pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

i mean tastes differ! there's plenty of even mainstream pop stuff that i think has been overhyped too but whatever really

p4k also still doesn't award bnm to that many big pop/r&b albums at all, even ones that are very well received generally elsewhere/by pop music nerds like on here etc. it's really not anywhere near as like aggressively pro-pop as all these reactionary idiots make it out to be but i think everyone here knows that

it does suck to see people who otherwise had seemed cool on twitter (& not even like particularly close to red scare etc. or anything) prove themselves to be total idiots about music by going all in on this shit lol though

Generally speaking, anyone who spends most of their time in the public eye talking about politics is guaranteed to have dogshit opinions about culture. Doesn't matter whether they're on the "left" or on the "right"; it's some kind of law of the universe that being an internet politics person breaks your brain and turns your taste into slurry.

xp
yeah especially since pitchfork/CN are currently trying to unionize while these podcast nihilists equate them with Raytheon or w/e. I actually wished Whiney had been right about the reading of "popular"; going full Adorno would at least be kind of amusing in 2021

I can sympathize with table's take to an extent. I had once assumed poptimism would lead to a wider embrace of global sounds. That's happened a bit (over the decades: bollywood, dancehall, kpop), but super unevenly and the essential parochial core outlook remains

For example, though, P4k didn't even *review* Azana's record from last year. That's insane to me!

just fyi, that's on you

99.8% of the planet / P4k audience has never heard that name. why would they review it? because you think it's great?

honestly, this whole discussion - here, on twitter, etc. - comes down to people believing their opinions are facts, imo

"treating all pop music as equal"

all pop music *is* equal until it hits someone's ears/brain/etc.

expecting a website to cover Charli XCX because she is clearly good and not Lorde because she is clearly bad is, like, broken from reality, man

Charli XCX is not clearly good and Lorde is not clearly bad, is what i'm saying.

i don't know why i am posting

or why i let people who act like what they believe is gospel bother me

are you responding to anyone other than imago here?

started out as table and then evolved into imago. 3 minutes later i am filled w/ regret

well, eight minutes, i guess. time flies.

You only got eight minutes to save the world!

lol no worries, I usually regret posting on this thread too

obviously i am avoiding work. please carry on.

actually, while i've stupidly raised my hand, i'll suggest that maybe it's time for a "part two" P4k is dumb thread. this one is unwieldy.

i think you guys are giving this more 'naif' than it deserves. its a big talking pt on leftist podcast irony twitter that music writers are overhyping pop music or whatever. these are ppl who spend all day tweeting about sopranos. this is not an original thought or empirical observation, it's cool kid social climber bullshit from ppl who orbit Red Scare.

chris they're not gonna be friends with you just bc you adopt all their positions opinions and internet debate aesthetics

I disagree deeply on their opinions about the Alamo Drafthouse and Hamilton but agree that the Sopranos is good

For example, though, P4k didn't even *review* Azana's record from last year. That's insane to me!

it would be certainly be really cool if they had but non-western stuff that isn't getting an active push in the western music press from their label or agent or whatever still seems to very much be a non-starter, but also obviously not very many writers are pitching p4k reviews of that sort of stuff either. not really much to do with poptimism one way or the other

They haven’t reviewed the new Sufjan Stevens, Animal Collective or Tune-Yards, all of which is really hilarious to anyone who lived through the Carles Age

wow yeah that's a legit sea change. Kind of odd that this week alone they reviewed Garbage and Sleater-Kinney

I did specify that that was my opinion and that all it demonstrated was that for any given listener, pop is not or should not be a monolith

imago genuinely have no idea who you're arguing with about that

I'm arguing with the person who made the initial tweet

oh i'd completely forgotten animal collective even put out a soundtrack this year

that tune-yards album was great though

no wolf alice review yet either which also seems strange

Aware we've all pointed out how fatuous the statement is by now though

has anyone considered the broad popularity of Mark Fisher in the Chapo-verse when it comes to this stuff? I remember him arguing with Tim F and Simon about this stuff on Dissensus at the time, and I kind of feel like "the [podcast] left'"s perception of these arguments is shaped a lot by him becoming this broad lodestar for this conversation. Simon was even on an episode of Red Scare talking about Mark

no, I have not considered the broad popularity of Mark Fisher in the Chapo-verse

is that before or after the Ant-Man sequel

I was also trying to locate why Lorde in particular has pushed anti-poptimist buttons, fatuous or otherwise

