Moving Goalposts: Poptimism and the Tyranny of Consensus

Anyone who writes about music will tell that one of the bigger drawbacks is the "everyone's a critic" social stigma: there's a widespread notion that music critics are failed artists who bring an axe-to-grind mentality to their profession, essentially toiling under the dubious motive of attempting to bring the more successful artists down to their rock bottom level.

The rebuttal to that hamfisted argument is a whole 'nother article in its own right. Yet the stereotype confers a secondary bias against the critic, that being that we "don't like anything". Even that sweeping secondary generalization could spawn any number of blog posts in its own right, but for the purposes of this particular write up I'm most concerned with how the concept of mediocrity often gets "rounded down" in the ear of the beholder to "it sucks", particularly when it comes to popular artists that may not be intrinsically worthless, but often benefit from relentless word of mouth well in excess of their actual skill set.

"Yeah I mean Band X is really not bad at all, but I don't quite get all the fuss"

"X is awesome. Why you gotta hate?"

"Er, I didn't say or even imply that I 'hated' them. I quite enjoy them actually, just at a nominal level which is significantly lower than the boatload of hype they currently enjoy"

"I don't know what any of that means"

"Basically on a scale of 1 to 10 I'd put him at maybe a 7, 7.5..."

"What kind of fence sitting bullshit is that? You either like them or you don't"

"I don't think it's quite that binary, actually"

"You're just walking back your hatred because you know you're wrong. Why do you have to be such a contrarian anyway?"

"Fine, X fucking sucks. Can we order lunch now?"

I jest, but that's not a terribly inaccurate portrayal for how many (most?) verbal discussions on aesthetics I have tend to go down. And I'm not entirely sure how much of this need to vet motivation first is a function of having that critic reputation - similar convos often transpire with no knowledge on the other person's part of my writing career at all - but I doubt if it helps any.

I do think, though, that a lot of the schism in people's opinions has as much to do with how each of us define "mediocrity" (to the extent that we're even recognizing the concept at all) as it does differences in the actual opinions themselves; we may find ourselves agreeing that much more often if we were all using the same baseline definition of where bad rounds up to "so so" meets above average meets exemplary, etc.

In a nutshell, I think that those of that grew up in the post-"Siskel & Ebert" era have been trained to think of entertainment in terms of binary values. I could be wrong there - maybe this goes back a lot further than that - but at the very least I think the "thumbs up/down" mentality of that show helped to cement an overly simplistic, yes or no idea of aesthetic value. Did you like it or not? Yay or nay?

With that mindset the first word out of your mouth has established to the listener what your general opinion is, and if that first word conveys little meaning then your body language makes for a capable substitute: that squint you do when you're engaging in analytical thought? Ah, that's probably a scowl, isn't it?

But mostly it comes down to the language itself, and for seemingly most people "mediocre" is a pejorative term, incorrectly synonymous with "poor" instead of the correct "average". By sheer definition, most works should chart asymptotically close to the median average, and thus mediocrity ought to be the single most common benchmark of all, yet this misconception that it stands for a negative value persists to the point that it's become a fairly useless tool of discourse.

Of course, this discrepancy in definition would be a sidebar gripe at best if it weren't like pulling teeth to clear up any misconceptions after the fact. But for whatever reason once the other party in the discussion has identified you as the opposition they seem to want to go out of their way to keep you on the other side of the fence, regardless of whatever amelioratory explanations you might offer to bridge the gap between opinions.

This symptom reveals an underlying "us vs them" attitude that is certainly a hallmark of our current political landscape, but I'd argue that in terms of aesthetic discussions it has a more immediate influence: poptimism.

As Wikipedia defines it, "the major tenets of poptimism are that pop music deserves the same respect as rock music and is as authentic and as worthy of professional critique and interest". And while on the surface poptimism sounds like a laudable response to rampant elitist thought in music criticism, in practice it often serves the opposite purpose, acting as a sort of axiomatic apologism for anything that has garnered mainstream acceptance... it's the old "1,000,000 people can't be wrong" adage writ large over today's music landscape.

The obvious rebuttal - one which has largely gone without saying throughout the history of criticism, yet seems to go wholly overlooked by the poptimist generation - is that there are any number of marketing factors that dictate what becomes popular beyond the value of the art itself. From the overt payola of the 1950's to the Clearchannel domination of the airwaves in the 21st century, it's an uphill case to be made that popular music is now, or has ever been, a meritocracy.

