“When fans discuss the virtues of their favorite pop artists, the commonest and highest point of respect is that they work very hard.” Every time I ask what’s so special about TS. This piece was excellent, btw.
It's so much healthier to define yourself by what you bring to the world rather than what you take from it. When I was a teen, someone insulting something I liked felt like an attack on ME. Then I grew up and realized that what you do is infinitely more important than what you consume (even if the two can be closely related). Corporations don't care about your feelings either way, except insofar as they can be used to milk you for money.
Right. When I was deep into Marilyn Manson fandom (I don't think "fandom" was part of the lexicon yet though), I got reeeaally rankled whenever I read a critical blurb in a magazine, went on a message board and saw someone complaining about the pivot towards glam rock in Mechanical Animals, or heard anyone daring to suggest that he *might* be a coked-out bullshit artist. An attack on Manson was, as you said, an attack on me. So I get where Kpop stans and Swifties are coming from.
But then again—I was a Mansonite when I was a *teenager.* I don't know what excuse the thirtysomething Taylor Swift obsessive has—though I can speculate.
I've been reading your stuff for about a decade or so now on various sites including your blog. One of the 3 or 4 sites I still read. Grrat stuff.
Love this post. Ive said this for a few years now about pop but really noticed its ramped up on the past 3 or 4 years. What really pushed it over the edge for me and sealed the deal was when Kpop became the biggest music in the world among bssically the planet under 20.
When I was younger, hanging with my small group of outcast friends listening to Type O Negative, Fear Factory, and Aphex Twin, we always wondered who itvwas actually listening to and buying Spice Girls. Seems like the answer was actually, everyone.
I blame the internet for this. The physical barriers that created associated cultural channels no longer exist in the digital world. The previously balkanized music scene is gone; we're in a soviet world where the pop state ruoes with am iron fist. "In soviet music scene, genre chooses YOU!" (in my best Yakov Smirnov voice)
But has it ever actually been any different? Maybe we just like to think that in our time, music stood for more. Is it possible that it was aways juat hustle culture veiled as art and originality, flavoured with what they knew would appeal to us?
It was always the case. It's sort of like the nostalgia-tinged branch of vaporwave: we're looking back fondly on an earlier stage of neoliberalism, one with a different production and distribution schemes and a different cultural vibe, some of the prominent wavelengths of which were residual Gen X skepticism and gloom, anxiety about (or related to) being the world's sole geopolitical/economic hyperpower, antipathy towards the ascendant Evangelical Right, an inchoate anticorporatism (which 9/11 nipped in the bud), etc. etc.
A large and diverse cross-section of the population wanted culture products that reflected their ambivalent mood back at them. The market provided. When I went goth, it didn't occur to me I was purchasing a readymade identity and announcing to retail sales associates which albums they should recommend to me.
I think what's changed is the idea that popular music (rock in particular) can act as a vehicle for subversion and real cultural transformation, that you can sell five million records, sit in the audience at the Grammys, live in a mansion, and actually be thought of as a rebel. Kurt Cobain wanted to be famous, but it seems to me he wanted to be famous on his own terms. He didn't realize he was signing up to be a product. Modern pop stars do, and we're fine with that, and hustle culture's most committed subscribers admire them simply on the basis that they had the will and the drive to do what it took to succeed. If they're succeeding at being the musical analogue to McDonald's, that's beside the point.
After seeing them here, I had to read the wiki on the New Radicals, where I found this gem:
"Following the mass media's excitement about the celebrity insults, Alexander explained that the verse, along with the lines directly preceding it ("Health insurance rip off lying / FDA big bankers buying / Fake computer crashes dining / Cloning while they're multiplying") were an experiment to see if the media would focus on the real issues, or on the celebrity ridicule"
Also, though this would have Bill Hicks turning in his grave, the greatest artist of the 20th century, the one who's gonna be remembered for 500 years, is, easily, without a shadow of a doubt, *Walt Disney*. Yes. Walt Disney is the most significant artist of the 20th century. Most original, most influential, most impactful, with work of the highest quality. Leader of a transformative school of people, too. The Miyazaki of his day, as it were, but breaking new ground. Despite being the most commercial, by far. I don't necessarily like it, but it's true. I will defend this statement to the hilt if necessary.
