pop fans. Also, it seems to me that rock and other forms of popular culture are remarkably good at not achieving consensus at what counts as legitimate, not to mention distrusting legitimacy and making the word "legitimate" something of an insult.

― Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 21:21 (nineteen years ago)

"Also, it seems to me that rock and other forms of popular culture are remarkably good at not achieving consensus at what counts as legitimate, not to mention distrusting legitimacy and making the word "legitimate" something of an insult."

Ha ha that's almost why I would normally use the word rockism instead - the legitimacy which is being grasped most likely vanishes as soon as it is perceived as such.

Although in this particular instance I believe I could as easily (perhaps more easily) use "PBSification" and hopefully not do too much violence to the concept.

I guess it may not be obvious that for me and at this stage, the notion of "rockism" having anything to do with rock music per se, except in a historically contingent sense, is pretty much null and void. Although I think Lex might disagree.

― Tim F, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 21:30 (nineteen years ago)

"a probing and restless brainiac like Ashlee"

i have this stomach-churning sensation that this isnt sarcasm

― deeznuts, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 21:35 (nineteen years ago)

But why use the word "rockism" at all? Or another way of putting the same question, how is it that you think I'm not a rockist (assuming that you do think I'm not a rockist) if we're using "the legitimacy which is being grasped most likely vanishes as soon as it is perceived as such" as a token of rockism? Or, if that's rockism, why is rockism a bad thing? (By the way, I didn't emphasize this as much as I should have 20 years ago when I came up with the "PBS" metaphor, but I think that a little bit of PBS is better than no PBS. Also, I think the PBS metaphor needed more thought than I gave it at the time. But it's a lot better than "rockism.")

― Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 21:48 (nineteen years ago)

Frank I was about to come back and qualify that rockism isn't necessarily bad - Ashlee's probing and restless braniacity is also to some extent her "rockism", although there's perhaps a separate "rockism" at work in the way in which that is recognised by almost no rock critics.

It is a silly term though, and I've probably written more about what I think it means that just about anyone on ILX (It's a great term to debate though, because of the issues it attempts (and fails) to grasp and pull together - or at least this is what I say in order to justify the fact that I've probably written more about etc. etc.) - if I'm talking about bad rock criticism I'll usually just term it as such, and the big r-word usually only gets trotted out as a bit of a joke - e.g. '"Cool" is the least rockist song ever".

― Tim F, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 22:11 (nineteen years ago)

Debates over PBS'ification and Rockism are exactly why I tune into Teenpop 2007 Thread, even though Teenpop is hardly my chosen favorite genre.

Anyway, Rockism always struck me as an idealogical argument, as opposed to a critical argument (if the two could be seperated). Which is to say, you could probably make a fair argument about anything being rockist or not being rockist - and that argument will probably tell you very little about the piece of art itself. When this guy says the influence of "Get Off Of My Cloud" is: "The latter, no doubt, included because a) it provides evidence of her historical depth, so to speak; b) it attracts that all important over 40—50? 60?—demographic; and c) it provides a handy readymade hook." He's making an argument about the legitimacy of the influence, but until point 'c' he's making absolutely no argument about the function of the influence - or the meaning of the influence - or even how the influence operates for real. ('b' pretends to be about how the influence operates, but it's either tongue-in-cheek or inaccurate. By comparison, my mother loves Avril and loves The Rolling Stones and dislikes 'Girlfriend.') Even point 'c' is a superficial argument - why does she need that readymade hook? Certainly Dr. Luke could've written a new hook. So it's an idealogical argument being made (about who has the rights to the music, and to the influence of music) and not a critical one (why this is happening now).

― Mordechai Shinefield, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 22:20 (nineteen years ago)

I noticed I didn't say I was talking about "Girlfriend" until later in the paragraph. In case of confusion - sorry.

― Mordechai Shinefield, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 22:21 (nineteen years ago)

deeznuts, why would it be sarcasm?

