Another stellar entry from Joey Shook:
Once again this year, there’s been a debate going on between music writers about what it means to appreciate that dirty, three-letter genre simply known as “pop”. The spectrum of opinions (and number of those offering them) is of course quite wide—Katy Perry is “genius” vs. “Katy Perry is trash music”—and the two most notable articles (which represent both sides of the argument) have been a NY Times piece by Saul Austerlitz and an NPR piece by Ann Powers and Carl Wilson (Mike Powell’s response to both pieces on The Pitch is also very much worth the read).
Austerlitz’s Times piece is basically a critique of “poptimism” which Austerlitz calls the “reigning style of music criticism today”. Poptimism, as held by its critics, is a reactionary appreciation or embrace of popular non-rock music in light of the overwhelming “rockist” attitudes that classified much of music criticism and appreciation up until this millennium (for classic rockist archetypes, think Philip Seymour Hoffman’s brilliant portrayal of Lester Bangs in Almost Famous or Jack Black’s character in High Fidelity). Austerlitz views the rise in poptimism as an over-correction to such rockist attitudes which now tends to completely write off anything that is rock or guitar-based music. In some ways, he’s on to something. At the same time there’s still a tinge of that old rockist ivory tower attitude that permeates his piece; e.g. “But should gainfully employed adults whose job is to listen to music thoughtfully really agree so regularly with the taste of 13-year-olds?” Yikes.
Powers and Wilson’s NPR piece represents the other side of the coin and much more gracious in its spectrum of music appreciation. It’s essentially a five-part conversation between the two critics in light of the reissue of Wilson’s 2007 book Let’s Talk About Love
“But I also think we all feel exposed. In her book Alone Together, the sociologist Sherry Turkle mentions music as a source of worry for teens on social media; they’re worried that if they “like” the wrong bands — State Radio instead of Spoon is one kid’s example — they’ll lose the respect of their peers. This resonated with me. Shaming is back in style when we talk about music. A line from your book keeps coming into my mind: “Shame has a way of throwing you back upon your own existence, on the unbearable truth that you are identical with you, that you are your limits.” In this vastly open moment when an average person could lose herself in virtually any musical experience, why is the conversation about music so concerned with limits — and with shame?”
Shame over liking the “wrong bands” has been commonplace since the invention of rock n roll, but the anxiety seems to have become particularly crippling in the social media-saturated lives of millenials who expose and broadcast all their likes and dislikes to everyone they know or have known. I can remember spending hours trying to update my favorite music on MySpace or Facebook and the stress that resulted from thinking “Should I list the Beach Boys? I love The Beach Boys….but everyone loves the Beach Boys. People wouldn’t understand that I meant mostly late period Beach Boys anyways. I’ll just put Animal Collective.”
But this fear of judgment is two-fold. Meaning, even if we only admit to an appreciation of something deemed more intellectual or high-brow, there is then the fear of our “wrong bands” being brought to light, crumbling our intellectual house of cards. I’ve been nervous to tell people I like something relatively obscure like Black Dice (which I actually do) to only have them look at the Most Played in my iTunes and realize it’s Ariana Grande or Skrillex or something similar.
Popular music is shameful in the sense that it seems shallow, sugar-coated, or fake. Identifying with Pop often amounts to a laying down of intellectual arms. We have no intellectual platform to stand on if we like Katy Perry just like “everyone else”. Popular music equalizes, and the one thing my inner Pharisee hates most is equalization.
So naturally we fight it, and “confident in our righteousness”, thank the Lord that we are not like the tax collector or Miley Cyrus. Our self-justification for liking pop is that it’s “dumb fun” and/or we see something deeper in it that general public does not. But what if we find ourselves gravitating more towards this “dumb fun” and developing a genuine appreciation for it? Everyone has their own categories of “dumb fun” that we try not to truly enjoy too much. How many times is too many to listen to 5 Seconds of Summer’s “She Looks So Perfect” in a row? (Whatever that number is, I’ve surpassed it). Here’s Wilson on his impulse to explain away his appreciation for Celine Dion:
“Writing my book about taste and Céline Dion, and discussing it later, I’m always aware of a tinge of embarrassment that I’m talking about an artist so feminine, flashy, lush and sentimental. I have an impulse to rush to explain that she’s only a case study for the sake of a bigger intellectual project. It’s as if I sense my stock in the sexual marketplace dropping. But if I’m mindful of that shame and can sit with it, it’s valuable — it confers a humility that nurtures the patience and non-judgment to encounter strangers and intimates alike on something closer to their own terms, without reflex posturing. It might seem like a weird exercise, but it’s an experience I really recommend.”
On that note, may we all sit in humility to the sounds DJ Snake’s great wrecking ball of an equalizer, “Turn Down For What”:
http://youtu.be/QFy0hQ3lY-w&w=600
COMMENTS
13 responses to “Katy Perry, Celine Dion, and the Shamelessness of Poptimism”
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Here’s something else that’s weird this way. I really really really like listening to something like Glenn Gould playing the Goldberg variations by Bach. Good God that is fantastic music! Just tonight I was listening to the late Beethoven string quartets. That is music for grownups, for certain. But simply liking this kind of fare ends up branding me as a snob, especially if I don’t like some things which I am “supposed” to like. Apparently aesthetics is a team sport. Under grace we are free to truly like things. I think there are people who have only ever “liked” things for their cultural currency, and it comes as a shock to have the freedom to just simply like something because you like it.