Maybe. But I think the semantics of "artist" have been slow to adapt to a new reality, and the word was probably made to do more work than was reasonable. Walt Disney was a man of vision, he was creative, talented, etc. etc.—but if we're leaning on the same romantic definition of "artist" that Bill Hick was, it doesn't fit. For obvious reasons, an "artist" to Hicks was a solitary man of genius who worked a canvas, wrote a poem, composed and played songs on his guitar, etc. etc.—a valuation he inherited from the late 18th and early 19th centuries (when the Romantic movement waxed powerful) and which was formulized/popularized by the likes of Kant, Ruskin, etc, and found purchase in the postwar years with the popularity of Ginsberg, Dylan, Hendrix, et al.
If we're using THIS sense of the word, Disney was more of a manager than an artist. A brilliant manager who oversaw the production of an amazing product line, but one who resembled Steve Jobs more than Picasso. I'm not saying that devalues what Disney accomplished—I'm saying that culture production has to changed to such and extent over so relatively short a time that the language we've inherited to describe the producers, the process, and the yield have become disjointed. (But "art" was ALWAYS an ambivalent word.)
Also—given where I was at the time, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I only remember the lines about Courtney Love and Marilyn Manson in "Get What You Give." I like the song a lot more now than I used to, but I only ever hear it when I'm shopping for groceries.
It's like looking into a time portal, isn't it? I also get wistful whenever I revisit Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music; in both cases I wonder what new iterations updated for the present would look like.
“When fans discuss the virtues of their favorite pop artists, the commonest and highest point of respect is that they work very hard.” Every time I ask what’s so special about TS. This piece was excellent, btw.
Thanks! I try very hard not to think about TS or say anything specific about her. It only makes the apparition more concrete.
would die to be this knowledgeable on this subject, incredibly interesting
Trust me, you'll be knowledgeable about a whole lot when you get to be my age. Most of it will be trivial, but we work with what we've got.
It's so much healthier to define yourself by what you bring to the world rather than what you take from it. When I was a teen, someone insulting something I liked felt like an attack on ME. Then I grew up and realized that what you do is infinitely more important than what you consume (even if the two can be closely related). Corporations don't care about your feelings either way, except insofar as they can be used to milk you for money.
Right. When I was deep into Marilyn Manson fandom (I don't think "fandom" was part of the lexicon yet though), I got reeeaally rankled whenever I read a critical blurb in a magazine, went on a message board and saw someone complaining about the pivot towards glam rock in Mechanical Animals, or heard anyone daring to suggest that he *might* be a coked-out bullshit artist. An attack on Manson was, as you said, an attack on me. So I get where Kpop stans and Swifties are coming from.
But then again—I was a Mansonite when I was a *teenager.* I don't know what excuse the thirtysomething Taylor Swift obsessive has—though I can speculate.
Sorry was testing post feature first.
I've been reading your stuff for about a decade or so now on various sites including your blog. One of the 3 or 4 sites I still read. Grrat stuff.
Love this post. Ive said this for a few years now about pop but really noticed its ramped up on the past 3 or 4 years. What really pushed it over the edge for me and sealed the deal was when Kpop became the biggest music in the world among bssically the planet under 20.
When I was younger, hanging with my small group of outcast friends listening to Type O Negative, Fear Factory, and Aphex Twin, we always wondered who itvwas actually listening to and buying Spice Girls. Seems like the answer was actually, everyone.
I blame the internet for this. The physical barriers that created associated cultural channels no longer exist in the digital world. The previously balkanized music scene is gone; we're in a soviet world where the pop state ruoes with am iron fist. "In soviet music scene, genre chooses YOU!" (in my best Yakov Smirnov voice)
But has it ever actually been any different? Maybe we just like to think that in our time, music stood for more. Is it possible that it was aways juat hustle culture veiled as art and originality, flavoured with what they knew would appeal to us?
