to be fair, a lot of you in here do think you're cleverer than you really are for liking Avril Lavigne...
this is a problem i have with Popjustice, which is a good site but can sometimes go a bit up its own arse about hating any band with a guitar, which is just creating another silly criteria against which to judge music... where kids used to say "i only want to listen to bands who play their own instruments/write their own songs/are 4 real etc" now kids say "i only want to listen to bands who have been manufactured especially for my enjoyment" as a way of railing against daddy's punk records.
the fear of accidentally agreeing with a 50 year old radio 2 listener is as ridiculous as the fear a 14 year old goth has of liking anything in the top 40. alright so no one wants to be pushed into liking this or that music but you can like what you like and stand up for it without making big declamatory statements of "i hate indie" or "i hate real music".
cant you?
maybe you cant on the internet. but back in the real world i find that my mates and i all like music because we like it, and this popist and rockist shit is reserved for people who dont really live in the real world much of the time. personally i like both the Libertines and the Sugababes and thats my radical big YOOF statement, and that of most of the people i know, who cant be fucked with being told what to listen to by popists or rockists.
i suppose when i joined this community i didnt realise "poptomists" meant popists, not just people who kind of liked pop music...hum.
I think a lot of us *do* fall into lazy knee-jerk patterns sometimes but that's why we need new people in the community! eg there used to be a lot of "LOL EMO" stuff and posters like Ms_Bracken and Piratemoggy and Cis have pretty much turned that around. At the other end of the scale lots of 'old radio 2 music' gets taken very seriously too.
but back in the real world i find that my mates and i all like music because we like it
Oddly enough this is also true of the vast majority of people who post on Poptimists - this is something k-punk/Reynolds have never really been able to acknowledge, possibly just because of the name. Of course, people here also talk about the how and why of liking the music they like, because if they didn't, there wouldn't be much to talk about, no?
personally i like both the Libertines and the Sugababes and thats my radical big YOOF statement
Liking both or two such bands is again something a lot of people who are members of Poptimists do.
there is admittedly a radical faction who get very upset about guitar bands/indie, but there's not going to be an expulsion of their ranks, Militant style, until their antics lead to something extreme like taking taxi cabs around to punch libertines fans in the faces.
>>personally i like both the Libertines and the Sugababes and thats my radical big YOOF statement
>Liking both or two such bands is again something a lot of people who are members of Poptimists do.
Yeah I don't see why liking the Libertines and the Sugababes is anything other than poptimist orthodoxy! Obviously for older readers it's more likely to be the Wedding Present, or the Smiths or somebody than the Libertines.
poptimism is generally inclusive. (if you ignore the Militant threat)
liking libertines, while not talked about a lot is not THAT hard to pass off here. now professing a liking for Keane, or Coldpud, or that guy doing the Massive Attack cover on acoustic guitar - that might get you some splutttering poptimists
"this is something k-punk/Reynolds have never really been able to acknowledge"
That's what I find so difficult about reading pieces like this - I don't know by what criteria the writer chooses to listen to music, but the way it is written about seems to automatically exclude the way I choose to listen to music. And, in fact, write about it; I've been consistently frustrated by my relative lack of articulacy when trying to describe why I love the music I love, but being able to say "I just like the noise they make" and then being free to talk about whatever aspects of the music are interesting to me seems... more open (loath to use the word honest, but that might be closer to what I mean) than what's described in this article.
The thing is I don't actually think k-punk's views stand up on a theoretical Marxist kulturkritik level or whatever, either. It's just really obvious which points he's choosing to massively gloss over - like, who are these popists and what is their agenda and what do the majority of them actually say and do they really have anything to do with Blair, for example?
but back in the real world i find that my mates and i all like music because we like it
But this is exactly the kind of statement that my column has been trying to challenge from day one. And if any of you guys find yourself drawn to making such an affirmation yourselves ("we like music 'cause we like it"), my column is meant to challenge you as well.
Yes! Show your working, everyone. Why is Song A on 10x repeat whilst Song B by the same artist is hovering on the delete list from your hard drive? Lyrics remind you of summer? More energetic drum beat? Amazing use of Aretha Franklin sample? Plodding unambitious chord changes? Awooga sirens making your brain cells do a pancake-flip? ENQUIRING MINDS MUST KNOW!