Not that it need be an either/or proposition: it would be no less arbitrarily binary to assume that just because something enjoys mass acceptance that it is automatically undeserving of critical praise (ie. that its appeal rise no higher than "guilty pleasure" at best), but at the same time shouldn't it also be kind of a given that we sometimes elevate mediocre music beyond its intrinsic value due to some external factor, ie. it has a cute video or the singer is hot? I'd say that the history of forgotten top 40 acts of the past - not to mention the notable "one hit wonder" effect - is compelling evidence that, in fact, we as a culture do that very thing with the utmost frequency.

This is not a new phenomenon, obviously. The popular songs of the moment that folks will still immediately recall a decade or more down the line have always been the rare exception to the rule, with the majority of disposable pop hits being exactly that: disposable tunes that sound fine in the moment but which will be superseded almost immediately with an overlapping succession of endless tunes with similar appeal.

On the other end of the spectrum, with "indie" or experimental types of music, it is no less difficult to suss out what people will still be listening to a decade or more down the road; this will likely be largely a function of whether or not superior works in the same vein overwrite the existing music's value to history. But I would argue that at the very least an attempt is being made to isolate the more timeless of these works, so are we saying that pop music - much of which is intended for no higher purpose than to stick in the craw just long enough for the next single by the same artist to see release - deserves an edge over its more ambitious, underground peers on account of aspiring to less in the first place?

"But wait", you say, "not all pop music lacks ambition to begin with. This is a straw man argument". Believe it or not, I don't disagree, but for me this is where the definition of "pop" gets problematic to begin with. If we define "pop" as simply "popular" music, then yes, I would say that in terms of critical appraisal it warrants absolutely no merit in terms of its popularity alone. If, however, we define "pop" in the historical context of catchy, melodic music with a sense of accessible immediacy intended for wide crossover appeal, then does it really matter whether it successfully achieves this mainstream crossover or not?

The reason I ask is because, to my ears, stuff like Sia and Grimes totally counts as pop music, and indeed both have achieved a healthy measure of success even if neither is necessarily a household name, but to the average poptimist one can still enjoy artists such as these two, Florence & the Machine, St. Vincent, M83 etc. but nonetheless maintain an axe to grind with pop music in general, the idea I guess being that if one can enthuse over these acts but find nothing of value in platinum selling pop artists like Adele, Taylor Swift, Drake, etc then it must therefore be because one is assessing an anti-populist cap on how many people are allowed to like an artist to begin with before a misanthropic backlash kicks in.

Perhaps... I mean, there are certainly countless examples of expressed opinions that would fit well within that bias, so obviously the mentality exists. But on the other hand it seems useless to infer that just because someone digs Grimes they should also be a Taylor Swift fan. There is a sort of restless edginess to Grimes that provides an interesting counterpoint to the immanent catchiness of her music that doesn't seem particularly present in the more straightforward work of Taylor Swift (or Carly Rae Jepsen, to name another unapologetic top 40 pop star that has been systematically overvalued of late).

In fact, for many of us the lack of appeal in a Swift or Jepsen is due in no small part to the absence of personality or individualism in their paint-by-numbers songs. The Beatles could pull off disposable because they were pretty much the best ever at what they did, but on a smaller, less ambitious scale the barrier of entry is much, much higher for me as the level of talent decreases exponentially.

God only knows the tropes and templates of modern pop music are not alien to me, so it's certainly not that I don't "get it" on a broad scale, but there's little that seems compelling over the long range for me in a Carly Rae Jepsen, which makes me wonder if our primary difference is that I am maybe myopically obsessed with the future whereas my poptimist opponent is conversely unable to see any further into the future than next week's Billboard chart? Maybe I'm missing the opportunity to enjoy the moment, who knows? What I do know is that if you repeat something often enough at the expense of alternatives, then people have a tendency to rationalize the good parts while ignoring the faults. All I ask is that we try to rule out the latter before we assume any inherent bias against payola pop.

Dylan Beale - Tri-Fusion X J-Wing (Sirpixalot Dubplate Acapella)

Only recently becoming familiar with Sirpixalot but apparently this cat has a regular show on Radar Radio and is a regular fixture on UK dance programs. This particular track has Sirpix combining J-Wing's "Dublate Acapella" and Dylan Beale's "Tri-Fusion" instrumentals with the  Radar Radio DJ/Producer rhyming over top. The whole thing is sampled from an old Wolverine game (Adamantium Rage) from 1994. Level up, bitches.

