pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

young's voice on that verse also echoes (intentionally or accidentally) his plaints on "ohio," which i think underscores the hopelessness—"we should have known better," etc

it's not like that's unique to Americans in the 80s

Thank you.

xp (maura -- your That Dog review was great!)

I'm not loading all 14k messages, so did I miss the discussion of the Reynolds piece?

He sure loves coining new genre names!

there's definitely a tone of desperation - "this MATTERS! because it's tied to other things that MATTER!"

otm

also the total lack of talking about what aspects of the actual music make it so profound.

basically Οὖτις on top. and it bugs me that you even felt like you had to add on the "cornball post" aspect to your words up there; especially when your words are more than competent and not anything except an honest evaluation. nothing cornball whatsoever about genuine and honest insights.

the blm essay is all over the place, but i'm glad it mentions people singing Alright. there's a video i saw in a tweet from when a bunch of high school kids were marching thru the streets of baton rouge, and they're in some suburban cul de sac and its dark out, maybe 10pm, and the main protest is long over and the cops are just chasing them through the street, herding them around, and they're too angry to be as scared as they should be, or maybe angry because they're scared, and they've been dispersed and keep being dispersed and then knots of them collecting together again, and you can barely see anything -- not even really streetlights. and a group of them find themselves being surrounded by cops. and they all start singing Alright together, the whole damn thing. The video cuts off and I know there were a lot of arrests that night, and I don't know who was arrested from the video, or what happened to them.

(a few years after that video, i met one of the kids from those protests, who was in college now. he told me that his mother had grounded him after that night, or maybe the next one, and a lot of other parents had grounded their kids too, because they were afraid something terrible would happen otherwise [and who is to say they were wrong to do so]).

Anyway that's the musical moment from the decade that is the most indelible to me.

For me it’s prob Lady Gaga doing “not this way” at the super bowl

“Born this way”, autocorrect

The night of the ‘16 election there were spontaneous and large protests in my neighborhood and I remember hearing, before seeing, a huge crowd of teens coming down the 18th St by Dolores Park street singing Alright together

FWIW, Rolling Stone’s blurb on Freedom in their 100 Best Albums of the Eighties list (published in November 1989 — they held out over a month longer than Pitchfork did, lol) doesn’t mention Reagan. Here’s what it says about “RITFW”:

The album is bookended by contrasting versions of the bitter, ironic "Rockin' in the Free World." The opener is live and acoustic, with the audience singing the chorus, while the finale is an angry, electric rendition with an additional verse.

KORITFW

(thanks morrisp!!)

The opener is live and acoustic, with the audience singing the chorus,

Good but with some room for improvement

i don't really get shakey's point upthread; you stopped being able to identify what kind of music ppl listened to by how they dressed last decade (and the decades when you could most reliably make that prediction were the 80s and 90s, not the 60s and 70s when music was incredibly important to culture). imo the '00s freakout over 'hipsters' within music was about the replacement of identity-specific musical subcultures with a new genre-agnostic subculture that grew out of indie and was made possible by the internet; then in the '10s people stopped talking about 'hipsters' because everyone ('normies') adopted the genre-agnostic attitude (this is why most tranches of cool-kid twitter are anti-poptimist now btw) and non-genre markers of identify (race, gender) became more salient within music

i like the way pitchfork writing includes lots of context and background, and i think the best writing weaves in the more subjective and ~ineffable qualities throughout a piece without foregrounding it. the main function of pitchfork, for me in 2019, is when i discover something new to have a smart and well-written article lay out the context, or otherwise make it intelligible. (not that i *need* music to be intelligible to enjoy it, but when you are fascinated by a piece of music you often want to flesh it out into extra dimensions). a big problem with the parts of the site that are still quite bad, such as its writing about dance music, is an overly impressionistic style ('drum loops that sounds like two grinding gears being splattered with paint', 'the four-on-the-floor beat and clicking hi-hats evoke walking briskly on a spring day') that misses the mark. if u read (the GOAT) Tim F on my roni size thread the other day, yes there are evocative descriptions of the music, but also its context within dnb and the artists' careers (marking the 'end' of a jazzy era, the first time the producers introduced live drums rather than samples, its stylistic unity compared to other dnb albums' tendency to do 2 tracks in each then-currently popular style)--i mean, i basically started the thread to get him and others to post that kind of info for me, to give depth to what was otherwise a catchy breaks album a friend told me to check out