'to be fair, a lot of you in here do think you're cleverer than you really are for liking Avril Lavigne...'
we need names! the 'to be fair' is totally inappropriate there...
i think your argument is a bit out of date as far as poptimists goes. 'my mates and i all like music because we like it' and a subscription to the concepts and conflict of rockism vs popism aer not mutually exclusive.
i don't get this 'being told what to listen to' thing either - who is doing this really?
i'm always i might suspicious of using "live in the real world" as an argument, i'm not quite sure what you mean. k-punk, for all he appears to be a cartoon, is a flesh and blood person, i've met him at a party.
the point is, it's fun to argue about all this stuff, reading different people's viewpoints on music(film/art/sandwich fillings/whatevs) you may have dismissed. even if they don't change yr mind the cut and thrust of discussion makes you think about why you do like things, and that's got to be good right?
also some ppl in here rly are very clever (not me), there's nothing wrong with being clever.
Quite. However, being clever != being able to express your arguments well. Or indeed, being clever != having an actual point. K-punk may well be clever, but he hasn't yet shown me whether he can engage in the latter two disciplines. We're lucky here at poptimists in that we have a number of clever people who have something interesting to say and know how to say it.
Why all this trust for Avril, who's been slammed multiple times by multiple co-writers for plagiarism and/or laziness, but not Ashlee, who's got a whole television show documenting her involvement in her album? At some point, you didn't know what Avril looked like, either. When did you decide she means what she says? (Unless when you say you know Avril, you mean you actually know Avril, in which case...well, feel free to tell her how much I hate her.)
A bit of background: a fair few of us here know & socialise with each other in real life (the more vocal, London-based crew at any rate), and so our freedom to like what we like crosses from the safe meritocracy of the interweb over to the pure joy of playing out the banging acid house Macarena remix at the Poptimism club night - we've all got over the 'guilty pleasures' thing a long time ago (ok for me it was only about 4 years ago but I am super-young compared to most of the chaps here AND used to be in a trendy indie band so whatevs) and we can concentrate on searching out the tiny specks of wheat in the vast oceans of chaff. Or floundering in a wonderful sea of wheat with only the occasional chaff raft floating by, depending on your point of view.
Basically, slag a piece of music off, or say it's great - either is fine as long as you say WHY! And there will usually be someone on this community trying to persuade you as to the opposite viewpoint. Or say "YES OMG if you like that then check THIS out!"
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 01:51 pm (UTC)this is a problem i have with Popjustice, which is a good site but can sometimes go a bit up its own arse about hating any band with a guitar, which is just creating another silly criteria against which to judge music... where kids used to say "i only want to listen to bands who play their own instruments/write their own songs/are 4 real etc" now kids say "i only want to listen to bands who have been manufactured especially for my enjoyment" as a way of railing against daddy's punk records.
the fear of accidentally agreeing with a 50 year old radio 2 listener is as ridiculous as the fear a 14 year old goth has of liking anything in the top 40. alright so no one wants to be pushed into liking this or that music but you can like what you like and stand up for it without making big declamatory statements of "i hate indie" or "i hate real music".
cant you?
maybe you cant on the internet. but back in the real world i find that my mates and i all like music because we like it, and this popist and rockist shit is reserved for people who dont really live in the real world much of the time. personally i like both the Libertines and the Sugababes and thats my radical big YOOF statement, and that of most of the people i know, who cant be fucked with being told what to listen to by popists or rockists.
i suppose when i joined this community i didnt realise "poptomists" meant popists, not just people who kind of liked pop music...hum.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 01:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 01:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 01:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 02:02 pm (UTC)(I def have a superiory complex about my taste)
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 02:13 pm (UTC)i think it would be idiotic to discount avril lavigne from yr likes. but i don't think it's ever clever to like pop music X.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 02:05 pm (UTC)Oddly enough this is also true of the vast majority of people who post on Poptimists - this is something k-punk/Reynolds have never really been able to acknowledge, possibly just because of the name. Of course, people here also talk about the how and why of liking the music they like, because if they didn't, there wouldn't be much to talk about, no?
personally i like both the Libertines and the Sugababes and thats my radical big YOOF statement
Liking both or two such bands is again something a lot of people who are members of Poptimists do.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 02:15 pm (UTC)i only joined yesterday, perhaps my judgement has come too quickly.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 02:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:ORGAFUN
From:Re: ORGAFUN
From:no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 02:24 pm (UTC)>Liking both or two such bands is again something a lot of people who are members of Poptimists do.