Throwback 1989 || Orbital "Chime"

Largely a victim of "what have you done for me lately?" status, Orbital emerged at the turn of the 1990's as an instrumental dance duo to be reckoned with, and "Chime" was not only their entry point into crossover acceptance but also one of the grand compositional epics that cemented acid house/techno's imperative to be taken seriously.

Bearing all the upbeat, X-static hallmarks of underground club music of its day, "Chime" double down by demanding an exacting attention span: the song builds and builds to a near-10 minute climax in a different manner than most extended tracks of its day, which largely just consisted of repeating the main hook over and over, with just enough filler downtime to get dancers anticipating the reintroduction of the main theme. "Chime" took a slower simmering build that compounded rather than repeated itself, in a way that much anticipated trance (the drone-like German kind, not fucking Darude).

The result is an endlessly remixed classic whose staying power is not only attributable to its innate excellence but also its malleability: in spite of the sprawl this track was designed by birth to be torn down and built back up again in other DJ's images, from further acid house excursions to drum & bass, breakbeat and beyond.

The Record Industry Is In Decline, and I Am Part of the Problem

"Piracy is stealing!"

"Support the artists, otherwise there won't be any music industry left to enjoy!"

Record sales have been slipping steadily since an all-time peak in the 1990's, and record sales have always been the key component of artist success in the music industry, so if the music industry is in dire straits there's a clear root problem to be solved there: you. You're not buying enough. I know I'm certainly not, but I suppose I can afford to be a bit glib with my headline there since, as a longtime music critic, I tend to get my promos for free anyway. Sure, they tend to be almost exclusively digital files these days, but I doubt too many level headed pundits would honestly expect me to go out and spend $15 on a physical copy of an album that I'd gotten for free and played to death two months ago.

Or maybe they would. This issue tends to inspire impassioned arguments which are not always beholden to logic or reason, and when you consider that those arguments are positioned as sticking up for the artists first and foremost, well... the arguer has little incentive to shore up holes in their rationale. They get to be "right" in some capacity or another either way.

I'm certainly not here to revel in the paucity of largesse I'm currently throwing at the recording industry myself, nor to encourage you to give up that completist vinyl jones, but in the interest of maybe coming up with more practical solutions to restoring the recording industry's preeminence it seems to me that there's value in picking apart the axiomatic assumptions at the heart of the most common complaints, many of which have been cyclically making the rounds for years with little acknowledgment that maybe their lack of results is a direct function of faulty premises to begin with.

First off, there's the assertion - usually writ large with moralistic implications - that as fans we are beneficiaries of the artist's talent and are obligated to compensate them accordingly. When positioned within the context of such a broad dictum it's hard to argue against that point, although the actual means in which we compensate the artists is usually given a much slimmer interpretation: you buy their music, the same as your parents did and their parents before them.

This argument is not so much flawed as it is anachronistic: it made a lot more sense in the pre-streaming heyday of Napster and Limewire in which it originated, when for all practical purposes there were still only two means of acquiring music: buying the CD or illegally downloading it off of the internet. In 2016, illegal downloading has been almost entirely supplanted by streaming options like Spotify and Pandora, but in spite of the above board legality of these streaming options we as consumers are still admonished for supporting these streaming services due to the services themselves offering below subsistence compensation (WELL below, in pretty much all cases) to the artists. We are informed, in stern intonations meant to impart that we should have known as much without having to be told, that until streaming services are able to at least approximate the lost revenue of traditional album sales they are, if anything, a part of the problem and not the solution.

"Very well", a typical consumer might not be remiss in thinking, "but what the hell does that have to do with me?" It's an interesting conundrum in that the record industry is not the only multinational empire struggling to adapt to a changing tech paradigm, although it is arguably the only one of which it is widely implied that the consumer himself bears some large portion of the burden in solving. The U.S. Auto Industry has found itself in serious peril several times over the years (the most recent of which roughly coincided with the subprime mortgage crisis of the previous decade), but I imagine a Manhattanite getting by just fine on the subway and saving himself a pretty penny in expensive parking fees in the process would be surprised to hear that he had a patriotic duty to go out and buy a Chrysler (in this analogy the government bailouts obviously hadn't happened yet).