― Mordechai Shinefield, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 22:26 (nineteen years ago)

Mordy, why call the ideological argument "rockism," as opposed to "guy being bigoted and lazy"? The argument seems to be "When Avril does it, it's commerce; when we do it, it's art" (or "When we do it, it's punk," etc.), which is an argument that people have employed for centuries, even though it's never been any good. The thing is, I doubt that the guy employs - or could employ - that argument with any consistency. The argument is entirely ad hoc, and doesn't add up to an ideology.

― Frank Kogan, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 22:36 (nineteen years ago)

T-Shirt Slogan: "Pop is the moment prior to legitimation"

Which is not to say that all pop music is illegitimate, or that pop music is necessarily better when it is less legitimate, or that when we legitimise something it ceases to be pop.

― Tim F, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 23:25 (nineteen years ago)

To put it another way: pop stages a suspension of legitimation which is, in a certain sense, violent, but, also, self-legitimising. It is impossible to speak of this violence without becoming complicit in its legitimation (but also: law-making, which is more interesting than simple legitimation-by-application-of-law).

Anti-pop critique (if we can call it that) consists of the denial that this suspension ever occurred, a denial that the chain of legitimation needs to be extended or worked upon. This is why a lot of the tautological dismissals of a given pop artefact often read like: "We have always already known precisely what this was."

― Tim F, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 23:52 (nineteen years ago)

pop stages a suspension of legitimation which is, in a certain sense, violent, but, also, self-legitimising.

Not necessarily...if you're defining it like this, any kind of music could function as "pop" -- rock can precede "legitimized rock" (which also raises the question "legitimized by whom," since "pop" is different if we're talking about Popjustice's or Paste's audience) while being self-legitimizing, if I understand you correctly. So Lester bangs can write about Count Five and the Troggs in a way that are "self-legitimizing" where Bangs = self, and then legitimized in the people subsequently influenced by 'em (and their audience). (Unless I'm misreading you, which I very well might be.)

― dabug, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 00:02 (nineteen years ago)

Part of that didn't make sense...what I mean is Bangs talking about the Troggs suggests they're a "self-legitimizing" band, i.e. they're legitimate 'cuz I think they're legitimate. And then the followers become Legitimate (and so do the Troggs).

― dabug, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 00:05 (nineteen years ago)

Speaking as “the guy” Mordecai refers to, I want to mention that all three comments I make about “Cloud” are, to a certain extent, tongue in cheek. a) I say “so to speak” because history is essentially a non-issue when discussing pop music; pop, at least the last 40 years of it, is, for better or worse, an overwhelming and inescapable present. b) This is most definitely tongue in cheek, but to suggest that these sorts of considerations don't apply in pop music is either naive or placing Lavigne on too high of a pedestal. c) this is not an idealogical argument; I have nothing against Lavigne stealing the hook, and she has no less of a legitimate claim to it than the Stones (who may well have lifted it from another source I don't know about). My main point was that some people might actually infer that Lavigne's music had greater legitimacy because she lifted from the Stones and not some more recent, pop-identified, source. To me, stealing from the Stones, or anyone else, is meaningless, but I suspected that it might mean something to others. So, if anything, I was being pre-emptive (or critically paranoid). And for those who don't follow the link (and thanks for that, Mordecai—just like publicity, there are no bad links), I do criticize the music on its own terms, which I find great at first, but too busy and muddled by the end.

Frank: Lazy sometimes, yes, but never bigoted.

Tim: I think that should go “Pop is the moment before assimilation”. All art is legitimate, no matter where it is in the cultural stream.

― AKA Mr. Jaq, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 00:38 (nineteen years ago)

because she lifted from the Stones and not some more recent, pop-identified, source

C'mon, now, at least glance at what we said upthread that links Avril's new one to about a bajillion sources from all over the past 40 years of pop history from the Stones to Skye Sweetnam (and beyond both those ref points).

― dabug, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 01:29 (nineteen years ago)

I wasn't suggesting it was the only lift in the song (I mention a couple of others in the review). But I'm an old guy (part of that 40+ demographic), and that was the hook that really jumped out at me.