Yeah I don't see why liking the Libertines and the Sugababes is anything other than poptimist orthodoxy! Obviously for older readers it's more likely to be the Wedding Present, or the Smiths or somebody than the Libertines.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 02:30 pm (UTC)liking libertines, while not talked about a lot is not THAT hard to pass off here. now professing a liking for Keane, or Coldpud, or that guy doing the Massive Attack cover on acoustic guitar - that might get you some splutttering poptimists
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 02:28 pm (UTC)That's what I find so difficult about reading pieces like this - I don't know by what criteria the writer chooses to listen to music, but the way it is written about seems to automatically exclude the way I choose to listen to music. And, in fact, write about it; I've been consistently frustrated by my relative lack of articulacy when trying to describe why I love the music I love, but being able to say "I just like the noise they make" and then being free to talk about whatever aspects of the music are interesting to me seems... more open (loath to use the word honest, but that might be closer to what I mean) than what's described in this article.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 02:37 pm (UTC)srsly though, k-punk annoys the fvck out of me on so many levels, it's just SO FVCKING MALE apart from anything else...
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 02:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 04:42 pm (UTC)But this is exactly the kind of statement that my column has been trying to challenge from day one. And if any of you guys find yourself drawn to making such an affirmation yourselves ("we like music 'cause we like it"), my column is meant to challenge you as well.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 10:26 pm (UTC)Yes! Show your working, everyone. Why is Song A on 10x repeat whilst Song B by the same artist is hovering on the delete list from your hard drive? Lyrics remind you of summer? More energetic drum beat? Amazing use of Aretha Franklin sample? Plodding unambitious chord changes? Awooga sirens making your brain cells do a pancake-flip? ENQUIRING MINDS MUST KNOW!
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 02:54 pm (UTC)we need names! the 'to be fair' is totally inappropriate there...
i think your argument is a bit out of date as far as poptimists goes. 'my mates and i all like music because we like it' and a subscription to the concepts and conflict of rockism vs popism aer not mutually exclusive.
i don't get this 'being told what to listen to' thing either - who is doing this really?
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 03:01 pm (UTC)i'm always i might suspicious of using "live in the real world" as an argument, i'm not quite sure what you mean. k-punk, for all he appears to be a cartoon, is a flesh and blood person, i've met him at a party.
the point is, it's fun to argue about all this stuff, reading different people's viewpoints on music(film/art/sandwich fillings/whatevs) you may have dismissed. even if they don't change yr mind the cut and thrust of discussion makes you think about why you do like things, and that's got to be good right?
also some ppl in here rly are very clever (not me), there's nothing wrong with being clever.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 10:31 pm (UTC)Quite. However, being clever != being able to express your arguments well. Or indeed, being clever != having an actual point. K-punk may well be clever, but he hasn't yet shown me whether he can engage in the latter two disciplines. We're lucky here at
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 03:57 pm (UTC)In any event, Avril Lavigne did come up recently in these parts (quotation is from
Why all this trust for Avril, who's been slammed multiple times by multiple co-writers for plagiarism and/or laziness, but not Ashlee, who's got a whole television show documenting her involvement in her album? At some point, you didn't know what Avril looked like, either. When did you decide she means what she says? (Unless when you say you know Avril, you mean you actually know Avril, in which case...well, feel free to tell her how much I hate her.)
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 04:13 pm (UTC)Don't worry. I'm not a popist, but they let me stay.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 04:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 04:46 pm (UTC)OFF TOPIC: A moderator speaks...
Date: 2007-08-22 10:19 pm (UTC)A bit of background: a fair few of us here know & socialise with each other in real life (the more vocal, London-based crew at any rate), and so our freedom to like what we like crosses from the safe meritocracy of the interweb over to the pure joy of playing out the banging acid house Macarena remix at the Poptimism club night - we've all got over the 'guilty pleasures' thing a long time ago (ok for me it was only about 4 years ago but I am super-young compared to most of the chaps here AND used to be in a trendy indie band so whatevs) and we can concentrate on searching out the tiny specks of wheat in the vast oceans of chaff. Or floundering in a wonderful sea of wheat with only the occasional chaff raft floating by, depending on your point of view.
Basically, slag a piece of music off, or say it's great - either is fine as long as you say WHY! And there will usually be someone on this community trying to persuade you as to the opposite viewpoint. Or say "YES OMG if you like that then check THIS out!"
Re: OFF TOPIC: A moderator speaks...
Date: 2007-08-23 10:16 pm (UTC)