The Decade In Pop

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

My enormous Pitchfork piece on "The Decade In Pop" is up: http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/7703-the-decade-in-pop/

Spotify playlist to go with it here: http://open.spotify.com/user/freakytrigger/playlist/6cudPLlniOyOrpX5M5Dnnz

Comments

[sm-woods.livejournal.com]

"But I think a really big element was that the early-00s attention paid to pop production meant even pop-friendly listeners cared more about how the music sounded than how it might feel."

You've caused much discomfort on the home front with this! A nagging concern of mine, most of the decade, is that I'm turning into a modern day equivalent of the seventies power pop critic -- albeit one who's never lost interest in the music of the present -- constantly on the lookout for the right sounds that thrill, failing (and at times not even necessarily feeling the desire) to make any better sense of it than that. I've more often than not felt strangely disassociated from the world most of the music I've loved this decade emerges from (incl. much of the attendant discussion around the music), and yet... I don't feel I love the music any less -- I've sure listened to some of it a lot -- though I do probably love it somewhat differently.

Anyway, excellent, sprawling piece... hard to absorb on a single spin.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

See, what's interesting to me is how much I recognize in this piece but how little of it I see in myself, if that makes sense. But then I'm one of the creepy Radio Disney critics!

I think your insights are right on, and it echoes something that, IIRC, dickmalone said in re: the "two types of poptimist critics" or whatever, #1 being the "sounds and producers" type and the other being the "ideas and auteurs" type (auteur being the closest shorthand I can get to a less-distancing idea of "persona," or "artist-object" or something). But I've always been firmly in camp 2, because to me it's a lot harder to have an intellectual conversation about sounds. They interest me, but only as a gateway to conversation -- they so rarely are the focal point of the conversation, even if it's not impossible. I think there's plenty of, e.g., instrumental, dance, and other music that facilitates deeply intellectual conversations; but tracking production teams through their minimalism, e.g., just doesn't strike me as being all that much fun. Hence the focus on CASSIE, or the Cassie-idea, over Ryan Leslie's production, or on ASHLEE, or Ashlee-Kara-John, over the guitar sounds (or whatever); these (the guitar sounds) deserve more ink, and I've only tried to get at them somewhat vaguely, but it's not really where the STORY is. The beat in "Come Clean" remix (it sounds like pop-rock because the original was basically a guitar-rock tune!) sounds perfunctory and pre-programmed (it probably is); the interest is a combination of melody and performance, the realm of the auteurs -- the songwriters and singers, not producers. (The guitar line in it perhaps holds a middle ground; like John Shanks's guitar, it's part melody and part production.)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Key distinction here, though, is that the pop-auteur critics, many of whom frequent here, don't want the context of the artist -- a kind of extended intentional fallacy. We're looking for it in the music. This is why Nelly Furtado, say, is such a problematic star for me -- I really think she seems plain dumb in her output, yet so much beauty has been produced with her at the center, it means I have to grapple with the dumbness and process the beauty simultaneously. Not so for more controversial stars -- Paris Hilton, Hilary Duff, Lindsay Lohan -- whose beauty seems, to me, self-evident regardless of how dumb-shit they may appear in whatever reality is reality.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

that should be "daily life context," as in Twitters, interviews, etc. These things are certainly interesting -- I'm so glad I had the chance to actually engage with Brie Larson as an intelligent person, not just as an idea -- but they don't necessarily play a role in the music's ultimate effectiveness.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think it was me who said it and Mike quoted it approvingly. The binary doesn't totally hold up, partly because the content of "Baby One More Time" and Destiny's Child (MAN HATERS!!!!111) was really central to the discussions of those at the time, partly because they're modes of appreciation and, as Steve M says, neither are useless ways of approaching stuff.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Haha, yes I knew you were involved somehow, but you don't get all the credit for writing EVERYTHING brilliant on pop, even if I have to misattribute stuff you said! And yeah, these are fluid types, but there's some...y'know, truthiness to it; it feels right, even if it isn't right. Maybe it's two paradigms, neither of which are clearly attainable as a binary but each of which factor into discussion, often one sphere more than the other.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

http://tomewing.tumblr.com/post/65349721/poptimism-my-part-in-its-downfall

Here you go - long comment from Frank too.

This is also actual PROOF that I use my Tumblr as a notebook, which is my self-justification for it.