Come back Simon Reynolds all is forgiven

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

Come the 21st century, however, and the mainstream began to congeal into a certain beige perma-blandness, neither soulful or soulless, semi-tasteful, efficient pop fare made by capable, acceptable sorts, a music rich in everything but inspiration.

Oh good grief...

Comments

Old man says 'kids these days wot r they like'

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Pop is no more or less bland now than it was in the 70s or 80s.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

David Stubbs has never liked pop, he's just pretending that he used to like it. The 1982 example is a massive giveaway - none more safe :)

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

I have borrowed that very argument for the comments box below.

That article would appear to be a masterclass in the art of leaving out the inconvenient bits that don't fit the argument.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's not that 1982 is a bad example for pop being awesome - pop was awesome in 1982! But it's sort of like talking about the best football team ever and saying "ah yes, Brazil in 1970". It might be that you've seen a lot of football and have no hesitation in choosing 1970's Brazil outfit as the greatest side. Or it might be that you don't really care about football but are aware that this is an example people won't really quibble with.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

interesting analogy (altho i say that about pretty much every football/pop comparison). maybe pop now is too "G14"? i can see the BPI lot in their suit and tie genuinely convinced that they operate "the best league in the world". But I suppose that was ever so.

[celentari.livejournal.com]

Same thing:
Best film? The Godfather

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

everyone of a certain age is increasingly become a parody of themselves :(

ps ADORNO ON A POGO-STICK!

[plumsbitch.livejournal.com]

wot Kat said. Lazy writing too.

[rechabite.livejournal.com]

FWIW Wingco has never really been in bed with pop; he spent the whole of 1984 listening exclusively to Stockhausen. Simon R wasn't that different; I used to sell records to both of them back in the eighties Music Market day. Wingco was well up on his Soul Weekender funk 12-inches though; Laura and I used to go to his club nights at St Clements where he'd play things like Vicki D's "This Beat Is Mine" and Evelyn King's "I'm In Love" to ourselves plus about three confused Goths. Great days to be sure.

Don't really see what the deal is with willing necrophilia towards decade's end - the death of XYZ - on the part of fortysomething Oxbridge music punters though, yours sincerely, fortysomething Oxbridge music punter ahem.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Quick, someone commission Paul Oldfield on the death of polka!

[rechabite.livejournal.com]

Works for the Potato Marketing Board in Cowley, does our Paul.

The death of polka? Has no one heard "Must Be Santa"?

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

"Must Be Santa" is coming soon to the Advent Calendar :)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Not that he's entirely wrong though - the charts are an erratic mechanism for reflecting exciting stuff and they haven't done that as well as they might.

[ms-bracken.livejournal.com]

That is a much more nuanced point than the one he is making though! ("Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone / I don't like Lily Allen very much")

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Stevie T pointed out on Twitter that I make a lot of the same points as Stubbs in this piece:

http://pitchfork.com/features/poptimist/6716-poptimist-9/

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Well, I think this is kind of what he's getting at with his "the real story is at the margins where Sunn O live"

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

I think the Lex hit the nail on the thread over on the Quietus ILM thread, chiefly:

"how you can write an article like that and not even get anywhere near to the real story of the decade i have no idea - that it's not any genre that's dying, it's the music industry, and that the tabloidism and default to conservatism of pop recently is a consequence of that."

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

The conclusions show that what he thinks is the standard for genuine quality, daring music is rock (which is why his classic examples are almost all rock-sensibility poppish acts). This has been a dubious narrowness since rock was born, whenever that was, but it's insane over the last couple of decades.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

Has there ever been a time where music was free of middle aged and old people saying things analogous to "it were all fields around here when I were a lad"?

"it were all FACTORY round here when i was a lad"

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

\0/

"it were all HOUSE round here when I was a lad"

[plumsbitch.livejournal.com]

etc.

[agincourtgirl.livejournal.com]

So I take it that there's a lot of swearing in this piece? Because the library computer won't let me see it due to 'profanity' (also 'pornography' for what it's worth).

Pop is great now, pop is always great because music is always great. Of course, it depends on what you call 'pop' I suppose...

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I really should update the poptimists user info :)

[agincourtgirl.livejournal.com]

:-)

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

It's blocked for me too. If I press 'Esc' immediately after the page loads and before the censor kicks in, I can read a screen's worth. Which was enough tbh.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

I have no problem reading it (apart from indignation, etc.), and I can't see what is there to block. Perhaps 'Cheeky Girls' is a trigger for your server...

fnar

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

the cheeky girls can trigger my server any ect zzz

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

Well, that was a lovely example of a logical fallacy.

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

Other commenters have already made most of the sensible points I would have made. But frankly, I think anyone whose raison d'ecrire is to fanboy Paul fuckin' Morley, deserves everything they get and then some.

And I ADORE post-punk pop sensibilities - give me 1982 any day you like. But using those acts as lazy flag-waving, balustrade-storming battering rams (mixed metaphors ftw) against young persons' chart music is borderline insulting - it's not as if music journalists at the time weren't making the same argument Stubbs is *about* ABC, Heaven 17, Soft Cell, blah blah zzzz! His presentism is very nearly astounding.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Some random samples of those occupying the charts throughout the decade give a sense of the encroaching flavourlessness. So, in December 2002, we have Blue & Elton John, Robbie Williams, Gareth Gates, Eminem, Las Ketchup, S Club 7, Pink, The Cheeky Girls, Daniel Bedingfield and Atomic Kitten. In December 2004, it's a revived Band Aid version of 'Do They Know It's Christmas', Natasha Bedingfield, Ice Cube, Nelly and Christina Aguilera, Green Day, Destiny's Child, Girls Aloud, U2. The winter of 2006, meanwhile, yielded Take That, Nelly Furtado, Gwen Stefani, Jamelia, U2/Green Day, Justin Timberlake and Emma Bunton.

Phew, I'm glad that all of those artists listed together like that after the word "flavourlessness" explains itself.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I mean for chrissakes, he qualifies this statement with THIS: "overall there is the sense of carefully honed and varnished acts produced by a sophisticated machine manned and womanned by people who know their pop heritage, and doubtless in their private lives are passionate about their Marvin Gaye and Bob Marley."

Yes, I see exactly how that applies to everyone on that list who is not Eminem or the Cheeky Girls. Why do people who demonstrably have no interest whatsoever in a subject find reasons to write at length about it?

I mean, yes, there's an argument to be made about the ways in which pop might homogenize or worsen or any number of negative things that I wouldn't necessarily dismiss out of hand over the course of a decade. But in order to figure that out you'd probably have to listen to some of it first.

[plumsbitch.livejournal.com]

Why do people who demonstrably have no interest whatsoever in a subject find reasons to write at length about it?

Visibility? Profile? Money?

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

B-b-b-b-but, that would mean that there's something downright cynical about all of these pieces!!! *naivete crushed*