It was always the case. It's sort of like the nostalgia-tinged branch of vaporwave: we're looking back fondly on an earlier stage of neoliberalism, one with a different production and distribution schemes and a different cultural vibe, some of the prominent wavelengths of which were residual Gen X skepticism and gloom, anxiety about (or related to) being the world's sole geopolitical/economic hyperpower, antipathy towards the ascendant Evangelical Right, an inchoate anticorporatism (which 9/11 nipped in the bud), etc. etc.
A large and diverse cross-section of the population wanted culture products that reflected their ambivalent mood back at them. The market provided. When I went goth, it didn't occur to me I was purchasing a readymade identity and announcing to retail sales associates which albums they should recommend to me.
I think what's changed is the idea that popular music (rock in particular) can act as a vehicle for subversion and real cultural transformation, that you can sell five million records, sit in the audience at the Grammys, live in a mansion, and actually be thought of as a rebel. Kurt Cobain wanted to be famous, but it seems to me he wanted to be famous on his own terms. He didn't realize he was signing up to be a product. Modern pop stars do, and we're fine with that, and hustle culture's most committed subscribers admire them simply on the basis that they had the will and the drive to do what it took to succeed. If they're succeeding at being the musical analogue to McDonald's, that's beside the point.
Test
After seeing them here, I had to read the wiki on the New Radicals, where I found this gem:
"Following the mass media's excitement about the celebrity insults, Alexander explained that the verse, along with the lines directly preceding it ("Health insurance rip off lying / FDA big bankers buying / Fake computer crashes dining / Cloning while they're multiplying") were an experiment to see if the media would focus on the real issues, or on the celebrity ridicule"
Also, though this would have Bill Hicks turning in his grave, the greatest artist of the 20th century, the one who's gonna be remembered for 500 years, is, easily, without a shadow of a doubt, *Walt Disney*. Yes. Walt Disney is the most significant artist of the 20th century. Most original, most influential, most impactful, with work of the highest quality. Leader of a transformative school of people, too. The Miyazaki of his day, as it were, but breaking new ground. Despite being the most commercial, by far. I don't necessarily like it, but it's true. I will defend this statement to the hilt if necessary.
Maybe. But I think the semantics of "artist" have been slow to adapt to a new reality, and the word was probably made to do more work than was reasonable. Walt Disney was a man of vision, he was creative, talented, etc. etc.—but if we're leaning on the same romantic definition of "artist" that Bill Hick was, it doesn't fit. For obvious reasons, an "artist" to Hicks was a solitary man of genius who worked a canvas, wrote a poem, composed and played songs on his guitar, etc. etc.—a valuation he inherited from the late 18th and early 19th centuries (when the Romantic movement waxed powerful) and which was formulized/popularized by the likes of Kant, Ruskin, etc, and found purchase in the postwar years with the popularity of Ginsberg, Dylan, Hendrix, et al.
If we're using THIS sense of the word, Disney was more of a manager than an artist. A brilliant manager who oversaw the production of an amazing product line, but one who resembled Steve Jobs more than Picasso. I'm not saying that devalues what Disney accomplished—I'm saying that culture production has to changed to such and extent over so relatively short a time that the language we've inherited to describe the producers, the process, and the yield have become disjointed. (But "art" was ALWAYS an ambivalent word.)
Also—given where I was at the time, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I only remember the lines about Courtney Love and Marilyn Manson in "Get What You Give." I like the song a lot more now than I used to, but I only ever hear it when I'm shopping for groceries.
Your stuff is already so good, but this is fantastic. Missed YourSceneSucks more than I realized.
It's like looking into a time portal, isn't it? I also get wistful whenever I revisit Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music; in both cases I wonder what new iterations updated for the present would look like.
& also thanks for reading!
Ishkur released a major update to his guide in 2019, don't know if you know. I grant you that 2019 was five years ago now, but.
I swear to god I though I'd checked it more recently than that
HOLY SHIT