What Is Rockism ?

Anyway here’s a timely investigation

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/20/arts/music/new-pop-music.html

Few” = 50 years?

Yeah ok lol

― Οὖτις, Thursday, December 20, 2018 1:33 PM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

We’re comparing it to the scale of Europe inventing the widely adopted notion of tonality so yes this is still relatively recent

Also techno was not invented 50 years ago, lol

yeah talking out of the side of my neck a bit on that one (what's the first "techno" record? Kraftwerk? idk lol) whereas house and hip hop both have conventionally agreed-upon start dates which are closer to the 40 year mark, my bad

Anyway here’s a timely investigation

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/20/arts/music/new-pop-music.html🕸

https://variety.com/2020/music/reviews/selena-gomez-rare-album-review-1203463571/

“Rare” is one of the best pop albums to be released in recent memory, and — as it does for artists ranging from Robyn and Charli XCX to Max Martin’s more adventurous productions — it feels like that term does a discredit to this sophisticated, precisely written and expertly produced music.

lol

Perhaps they should call it something like Sophistipop

In the new movie Trolls World Tour, it is revealed that Trolls representing all different genres (and sub-genres) of music used to live in harmony, but are now separated. Queen Barb of the Hard Rock Trolls (Ozzy plays their senile king) sets out to conquer all the other lands, making Hard Rock the only music. Our heroes, the Pop Trolls, have to save the day and unite all the genres again. Barb hates Pop, says it’s “not real music, too repetitive, the lyrics stink,” etc. I won’t tell you how it ends!

Stereogum had a whole piece about this on Friday.

I won’t tell you how it ends!

xp Terribly written piece, desperately straining for a “critique” and misrepresenting basic plot points to do it.

Until utopia is achieved and everyone makes an effort to enjoy that obscure and much-maligned art we call pop music while its devotees do absolutely nothing to meaningfully engage with other subgenres even as they clamour for more inclusivity, the need for endearingly didactic allegories will continue unabated.

Part of the story is that Pop snuffed out musical diversity in the past, but you’d have to watch the movie to know that.

Care to tell us more? (Not trolling, for real.)

Never mind, I just read the plot synopsis on Wikipedia.

xp Terribly written piece, desperately straining for a “critique” and misrepresenting basic plot points to do it.

― morrisp

truly, Trolls World Tour demands more thoughtful and incisive social commentary than this piece delivers

It doesn’t, but if someone’s going for that they should do it better.

Caramanica did a piece on this for NYT, of course

Now that there's an entire Trolls movie about rockism and poptimism maybe we can finally be done ever using those words or concepts again

+1 to that

people are writing about poptimism and rockism, in this economy??????

Aimee Mann:

By 1990, everything on the radio was starting to be Whitney Houston, Taylor Dayne, Tina Turner—it was very pop. Then Michael Penn comes out with this Beatles-esque, melodic song, but still with a little bit of a big snare drum sound. I was like, “Finally, somebody broke through with an actual song.”

A poptimist would have married Taylor Dayne.

The 1975’s Brits nomination proves great pop isn’t always drowned out by mindless gym music

lol amazing

While making the album, The 1975 sought to capture the pure essence of their band – to simply “play it and record it,” as Healy told the New York Times last year. “Any kid can make a bedroom thing that sounds crazy,” he said. “What you can’t do is have been in a band for 20 years and be great players and go into a room and have that freedom.” The resulting album makes you feel as if you were in the room with the band as they recorded it.

Wow irl Aging rock act on new album: This time we wanted to go back to the basics guys in a room

If you're not listening to the 1975, you're probably at the gym

Have they really been together for 20 years?

Sounds like rockism is her weapon of choice for generation warfare. At the same time wishing for music that unites everyone by soundtracking our lives like Elton John.

Sounds like rockism is her weapon of choice for generation warfare. At the same time wishing for music that unites everyone by soundtracking our lives like Elton John.

I'm a rockist man

Burning out his fuse up here alone

I'm a rockist man

the opossite of thinking pop music with dubious quality (taylor swift, beyonce, the weekend, drake...) is relevant: the opposite of rockism... and both wrong

i miss the days when all new posters like this were considered to be a sock

sockism

lol

it's more fun if you call them shit instead of not relevant - you'd be half wrong but have some courage in your own subjectivity

what's the rockism of appeals-to-relevance? it's a real thing and you can do it for or against rock or pop or whatever

It’s a far cry from previous decades, when artists like Elton John, Kate Bush and Phil Collins – who made music about grown-up concerns, which could be enjoyed by teens alike – soundtracked our lives. (It’s no surprise that this is the current state of pop in a country whose music industry is, according to the charts, propped up by a holy trinity of po-faced men: Ed Sheeran, George Ezra and Lewis Capaldi.)

I like Phil Collins but also it's very funny to use Phil Collins as an example here (and surely Phil is at least as po-faced as Sheeran, Ezra and Capaldi?)

I want someone to write a take on rockism that explains how Phil Collins and Steely Dan were the two uncoolest things imaginable to rockist gen x-ers but are both loved by rockist millenials. I have no idea what zoomers think of them, if anything

the early definitions on this thread are interesting in how diverse they are. what I'm getting is that rockism is a lot like fascism in how syncretic and incoherent it is and how many different guises can wear. someone could write a thing on ur-rockism like umberto eco did for fascism

"We wanted go back to the sound of just four guys in a gym."

i prefer 'whinerism'

Why don't we ask Freddie deBoer

runner up: crypto-poptimists & crypto-rockists