(no subject)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I have a new Pitchfork column up - inspired indirectly by Frank's series of columns, and directly by conversations with people here, and by conversations ON here dating from ages and ages ago. The column is nominally about the Smiths but not really (also the summary on the front page misunderstands it, so I wonder if it isn't very clear what I'm getting at).

It's also worth having another look at yesterday's Pop Open thread, where an interesting chat has got going between cis and koganbot and a couple of other people, on the subject of...well, depending on what you think about the topic you might call it "indie trying to be pop" or "perfect pop" or "revivalist pop". Follow-on post action here may yet occur.

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

(The main regret I have about the column is the clunking Sugababes example - not cos it's a bad example but it goes on too long for something that doesn't relate to the rest of the piece, and not long enough to fairly deal with what it's talking about. I put it in when I was worried I wouldn't hit wordcount, and never removed it.)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I thought the Sbabes was a good point! Another enjoyable read, Tom. I think exploring the emotional side of music (certainly of pop) is difficult to do well, hence most people don't bother. It's hard enough to get most dudes to talk about emotional ANYTHING unless they are teenage girls with unlimited phone credit.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

The Sugababes example is really interesting because it was this initial Big Fact that effectively caused their almost never-to-return-dumperdom within twelve months of 'Overload's chart peak. As it turned out they dragged themselves from the brink by virtue of a hit song they DIDN'T write - but they were at least quick to sustain this by backing it up with more actual good self-written pop songs which was even more impressive I think.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

I think this is an excellent column. I think besides the embarrassment factor of talking about your feelings, there is also the notion that talking about craft and excellence and originality and so on are more objective, therefore what the critic should strive towards. I don't believe this is true.

I was thinking on a related subject a couple of days ago. I was listening to Bettye Swann, the only singer I can think of offhand where both names should have stopped a letter earlier, and thinking that she has maybe the most beautiful voice I know, and I was thinking about how I reach that conclusion, and what makes it beautiful (and perhaps more beautiful than Dolly Parton's or Al Green's or David Surkamp's), and what the beauty does for the music, and indeed how it affected my feelings when listening. I don't think I got anywhere useful on this, so far, but I have a feeling it is something I want to think more about and write about at some point. It feels kind of related to my old Al Green article - that was centrally about people using one big idea about soul (the authenticity of its raw emotion) to the point where they miss what is actually happening.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yes - and in the case of soul it's a double bluff - the artist's emotion is paramount but it hustles out the listener's emotion (other than "awed sympathy" I guess).

Not that it's always useful or desirable for a listener to think about their own emotional reaction too much, I just feel it would be good to acknowledge it more.

it's a little tangential to your main point

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

a lot of my aversion to music writing is because it leapfrogs the emotional response - presumably because they take that as a given. associated with that, in my head, is the suspicion that the non-emotional response is chosen post-hoc to fit with the emotional response (+ve or -ve). so if correspondent rly rly likes X but there is no 'craft/sophistication/rockist theme Y' in there they have to go elsewhere for praise.

the most ad- and post-hoc responses are when the response is -ve yet there is something really interesting to be said - for which see any super-long ILM thread which is full of long explanations of why something is rubbish interespersed with random 'i love this' posts.

Re: it's a little tangential to your main point

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Could you possibly be thinking of the Justice thread? ;)

I think it's very true that people trim the analysis to fit the reaction - OK I wuv this - why? I find that the longer I do this music criticism LARK the more cautious I get about trying to make sure that I'm just writing about how particular things in the music work for me, rather than inferring grand pronouncements of right and wrong from the mechanics of individual records. (I save those for Poptimists threads)

Re: it's a little tangential to your main point

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

actually i toyed with going on to to say explicitly NOT that one. (lex was treading his usual ideology, not ad-hoc, and ronan was upfront about his -ve reaction). i was specifically recalling the arctic monkeys thread. honest!

Re: it's a little tangential to your main point

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I HATED that on the Justice thread b/c everyone was all like "HAHA Spencer has PUNCTURED YR POMPOSITY" whereas when I've done it about Hilary or Paris or someone people demand explanations.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Ha, this is the kind of thing I was trying to write last week. But I hate writing about my emotions! I love writing about songs' emotions, which inevitably involve what I project on to the singer and identify with, find emotionally resonant, but that's total displacement b/c I never talk about me. I don't intend to actually ever write about me, though (well I will willingly write about the parties I go to, but not my feelings, b/c I am shallow and repressed).

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think writing about the emotions in a song is a fine way of approaching it!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

So do I but it just means that if I ever get offered a brief to be "personal" and "heartfelt" again it will have to be rejected!

[koganbot]

I like your emphasis on THE BIG FACT. A question I'd be prone* to ask about a particular BIG FACT is "Why this fact rather than some other?" So a question we can ask people (incl. ourselves, should the FACT be one that we ourselves are drawn to) is why are they drawn to a particular FACT, just as we can ask them why we like or dislike a particular song. There's an obvious family resemblance between BIG FACTS and what in my column I called "stand-in issues." My working assumption in approaching either a BIG FACT or a stand-in issue is that people who embrace it are trying to take care of something (elaborate on some insight or address some disturbance) without having to upset who they are. (Not that thinking further would necessarily upend them in a big way, but e.g. "Why do I want to dismiss this class of people - Smiths fans, Backstreet Boys girls" is a bit more fraught than "Is Morrissey and fans miserabilists?" and "Did the Backstreet Boys write their own songs?")

Of course, there is a distinction between explaining why I like something and justifying why I think it's good - I can like things that I don't think are so good, and I can dislike things that I think are good. [Insert subsection two of chapter three of Richard Rorty's Philosophy And The Mirror Of Nature, where Rorty argues that Locke, by confusing a mechanical, causal explanation of how we arrive at a belief with a justification for holding that belief entangled philosophy in false issues for subsequent centuries.] Not that we can or should totally disentangle "liking" and "justifying" - after all, we don't necessarily all use the same justifications, which means that at some point we have to justify our justifications (if we're serious about our justifications), and at some point (justifying the justifications for the justifications) there's nothing to choose between saying why you like a justification and saying why you justify it. I can't say a lot of people ever get to that point.

But saying that you like something is often safer than saying that you think it's good; but saying it's good is more potent.

*Actually, I'm not prone, merely slouched in my chair. So let's say I'm inclined to ask the question.

Proofread after posting

[koganbot]

we can ask them why THEY like or dislike a particular song

ARE Morrissey and fans miserabilists?