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| Music criticism's popist problem by skip 06/29/2014, 10:37pm PDT | ||||
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skip wrote: The other thing I forgot to mention was introducing and championing works that aren't going to be that popular or break-out hits. Even back when I wrote this, I subconsciously knew that music critics didn't qualify. I got to thinking about musical taste recently since I read "Let's Talk About Love" by Wilson and this incisive NYT article about "popism" which is defined as disco, not punk; pop, not rock; synthesizers, not guitars; the music video, not the live show. It is to privilege the deliriously artificial over the artificially genuine. It developed as an ideology to counteract rockism, the stance held by the sort of critic who, in Sanneh’s words, whines “about a pop landscape dominated by big-budget spectacles and high-concept photo shoots” and reminisces “about a time when the charts were packed with people who had something to say, and meant it, even if that time never actually existed.” The problems with doing this are that it 1) gives even more attention to artists who really don't need it. Beyonce's album will sell no matter what score you give it and 2) actually narrows the musical field since you're only discussing things that people have heard on the radio dozens of times by that point. Rolling Stone will give anything with Jagger or Dylan on it at least 4/5 no matter how terrible, but besides that their reviews aren't different from Pitchfork's at this point. It's hilarious when reviewers accuse another of their own of being stuffy or a typical white male even though 90% of the time they probably agree with each other. They're writing that to stand up to a majority that no longer exists. The classical music guys are too busy debating which Naxos version of The Planets is definitive and the kids who only listen to rock or metal definitely aren't reading Salon. On a side note, Salon tried this stupid bullshit with literature too for a book that was a finalist for the National Book Award. One or two dissenting critics ain't exactly proof positive of a conspiracy here. It's frustrating because these issues deserve to be discussed, but Flavorwire, etc. are only interested in clickbait and ruining careers. The article points out that no critic can completely ignore the mainstream, but you don't have to suck the dick of every manufactured star that appeals to tweens. The third issue that he doesn't mention but sort of touches on: Obsessive coverage of stars like Drake and Justin Bieber drives Web traffic in a way that more judicious, varied coverage of the likes of, say, the Tuareg guitar wizard Bombino generally cannot. It becomes more about the performer or the issues surrounding the performer than anything else. Besides devolving into celebrity rags, they have nothing to say on music since a lot of it is so shallow and it's not like their readers haven't heard the actual song. So it also becomes about "problematic" parts of the song. Is Lorde racist? What about Macklemore? There's nothing novel about liking mainstream media anymore. Wilson's book made the point that the new standard for cool has become "media omnivores" or people who can cite low and high culture easily - talking about going to the opera one day than seeing Katy Perry the next. And there's also careful cultivation of which low brow culture is to be liked. At this point every musical genre has its own websites with critics, sometimes just enthusiasts, offering reviews, walling themselves away from all this. I also like the counterarguments to this article, which just boil down to "can't we all just get along?" No. When your coverage is hitting the lows of video game journalism, it deserves to be called out. |
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Music criticism's popist problem by 06/29/2014, 10:37pm PDT  There's a general need for a "middlebrow" like that of the mid-20th century. by 06/30/2014, 7:28am PDT |