obviously i roll my eyes at lots of the strained efforts of current-day p4k to find a woke peg or political angle for essentially apolitical indie music (i become a total cynical dad reading the umpteenth '[24 year old in a cis relationship who self-ids as queer and has one south-asian grandparent] is part of a new wave of queer POC Portland grunge artists'), and rolled my eyes at a lot of the blurbs in this list. i even said "sorry but 'alright' is a terrible number 1" upthread, and stand by that (i honestly don't believe that it is anyone's favourite kendrick song)

fav kendrick song is tricky. I went with "hiiiPOWER" bc i think that captured a lot of the hope for his potential that he'd deliver at album length later on, this kind of write your own destiny thing centered in the black experience, but also i like "Loyalty" as a kind of more underrated "poptimist" choice ... that said it felt too detached thematically from the kendrick project ... a friend tho says "how much a dollar cost" is his best time capsule song bc its the most effectively realized "modern rap and modern jazz together at last" song

my favorite kendrick song is when he rereleases to pimp a butterfly as one long track, like prince's lovesexy on cd.

King Kunta and Alright are probably my two favorite Kendrick songs. I'm a bad Kendrick fan...

those are both very good.

flopson, paragraph 1, otm

thx treesh

imo kendrick is not really a 'tracks' artist per se ('bish dont kill my vibe' is the one that felt the most like, of a moment, to me, but is DQd for obvious reasons) and TPAB aotd would have made a lot more sense than blonde, and then swap out #1 track for uh idk, all my fav songs came in at like spot 150

“swimming pools”, I’m a worse Kendrick fan

yep I agree with flopson too.

also I disagree with the idea that music matters less to young people now. What I think has changed is that music is so extremely accessible, effectively for free, that the economic structure of young people's relationship to music has changed.

For me and I guess most ILXors, my adolescent engagement with music was in a context of relative scarcity: I had to consciously prioritise certain music acquisitions based on my available free cash, which in turn has a whole bunch of consequences:

1. Structures of taste which limit your exposure can actually be useful in that they make it easier to work out how to spend your available money: in particular, tribal/genre affiliations (i'm a metalhead; i'm a raver) provide a basis on which to turn the economic reality of limited music acquisition capacity into a virtue;

2. Against (1), the economic (and/or time-based) pain associated with locating and acquiring a large swathe of music, whether on a depth basis ("I have every consecutive Halo-numbered Nine Inch Nails release") or on a breadth basis (being genre-agnostic), confers on that pursuit a different kind of virtue ("you're a real fan" / "you know a lot about music") which loses its force in an era when the vast majority of music is readily and immediately available at effectively no cost.

3. More simply, if you can only afford to buy, say, one album a month, then you're pretty much going to be forced to invest in that album much more than if you can stream a different album each day. Moreover, the more music you hear, the less the idea of massive investment in a single album or piece of music or artist makes sense as a way to structure your taste.

4. Finally and further to (3), if music is expensive to consume and you have limited funds, then the use of gatekeeper authorities (such as music critics, magazines, trend-setting friends) to assist you to order and prioritise your music consumption activities becomes much more important.

What strikes me about young people's listening habits today is that they are consuming more and a greater variety of music, and often quite obscure music, than I did or would have been able to at their age. This tends to propel people toward being genre-agnostic as a kind of default but not in the way that would necessarily make sense during the 90s - the "eclectic" tastes of younger listeners often strike me as pretty random, and lacking the kind of editorial meta-narrative applied by a listener who made a conscious effort to, say, hear each of Spin's top 20 albums of 199x (I also agree with flopson that the cool kid riposte to this is to rebel against or resist the semi-conscious poptimist/genre-agnostic consensus).

All of which means that the narrative structures for why music is important are becoming less and less persuasive - young people listen to just as much (more) music, and connect to it on an individual, emotional level just as much, but the economic incentives to tell ourselves stories about the music (and in particular why this music is more important as that music) aren't as strong as they used to be.

Which is one reason why p4k's insistence on "importance" feels a bit perverse when applied to contemporary music: the last decade feels like a time when viewing music through that lens makes less sense than it would have previously.

you say all that but then i'm less clear what makes you think they connect to the music as much since you've just undercut lots of things that go into connection

Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by "connect".

One analogy would be whether someone who boasts endlessly about their child being a successful surgeon loves their child more than another parent who doesn't really care about their child's career.

That is, the stories we tell ourselves and others about how/why we love something/someone do not exhaust the experience of that love (although it would be naive to believe they don't shape that experience).

What strikes me about young people's listening habits today is that they are consuming more and a greater variety of music, and often quite obscure music, than I did or would have been able to at their age. This tends to propel people toward being genre-agnostic as a kind of default but not in the way that would necessarily make sense during the 90s - the "eclectic" tastes of younger listeners often strike me as pretty random, and lacking the kind of editorial meta-narrative applied by a listener who made a conscious effort to, say, hear each of Spin's top 20 albums of 199x (I also agree with flopson that the cool kid riposte to this is to rebel against or resist the semi-conscious poptimist/genre-agnostic consensus).

