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

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Well, I guess what I find confusing (and I bet I'm not the first person to point that out), is that even those critics who tend to rely almost exclusively on critiquing production techniques and ignoring everything else are responding to ideas, because, uh, production techniques are ideas in and of themselves (or the results of ideas, whatever.) So maybe I'm just arguing semantics.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

A good point. Maybe I could put it something more like "sounds" versus "stories," though even then it doesn't seem quite right. I guess I was just trying to recognize what Tom, I think rightly, sees as a split, and define it more precisely. But the problem is that it's a subtler split than any "this versus this" version of it might suggest. There does seem to be some kind of rift between production-centric and more holistic criticism of pop in this decade, though. I don't know if it's any different than any other decade, but it's still an issue.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Well, the version of it I was telling is that the emphasis on production emerged as a tactic and that, like many tactics, it had a degree of blowback.