― AKA Mr. Jaq, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 01:47 (nineteen years ago)

Actually, now that I'm reading what you wrote (er, sorry), I'm interested to know whether or not people think that "Girlfriend" somehow legitimizes Avril. The dumbo blog Idolator linked to when they linked "Girlfriend" to Kay Hanley-fronted Josie and the Pussycats said:

The new album is heavy on the addictive rockers and rather light on the treacly ballads that marred her past efforts critically, but can probably be attributed with her phenomenal sales record. So the biggest difference is that she's produced an album that has nine guilty pleasures for the Stereogum crowd instead of the usual single and a half that made their way on to previous albums.

Aside from this being generally idiotic, it's suggesting from a sort of outsider position that the new sound/single is about perceived legitmacy to an audience she doesn't usually connect with. It sorta relates to what Tim said about Hilary and Mandy essentially doing the same thing in the inverse way (and I'd argue Avril's also doing the same thing in a different way)...making a blatant legit status-move. This also (sort of) explains why Avril is so insistent and overbearing with FUN. Just as Hilary is insistent and goofy about CLASS, both are trying something that doesn't quite fit them...but for what or whom, exactly? Legitimacy? Dignity? Fun?

― dabug, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 02:05 (nineteen years ago)

Do I dare bring up as hackneyed a term as "empowerment" (FUN being as empowering as CLASS)? Age probably has something to do with it, too, and the desire to break out of what's perceived as a manufactured teenpop mold. The obvious model is Kelly Clarkson, who moved from the epitome of manufactured pop to something far more personal (even though I think her records are overdone) in record time. In some ways, I bet Avril is kicking herself for giving Clarkson "Breakaway". But "Since You Been Gone" is the stronger model, a total break from how Clarkson was perceived, and far more inspiring, if only because it seems more real, than the simplistic "Breakaway".

― AKA Mr. Jaq, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 02:30 (nineteen years ago)

why wouldnt it, mordechai??

i have many teenpop friends but i dont feel the need or see the reason to refer to them as 'braniacs' to legitimize the relationship.

btw im only using the word 'legitimize' because im under the impression using some form of it is a requirement for any post on this thread.

― deeznuts, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 03:28 (nineteen years ago)

Because Frank didn't use it in a way that suggested sarcasm or irony. He's describing Simpson as a braniac in-good-faith that he believes that to be true. If you're willing to concede that some musicians deserve being called braniacs (maybe you don't - maybe you think that adjective should never be applied to any artist), why not Simpson?

― Mordechai Shinefield, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 04:11 (nineteen years ago)

there are some artists (& extraordinaly few musicians) i would describe as 'braniacs', but these are very rare. and if i went into why not i would feel like a complete tool, to be honest. so lets start with the simpler & unanswered 'WHY?' & bounce off of that.

legitimitely.

― deeznuts, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 04:25 (nineteen years ago)

You're asking why Frank considers Simpson a braniac. I can't answer why she is one, but I can offer some possibilities why he believes that. First, start with his post here: March 19, 2007 1:49 PM. And then go to the 2006 Teenpop thread, and *Find* all the comments on Simpson, particularly the lyrical analysis that happened around 2/3rds through the year. The question about why Frank likes Ashley has become cliched in-of-itself, so some research is in order before reviving it. And finally, if you're looking for insight, here's a quote from Frank's myspace, which I imagine you could've turned up with some research (also, one of my favorite things I've read of Frank's): "Here is something I wrote to John Wójtowicz several months ago, while working on my Marit Larsen review. Obviously, I'm identifying hard with teenpop in that just as I don't see a path for them into the future, I don't see a path for myself either - which isn't to say that there's no future for me, or for them, but my path isn't given, my way isn't clear, so we're going to have to invent one."

And - uh - sorry, Frank, if posting this is stepping on any toes. Just figure I've been following this conversation long enough to step in.

