Public Carmodism

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Discussion on the tournament thread about GHOST TOWNE by the Specials - is this the biggest example of Carmodism being generally accepted and written into the executive summary of rock history?

(Definition of Carmodism for the 99% of you who won't know what I'm on about: the belief that the state of the charts reflects the state of the nation, or at least the belief that it makes for more interesting analysis to pretend it does. From Robin Carmody, cultural critic and high practitioner of the art.)

Comments

Re: full-on carmodism...

[koganbot]

One difficulty in relating electoral politics and the charts is that (1) if I vote for a candidate and he wins, he then goes and does something, whereas (2) if I buy a record, I then go and do something with the record, whether the record charts well or not. In elections, you've got a number of people voting for a candidate, not all for the same reasons, and what the candidate does won't always have a lot to do with people's reasons for voting for him (and at least in the U.S., many voters will never notice this, since they don't pay much attention to what the candidate actually does). On the charts, you've got a number of people buying a record (or, in the U.S., being the sort of person who radio programmers think will like the record), again not all for the same reasons, and then going and doing a number of different things with the record, which most likely will have something to do with their original reasons for buying or listening to the record, but this isn't guaranteed.