Simon was even on an episode of Red Scare

lol that's embarrassing for him

I mean there's kind of shit going on with conde nast

I would not necessarily draw any conclusions about Grand Musical Direction given that there are other variables

hyperbolic love of pop music & being corny about it are signs of being an earnest young person who is new to criticism, not signs of corporate strategy imo. there's some overlap there, but the objections are aesthetic pretending to be ideological, imo

hyperbolic love of pop music & being corny about it are signs of being an earnest young person who is new to criticism

Then what's ILM's excuse?

name names

Yeah, P4k’s slide to the Bieberverse is probably just a general shifting taste of young critics + now having someone to answer to wrt traffic goals + the fact that there’s like ~zero other places that do dedicated longform reviews so why tf not.

It’s not as sexy as a viral tweet or CONDE CONSPIRACY but what can you do

"Underneath the ill-advised MLK quotes, you’ll find an earnest pop album that unearths the charisma and agility that helped make Bieber a star."

If you guys are curious to dig into what I'm talking about, I genuinely think the origins of the terms of this conflict can be found in this thread. See arguments from Mark K Punk, Simon, and Tim F, Woebot, others: https://www.dissensus.com/index.php?threads/1143/

"Underneath the ill-advised MLK quotes, you’ll find an earnest pop album that unearths the charisma and agility that helped make Bieber a star."

― the mai tai quinn (voodoo chili), Tuesday, June 15, 2021 3:52 PM (eighteen seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

7.2 ... so hyperbolic

thank you for pointing me towards this review because it is hilarious

Bieber is not a powerhouse vocalist, but he is a compelling one, casually dropping in a stray yodel here, a Mariah Carey-indebted set of runs there. His voice has a palatable smoothness; he’s mastered push-and-pull dynamics, and he swings effortlessly from a placid chest voice to a zephyr of a falsetto. That litheness and control are on full display across Justice. Even when the songwriting is spiritless and the production rote—and it occasionally is, as on the confessional “Unstable” and the saccharine “Deserve You”—he still sings the hell out of it.

his voice ranges from placid to wispy, I cannot argue with this

"casually dropping in a stray yodel here" is also killing me, like does he just go full Lonely Goatherd in the middle of a slow jam

"Underneath the ill-advised MLK quotes, you’ll find an earnest pop album that unearths the charisma and agility that helped make Bieber a star."

― the mai tai quinn (voodoo chili), Tuesday, June 15, 2021 3:52 PM (eighteen seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

7.2 ... so hyperbolic

― ILX’s bad boy (D-40), Tuesday, June 15, 2021 3:52 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

oh i wasn't commenting on the rating, i just thought that quote was funny

but isn't it true the writers don't determine the actual score

kidding, kidding

hyperbolic love of pop music & being corny about it are signs of being an earnest young person who is new to criticism, not signs of corporate strategy imo. there's some overlap there, but the objections are aesthetic pretending to be ideological, imo

completely otm

Then what's ILM's excuse?

there's obviously a difference between a message board & actual published music criticism

that's right, ilm's where all the money's at

#paymentforposts

like just personally I find the conspiracy theorizing very fucking weird since I started writing for them in 2012, I had almost entirely written about pop music, and that was pre-conde

i think the other thing that rankles about the original tweet is that pure poptimist pop is really at a low ebb commercially right now... olivia rodrigo & doja cat are basically the only two breakout pop stars of the last year and a half, and pitchfork barely covers them, at least from a critical POV. what's driving authentic rock music down and off the review pages is moneybagg yo, lil durk, lil baby, rod wave, polo g etc ... not exactly rich white girls on pills. and of course, pitchfork is actually ambivalent about much of that music as well despite its immense power in the marketplace, while on a daily basis putting its critical weight behind tons of underground rap music that is more artistically pure than the above artists and which would never get any coverage elsewhere. pitchfork was the first/only critical outlet to write about i.e. capella grey "gyalis" which is a great independent song w/ a localized fan base, but of course red scare hangers on have no idea what that song is. so really what you have is culturally out of touch ppl RTing themselves to explain why they don't ideologically align w/ a culture that they don't, in reality, understand

xp -- to be fair I think what people are reacting to are year end lists which do tend to skew more pop. like someone posted a screenshot of the WAP writeup