― Mordechai Shinefield, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 04:32 (nineteen years ago)

i appreciate it mordecai & ill try to look into at least some of that stuff, im not trying to beat a dead horse, im far from a regular here. i just think sincerely calling people like ashlee simpson 'braniacs' is hyperbolic enough to undermine whatever credibility uh i mean legitimacy youre trying to establish for your argument.

― deeznuts, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 04:53 (nineteen years ago)

Sorry deeznuts I'm gonna use that word again.

'Tim: I think that should go “Pop is the moment before assimilation”. All art is legitimate, no matter where it is in the cultural stream."

I dunno, "all art is legitimate" sounds like a position rather than something which is an a priori objective given - in fact "all art is legitimate" is in itself a legitimising statement. It also assumes that we all agree on what "art" is, and that it automatically applies to (subsumes, even) pop - "all art is legitimate" in this context is in itself an assimilation of pop to art.

But what I'm interested in is not the formal (empty) legitimacy implied by "all art is legitimate", but substantive social legitimacy, and the process of adjudication which considers pop (or whatever) to be worthy of the formal legitimacy you have granted it. Legitimisation is always performed, even if the conclusion is foregone.

"Not necessarily...if you're defining it like this, any kind of music could function as "pop" -- rock can precede "legitimized rock" ........
.........(Unless I'm misreading you, which I very well might be.)"

No I think this is right, I'm using pop more as a kind of regulative ideal than as a genre per se, albeit one which can be stood in for by real life pop-content at particular moments.

― Tim F, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 05:52 (nineteen years ago)

Tim, it seems to me what you're doing is taking the social word "legitimate" which you may or may not agree with, and asking when "society" starts to apply this meaningful/meaningless word to a particular genre/artist/song. Which seems like an empty question to me - because if you're asking: when does a genre/artist/song become socially legitimate. But you aren't giving the conditions of legitimacy. (Unless you gave a definition earlier and I missed it? Or are we just using the PBS definition?)

― Mordechai Shinefield, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 05:58 (nineteen years ago)

I don't think there are "conditions of legitimacy" in some coherent, definitionally contained sense, else "rockism" would be much easier to talk about.

Frank's point upthread:

"Also, it seems to me that rock and other forms of popular culture are remarkably good at not achieving consensus at what counts as legitimate, not to mention distrusting legitimacy and making the word "legitimate" something of an insult."

― Tim F, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 06:04 (nineteen years ago)

I mean, a genre/artist/song will generally become socially legitimate straightaway for the person who likes it and is willing to go into bat for it (we might have to detour here to work out where we stand on the "guilty pleasure" - "I like this but I don't think it's legitimate").

I guess what I'm referring to therefore is more of a phenomenological experience of legitimacy, which is to say, when we immediately perceive a given piece of music, do we perceive it as legitimate or not, and why/why not? Are we doing so in in accordance with a pre-established rule or do we have to come up with a new rule of legitimation to explain what the music has done? (which is why AKA Mr. Jaq's suggestion of "assimilation" is pertinent)

― Tim F, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 06:12 (nineteen years ago)

Are we doing so in in accordance with a pre-established rule or do we have to come up with a new rule of legitimation to explain what the music has done?

Assuming it's the second thing - that we make up the rules as we go along - doesn't that place us in a tricky spot? After all, we're redefining an otherwise meaningless word just so we can use it. (ie: Avril Lavigne is legitimate because she... has intelligent things to say about young male-female relationships. So that's what legitimate means. But when I'm talking about Frank Sinatra, it means something completely different. So we're playing language games just so we can keep the word around.) So even if you say it's the second thing, you still need to explain why we want that word so badly. I imagine it's because even with the second thing (redefining), we still leave "legitimacy" will a primary definition. Something like: Because Avril has these important comments that also means that it is valuable and productive to listen to her. Or, because the Clash has passionate political points that also means it is valuable and productive to listen to them. Essentially, it needs to point back to your first option - some essential rule by which we're designing the other rules.