I know I'm countering your anecdotal data vs mine, but I have no evidence that my POC cohort at a large public university consumes a variety of music: if anything, I see the Mitskis, Parquet Courts, Big Thiefs, and so on that Pitchfork still pushes. Yet here's the thing: few read Pitchfork for reviews anymore. I realize they didn't read SPIN, RS, whatever in 2009 or 1999 either, but these young men and women are pretty isolated, reliant on second- and thirdhand sources for recommendations.

I've become friends with a 22-year-old self-aware student reporter who told me last week "I know songs, not artists." At the newsroom today the editor blasted Angel Olsen, CCR, Cream, Method Man, and George Benson. This miscellany would, of course, defeat anyone. When I asked him about it, he said, "This shit just comes up" on Spotify recommendations.

(NB: the collapse of CMJ has hurt college radio but released them from what Tim calls genre-agonsticism).

I would say that spotify playlists/recommendations and equivalents are massively important

*Big Thief

At the newsroom today the editor blasted Angel Olsen, CCR, Cream, Method Man, and George Benson

the strict chronological equivalent of this in, say, 1989, would be an editor blasting whover the 1989 version of angel olsen was followed by roy acuff, robert johnson, a motown song, and then, say, "take the 'a' train." which i'm pretty sure no one in any college anywhere in 1989 ever did. but maybe they should have?

the "i know songs, not artists" thing tracks with conversations with one of my nephews 15 years ago who didn't know artists *or* songs, just track numbers. he knew he liked track 7 on this cd, track 3 on that cd, etc.

i don’t have a strong prior about whether music is less important now; we could check using American time use survey tho. i suspect Shakey is correct in the sense of time spent listening to music by the typical 20-35 year old decreasing since 2000

if ‘young people are consuming more and a greater variety of music and often quite obscure music’, and the narrative and economic incentives aren't as important as they were in our era, I'm wondering what shakes out from that

'more...

Lol @ “obscure” tbh

This conversation is very interesting, except I don’t understand why you guys are talking about cool kids turning up their noses at pop music as if that’s a new phenomenon(?)

(I’m ignoring the fact that you’re using the term “poptimist,” b/c I don’t know what it means – other than it sounds like a rock critic trying to convince himself that pop music is “valuable” and “worth attention.”)

Dont worry, nobody else knows what it means either

thinking 'pop music' probably mean something very different to kids today

*means

I would like to applaud you Tim F for such an interesting and thoughtful post! I've often thought of critical sources had now become "filters in the face of an exhausting mass of content" but it's not really the case, is it? At least you argue against it; I would think that user-based aggregators such as RYM are working in this capacity more than journalistic institutions, which is.. sad! but whatever

i think spotify and other service's algorithms are doing a lot of this "filtering" for people, which is kind of frightening

When I was 15 it was radio algorithms, the choices of a few college DJs and what I could find at the one 'cool' CD shop in town.

i don't think the role streaming algorithms play is all that different to radio playlists in previous times, just the results are a little more eclectic

(I’m ignoring the fact that you’re using the term “poptimist,” b/c I don’t know what it means – other than it sounds like a rock critic trying to convince himself that pop music is “valuable” and “worth attention.”)

― drunk on hot toddies (morrisp), Monday, October 14, 2019 10:19 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Dont worry, nobody else knows what it means either

― Οὖτις, Monday, October 14, 2019 10:21 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

people always say this but it’s extremely simple and everyone who reads this board understands what it means

morrisp's thing as new guy is putting on airs among all us reprobates like he'll finally get to the bottom of things with his incisive critical interventions

the feigned ignorance by ppl who have posted here for 15 years when we talk abt rockism and popism is one of the weirdest things imo

its kind of like the ‘how could i possibly understand what “intersectionality” means—that word has like, eight syllables!’ routine from 5 years ago

iLM built a great tower to reach pop heaven but GOD struck it down and now all our pop music discourse is confounded

LOL @ u guys

except I don’t understand why you guys are talking about cool kids turning up their noses at pop music as if that’s a new phenomenon

i mean, it’s more abt the ebb and flow about the mean. some cool kids (rightly) don’t turn up their noses at pop music, but maybe more do now than did 8 years ago

If you say it, I believe it (sounds like you have your ear to the ground)... it just struck me a little funny, I thought “not liking the most popular stuff” was a fairly constant signifier of “coolness.”