Is this the part where Greg Kot flies the rockist flag?

"What [rock critics} basically want is for it to be like 1969 again. It 's this thing where British – or in U2's case, Irish – groups discover the roots of American music. U2 have discovered this and they're just doing pastiches [his voice rises] and it's reviewed as a serious thing because DYLAN PLAYS ORGAN on some song and B.B. King playso n some throwaway pop song "When Love Comes to Town" that could have been written by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It coudl bein Starlight Express if you ask me.

...We hate everything that they are and stand for. We hate it because it's totally stultifying, it says nothing, it is big and pompous and ugly. We hate it for exactly the same reasons Johnny Rotten said he hated dinosaur groups in 1976. To me U2 are a dinosaur group. They're saying nothing but they're pretending to be something. I think they're FAKE."

I would agree that this line of U2 crit made a lot more sense in 1989 than it does now.

where, during this period, they were selling out stadiums, incidentally

No, wait...

Anthony Is, in fact, Right. But only because he ignores Achtung Baby, Zooropa, and Tennant's painfully rockist accusation of fakery.

U2 idolaters deserve an undending stream of scorn and mockery. The band and Bono still strike me as quite self-aware and often hilarious.

Usually I read the word "U2" in a headline as "Skip To Next Story," but I was prompted by this thread to actually read the interview. Bono comoes off as far more clearheaded than Kot, whose rockism he challenges in a way that, were he not Bono, many here might support.

I wish. Cf. Madonna Studies.

It combines any number of half-baked notions, including what appears to be some professional jealousy. I still wish that it were as OTM as this group's interpretation of it is.

OTOH, "U2 sell themselves on their authenticity, but their authenticity is fake" strikes me as no less rockist than a straightforward fake=bad argument.

"Better my authentic fakery than their fake authenticity."

Or maybe it's just me.

And yeah roger, I'm not saying that that Neil Tennant quote isn't wrong-headed, but the last thing anybody wants right now is another gambol through the swamp of R-ism ;)

this thread was kind of like waving a red flag in front of a china shop full of bulls though

Wow, the power of pop criticism.

I will download it next time I'm on slsk - that mid-80s period of Depeche Mode is my favourite so there's no reason why I shouldn't like it now.

So we're to sound out what Tennant meant instead of playing with what he actually said? Such strategies are the Great Big Poppa of authenticity tropes!

As for lackign context, I think I made the context clear. Reporter Chris Heath asked them what they thought of "Rattle & Hum." Without the benefit of forming a lucid statement (as we do, sitting here in front of our compuers), Tennant came off rather well. The guy was a critic at one point, remember. As for "professional jealousy" or whatever, the Pet Shop Boys were still having hits in the UK and USA at that point in their careers - as well as a fair amount of critical acclaim - so nuts to that.

(and Anthony's right too: their U2 cover is the perfect U2 critique - and tops U2's version.)

a) a song of yours now being associated with something that you don't like or don't want it to be associated with. "I liked Lust for Life BEFORE it was on tv and regular people knew about it"

b) having the assumption that the commercial is of greater artistic value than the song

c) Hearing a great song that you immediately associate with a product

Considering the relatively short life of most ad campaigns, the number of people who will make that association is small, but I still wish I didn't associate Beach Boys tunes with car ads and Cubs radio spots, and I sure as hell don't think of "Rhapsody In Blue" as anything more than that United Airlines jingle, at least for the first split second I hear it.

It's the artist's right to do what they wish, but some of those associations are annoying...

The Nazis had their death camps to wipe out races. We've got Limp Bizcuit and Korn. :(

I admit that it's perverse, but as they say it's there in the text.

The first quoted paragraph (which is where I read some envy over U2 pandering in just the broadest possible way to the Landau Nation and being celebrated for it while serious artists like the Pet Shop Boys, who wouldn't be caught dead doing anything as obvious as making a pilgrimage to Graceland, were treated as bubblegum, no matter how many hits they had) is razor-sharp.

The second paragraph... not so much. You can't decry artifice without implititly valorizing authenticity. Though I happily concede that NT is well aware of the irony in holding up the Pet Shop Boys as champions of the authentic.

Not that it's any of your business, but Discography did indeed replace various cassette recordings at some point (I think when I got a car w/out a cassette player - I can't drive in LA without "Left To My Own Devices")