― Mordechai Shinefield, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 06:24 (nineteen years ago)

we still leave "legitmacy" with* a primary definition. ie: it's still a loaded word.

― Mordechai Shinefield, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 06:25 (nineteen years ago)

I guess what I'm referring to therefore is more of a phenomenological experience of legitimacy,

Also, I'm not quite sure what this means. I've never had an experience of legitimacy when confronted by a piece of art. I've never heard anything completely out of context and thought: Wow! Legitimate! I've thought, wow, beautiful! So maybe that's why I'm having trouble relating to the word as something phenomenological. Re: Heidegger, can one be legitimate? Which is to say, can one act in a way in which they're being legitimate? And if they can, is that related to being 'authentic'?

― Mordechai Shinefield, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 06:31 (nineteen years ago)

x-post - Yes exactly - I should have noted that I don't really believe the opposition "apply old rule"/"make new rule" works in this case - it's more like a chain of articulations in which every rule is an interpretation of prior ones.

In a lot of ways "legitimacy" (which may not be the word used, but other words will stand in for it - "real" for example) is loaded because it has to do all the heavy lifting thought-wise (e.g. the strawman listener who dismisses Ashlee because she's not a 'real' rocker and then goes no further - emphasis here intended to point to what I think is really problematic about this position).

So for me perhaps good criticism, and criticism which is conducive to pop music (pop in the regulative ideal sense), is about trying to shoulder as much of the load as possible, to do the heavy thinking that would otherwise be achieved simply by standing on the shoulders of prior articulations of legitimacy.

― Tim F, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 06:33 (nineteen years ago)

"I've never had an experience of legitimacy when confronted by a piece of art."

What about an experience of il-legitimacy though? I'm thinking (again resorting to strawmen) of the parent who claims that their kid is just listening to noisy trash, or repetitive beats over and over. You're right that we normally don't register every piece of music or art or etc. as "legitimate", any more than we think "hey, i'm acting in accordance with the law" when we follow traffic rules. It's more where this legitimacy is called into question that we suddenly experience it, if only obliquely.

― Tim F, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 06:36 (nineteen years ago)

Ok, let's say you're listening to MC Hammer in 1990. And you think: This seems off. So you're having some experience of his illegitimacy. Maybe you think: this guy looks ridiculous and he's doing something that seems imitative of what we consider legitimate hip-hop. So that's one kind of illegitimacy. Then you find out that he's a phony - he lied about his background and said it was poor when really he's from a wealthy family. Now he has a different kind of illegitimacy. A legitimate artist wouldn't lie about his background (maybe), so he's illegitimate in terms of that legitimacy too.

So considering this, are you saying both illegitimacies are linked? That you have the same (oblique) phenomenological reaction to either? Or are they so different (one is not staying true to a genre convention, the other is falsely representing yourself) that legitimacy is just a handy word to describe a lot of basically unrelated things?

― Mordechai Shinefield, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 06:42 (nineteen years ago)

Hmph. That was supposed to read Vanilla Ice.

― Mordechai Shinefield, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 06:43 (nineteen years ago)

It seems to me the whole idea of "legitimacy" is inseparable from the persona of the performer and thus, from my perspective, an entirely irrelevant subject in terms of the value of the music.

Following the Vanilla Ice example, Ice Ice Baby is simply a decent to good hip hop song that happened to become a smash hit. It's a fun, hooky rap song. There's nothing illegitimate about that.

Is Dean Martin singing a country song about a long lonely walk back to Houston "illegitimate?" How many times did Dean even GO to Houston?

What matters is if the song is good. If it's bad, that doesn't make it illegitimate. It means it's not well-written or well-performed.

― Matt Armstrong, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 06:57 (nineteen years ago)

I also can't help but mention Jared Leto's great quote about his atrocious band:

"Like our music or not, people can't deny our legitimacy."