One other thing. I used to work with a guy who would sit there with headphones on listening to John Cage (random noise music), Xenakis (music by math equation), and Ligeti (think the scariest shrieking part of 2001 A Space Odyssey as they get near the obelisk). You could hear it through his accursed headphones. I was outraged. I told him there was NO WAY he actually liked that stuff. I think it was musical taste as shock value; kind of the exact opposite of poptimism. Maybe he really liked it! I loved that guy!
Had to find some Ligeti after an endorsement like that. Delicious!
Great points Jim! I think a lot of this debate has to do with our spectrum of taste. I didn’t mention it above but in the NPR piece Wilson also touches nicely on this “encountering otherness”:
“But more than that, in a globalized, polycultural, multilateral, warming, mass-migrating world, we have urgent questions such as, “Where is the center?” “Which information matters?” “Who benefits?” “What does that make me?” They’re the same anxieties that have powered the polarization of American political camps.
A painful thing about encountering otherness — even in the form of music you don’t get or identify with — is that it makes you aware of your own smallness, your vulnerability and, yes, thus your shame. It undercuts any fantasy that your own lifestyle, traits and priorities might be universal — it tells you that you’re specifically bounded by your own context, while other realms may be indifferent to your existence.”
I think this “encountering otherness” plays a large part in fueling a “snob!” accusation or the general reflex we have to encountering musical tastes outside our own.
Ok, so my DJ Snakes “otherness encounter” is now officially 3 minutes and 35 seconds of my life that I’ll never get back…….but the equalization is indeed healthy. 🙂
Great post, Joey, and great comments, Jim. As someone who loves plenty of pop music but whose initial interest in classical music and other high art was fed by reading reviews and wanting to know what I was missing, I used to shake my head at the snobbery charge. (What’s “elite” about the concert hall? For the price of a ticket they let me in. Let the snobs be snobs but don’t let them keep us away from what successive generations before them loved and knew as the pop music of their day). Seen through the lens of “law” and “grace” – thank you, Mockingbird – the charge is easy to understand. Perceived snobbery produces reverse snobbery, which in turn reinforces the initial snobbery. But I’m sure there are people reading this blog who’ve studied Latin and Greek. Do pop fans consider them snobs? Yes, late Beethoven is “grown-up” music, but it’s approachable even for people, like me, who don’t read or play music. (And if you like those late quartets, I hope you’ve heard Shostakovich’s quartets.) And pop music, as Mockingbird contributors regularly make clear, is for thoughtful, cultured people too.
As it happens, I’m listening to a Wagner opera at the moment because it’s available this morning on Sirius, but I’m really more in the mood for the Grateful Dead. 😉 I also like a lot of John Cage’s music, in part because he worked so much with Merce Cunningham, one of my favorite artists in any genre, and in part because I’m intrigued by the thinking behind it. I have to disagree that Cage’s stuff is random noise. He used chance, but “chance operations” are only one element of his compositions. Also, as you may know, he claimed that what most of us hear as noise, he heard only as “sound.” He even claimed to love the sound of 6th Avenue traffic – a neat trick for someone living on 6th Avenue. I once attended a Cunningham company performance in which a woman coughed loudly throughout an otherwise silent section of a dance. The company historian sitting behind me muttered imprecations afterwards, but I think maybe Cage might have laughed in delight.
Howie- Glad to introduce you to one of the greatest modern purveyors of LOUD “dumb fun”! 🙂
Ken- “Perceived snobbery produces reverse snobbery, which in turn reinforces the initial snobbery.” is probably the best way sum up a lot of the mud slinging in the ongoing Poptimism debate.
Speaking of Cage, have you had a chance to play with his 4’33” app? It’s an app that allows users to record the ambient sound of their surroundings for their own little 4’33” pieces and share with other users around the world. Really interesting concept and an enjoyable app if you’re a fan of found sound.
Speaking of Cage, have you had a chance to play with his 4’33″ app?
Now I have – such fun! Thanks.
I like this + it reminds me of “The American Radiohead” by Chuck Klosterman, where he makes fun of the band Jet to Jeff Tweedy, who mildly responds “Well, don’t you like rock music?”
“And then I felt stupid, because I realized that (a) Jet plays rock music, and that (b) I like rock music, and that (c) I actually liked Jet, both tangibly and intangibly. So that was something I realized about Jeff Tweedy: musically, he remembers what is obvious.”
Selah.
I find rockism and poptimism very meaningless and only important to rock critics. I have been called a rockist, but when I look at the examples given in Almost Famous and High Fidelity, I don’t think I fit that category, even though I prefer music of the 60s over a lot of decades, although I confess to have found a lot of music in other periods that I find interesting through the Internet and word of mouth. I lean towards music that prefers lyrics and playing instruments versus whatever is fashionable in popular music at the moment. I find the music that poptimists enjoy to be boring, soulless, and uninspiring. Everytime someone says that the music of Beyonce, Katy Perry, or Taylor Swift to great I wonder what they are talking about because I can’t understand what they hear. Poptimism seems to give the excuse to be lazy and do whatever the marketplace demands. I prefer artists that don’t conform and try to deliver something new.
Speaking from experience, David, you may be on the slippery slope to free jazz and opera. 😉
Actually Ken, I do love opera and free jazz, although there are some pieces that aren’t my cup of tea. I can understand why people don’t like free jazz and I don’t play it all of the time. I like a lot of different types of music and I try not to play one genre anymore than the other, but that doesn’t always happen. I am very grateful for the avenues of campus radio because it is one of the few avenues where any interesting music can be found.