― Matt Armstrong, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 06:59 (nineteen years ago)

x-post to Mordechai: I think they're linked insofar as that you're going through a simialr process of adjudicating the worth of the music against a particular standard and according to particular aspects which you consider to be important - those aspects or standards may of themselves be unrelated, but, assuming you have "an opinion" on an artist (rather than a range of different thoughts with no conclusion or summation) you're linking them.

So, what i was getting at in terms of invoking phenomenology is how this process of adjudication works at an individual level - and of course it might work differently depending on the artist, the song, the aspect you focus on, the people you're with, the bar you're at...

Matt - I think that's often true, and especially in pop, but I don't think legitimacy is solely or necessarily persona. Take electronic artists and the way in which (for example) The Field's legitimacy is impliedly linked to his relationship(s) with trance, french house, IDM...

― Tim F, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 07:01 (nineteen years ago)

HOKU HOKU HOKU

Sorry, had to get this in here, Hoku just launched her NEW CAREER this past weekend, the same weekend her father passed away (she wrote a nice post about her father today). So power to her for deciding to go forward with it anyway as scheduled.

And...hey whattaya know, sophistication. "If You Don't Want My Love" has a loungey piano hook and a kind of elevator-R&B lazy syncopation. This isn't quite right but can't think of any other way to describe it...I guess what I'm saying is she sounds closer to being on the soundtrack of a Hugh Grant romantic comedy than she did before.

― dabug, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 13:09 (nineteen years ago)

Huh, Hoku's got in her Top 8 friends the Archies version of Blink-182, called Hey Ladiez Band. "MySpace Girl": "OMG I found you surfing the web this afternoon..."

― dabug, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 13:12 (nineteen years ago)

Dave, I don't have time for a search: do you happen to know if Antonina Armato and Tim James are involved in the new Hoku? (They'd produced her in the old days, now work a lot with Aly & A.J. and a little with Vanessa Hudgens.)

― Frank Kogan, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:32 (nineteen years ago)

No, she's working with someone else (can't remember who offhand, googled it once, but can't look it up at the moment.)

― dabug, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 19:35 (nineteen years ago)

Pop is the moment prior to legitimation

I'm not getting this for some of the same reasons that Mordy isn't. Even if you narrow it to "Pop is the moment prior to middle-class middlebrow 'art' and 'punk' and 'social-do-good' legitimation," that doesn't work, since middle-class middlebrow legitimation is part of pop. Challenges to or uneasiness with such legitimation are also part of pop, which helps to keep legitimation unstable. But you simply can't say that legitimation comes from somewhere outside of pop. So, unless you're saying that "Pop is the moment prior to legitimation's becoming stable" (if that means anything), I don't understand what you're saying. And why would you say it, anyway? (And how does legitimation become stable?) Are only new artists pop?

I feel that you're talking in shorthand, and I'm not able to read the shorthand.

To paraphrase Yung Jac*, all pop is potentially legitimate, and people who think otherwise can't stay smug in their belief, because there are too many of us around to knock them down. Which means the legitimation/counterlegitimation process is there from the get-go, and there's no "experience" that's prior to it.

I'd say that "legitimate" is a judgment, not an experience. Aren't you contradicting yourself when you tell Mordy that it's "where this legitimacy is called into question that we suddenly experience it, if only obliquely"? If we're already experiencing its legitimacy ("experience" is the wrong word; we're not experiencing the traffic laws, we're assuming them; we're not experiencing the music's legitimacy, we're assuming it), then the legitimacy is already there. But you're saying that pop is the moment prior to legitimation, so you're saying that we never make such an assumption about pop. We "experience" pop as illegitimate from the get-go. That doesn't seem true. What are you calling pop?

I just don't know what "moment prior to legitimation" is. At all. What would an example of such a moment be? What, for that matter, would be an example of a moment of legitimation?

*I call him Yung Jac 'cause even if he's over 40, he's probably younger than I am.

― Frank Kogan, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 19:56 (nineteen years ago)

Jac, sorry about the "bigot" thing. That was an unjustified leap on my part. But I will say that the reason I made the leap was because you jumped in immediately talking about Avril in terms of marketing, and one thing I've noticed is that, as a class, "people like Ashlee" (in deeznuts' eloquent phrase) - and this would include Avril - are the ones whose work tends to get analyzed as marketing (rather than as, for instance, art).

Not that her music isn't being marketed - but then, I hope to successfully market the ideas that I work out in these threads; however, I don't think the most interesting thing about my ideas is that I'm trying to market them.

― Frank Kogan, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 20:09 (nineteen years ago)

Writer and Jew Abby McDonald can't get a log-in to nu-ILX at the moment, and asked me to post this:

Taking this back to Robyn - Lex, I think you're on the wrong track re: pop/extremism. Actually, I know you are. Maybe the editing muddled the meaning, but Robyn was talking about 'more' as in, songwriting. She wanted more melodies, songs that had more human emotion to them, that somehow went further than Gwen delivered. And no, she wasn't making a statement about 'human emotion = proper music/pop' etc, it was part of a conversation about her taste and influences - the songs she admired and artists she connected with. As in, her personal love of music rather than any statement about what was 'good'

Also, she wasn't 'sounding off'. In fact, she was giggling adorably :)

― Dom Passantino, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 20:10 (nineteen years ago)

But what I'm interested in is not the formal (empty) legitimacy implied by "all art is legitimate", but substantive social legitimacy, and the process of adjudication which considers pop (or whatever) to be worthy of the formal legitimacy you have granted it. Legitimisation is always performed, even if the conclusion is foregone.

I absolutely agree. In fact, I'm not sure the concept of "legitimacy" can exist outside a social framework. I don't think there is such a thing as "aesthetic legitimacy" (hundreds of posts will now inform that I'm wrong), or at least there shouldn't be. How you define "social legitimacy", though, is probably as difficult as defining art. And no, I don't believe there's a consensus about what art is. If there were, this thread, and all of ILM, wouldn't exist, and the world would be a dull, dull place. But if I'm going to make any sense at all, even if it's only to myself, I need to pretend to know what art is. Or, to put it less ironically, I need to know what I think art is (subject to change without notice, of course). If I don't do that, I'm worthless as a critic, and what I write would be even more confused than it already is.

Frank: No harm done. I tend to lean toward the "pop as package" theory, in which everything is a form of marketing. It's not necessarily meant as an insult, just what I consider a necessary perspective.

But Yung Jac! Does this mean I get to make a mixtape with Ludacris on it?

― AKA Mr. Jaq, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 20:47 (nineteen years ago)

Just listened to the Avril, btw. Not bad, but she really needs those hooks, because when they're not there the melodrama is deafening.

― AKA Mr. Jaq, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 20:50 (nineteen years ago)

Mediabase reports "Never Again" getting 1,276 Top 40 spins over about 5 days. Prorating that to seven days, that's 1,786, which would put it at about 30 in the Top 40 airplay chart. I don't know how that rates in relation to how her earlier songs started. The song is fairly weak on adult contemporary, which is still playing "Walk Away" and "Behind These Hazel Eyes" a lot more. And it's gotten only a handful of spins on "rhythmic" (hip-hop/r&b/dance) and no plays at all on the active rock or alternative stations.

The incredible journey of Pink's "U + Ur Hand" continues - now at number six in Top 40 airplay (7,159 spins) and still rising strong; Avril's "Girlfriend" at number ten and rising strong; Fergie's "Glamorous" at number four but will probably top off in the next couple of weeks; but significantly she's also up to number four on the hip-hop/r&b stations and rising stronger there; Rihanna's "Umbrella" is number 21 in Top 40 plays and rising very strong, and is at 28 in hip-hop/r&b and rising there, though not with such strength. Timberlake's "Summer Love" is taking off on Top 40 but much weaker on hip-hop/r&b. Maroon 5 "Makes Me Wonder" with a good start on Top 40, some though not a lot of action on "rhythmic," but in the top 20 on adult contemporary.

― Frank Kogan, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 21:21 (nineteen years ago)

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