While it's a perfectly understandable instinct to go to bat for a relatable artist with which one feels a kinship, on the other hand it's all too easy to overlook the shifting economics of the average consumer's monthly expenditures over the last twenty years. In 1999, the year Napster broke, the average American still had dial up internet and used a land line. The monthly nut we now allot to tech alone has swelled to consume much of the expendable income that we used to throw at our record collections in the 90's (a decade where used CD sales provided a sort of warm-up debate to the filesharing woes right around the corner). Many of us spend close to $100 a month for a combined voice/data plan on a single smartphone; that money would have bought you roughly half a dozen albums at $15 a pop back in the day, surely an at least marginally higher number than the average music buyer was throwing down for each month even at the peak of 90's album sales.

And that apologia completely belies the fact that, so long as Spotify, Tidal, etc are legal, ongoing concerns, the consumer has no obligation to spend his or her money acquiring a physical music library when their needs are being met at a much lower price point and with greater convenience elsewhere... as far as the consumer is concerned, the fight for equitable compensation is entirely between the artist and the licensee, and doesn't require consumer arbitration any more than any other contract dispute between content providers and the intellectual property owners they seek to do business with. For many people that are bewildered at the fact that they're being chastised for not doing more to solve a high-level business conundrum, the very airing out of such internecine grievances represents unsavory dirty laundry which should be handled in-house, behind the scenes.

The imperative to continue purchasing physical media is further undermined by the admission among many existing collectors that, in spite of an enviable stockpile of vinyl that would make the Library of Congress blush, they nonetheless do the vast majority of their listening via streaming... for the convenience.  Well, shit, if even the lifers that never gave up the fight to begin with are still getting their most frequent fix from Spotify or Youtube, how reasonable is it to expect the more casual fan to pony up $10-15 a clip for a physical (or even MP3) album that they'll never actually use? Industry enthusiasts have been playing the shame game with consumers since the advent of filesharing, and the little they have to show for it has never caused them to question that maybe their arguments are one-sided and reductionist?

Another consideration is that, at least in terms of underground or only semi-commercial music, there is simply more material coming out every year than ever. That's not meant to be a cynical denial of the diminishing economics of a reeling industry, but rather an acknowledgment that the ability for a hardcore music fan to stay on top of current trends in 2016 is almost entirely predicated on the idea of the vast majority of that listening being of a free nature. Like it or not, the barrier of entry in getting new music exposed has ensured that only the wealthiest among us could possibly hope to pay for everything we listen to and still expect to maintain any kind of genre expertise within the scope of those purchases.

Very well, let's assume it's not an all or nothing deal, that we're allowing for a reasonable amount of free "skimming" so long as the consumer continues to purchase the music they listen to most frequently. How many repeat streams trigger the obligation to purchase the album rather than continue streaming it? No two people would arrive at the same answer to that question, which makes the whole thing unenforceable, if not downright asinine. In fact, the mere willingness to allow for any degree of free skimming by nature removes the matter from the sphere of ethics and makes it a subjective, practical concern. A mathematical problem, not a moral imperative.

It also doesn't help that the labels themselves have often treated their most loyal customer - the completist - with increasing degrees of bad faith. The people most likely to buy your albums are the ones with the mindset of an archivist: they enjoy seeking out rare pressings, imported b-sides and the like. What they don't enjoy doing is paying full retail for multiple domestic versions of an album just because the Best Buy pressing has one exclusive bonus track, the Target pressing another, etc. And that speaks nothing of the even more common iTunes versions, which in many cases either collects all of the bonus tracks available in various physical editions into one digital package, or even more frequently offers extensive bonus content not available in any physical edition.

Collectors being collectors, they tend to prefer their amassed libraries all in one place, and of a type. For some that may mean a bunch of daisy-chained hard drives full of MP3s, for others that will be a shelf full of vinyl, but for almost no one does it imply a partial discography on physical media, another piece of it in lossy MP3 and the remainder of it settled for on a streaming service. Insisting that such an anal retentive mindset (and again, this is the last bastion of your target demographic here) conform to the vagaries of confusing, unsatisfying - and, ultimately, expensive - marketing decisions just further erodes the case for spending disposable income on large music collections of questionable endurability and fragmented presentation.

So the record labels are unsympathetic and the consumer's financial loyalty is being pulled in a million different directions... where does this leave the artists themselves? That's still the million dollar question, really. Sympathy for the livelihood of the musician (including the purely selfish desire to see them continue making music as opposed to, I don't know, painting houses) is the driving force behind these handwringing arguments about the future of the music industry in the first place; nobody's fussing about whether Def Jam or Columbia will continue to be thriving labels in the year's to come, it's all about keeping the artists in play. I don't have any ready made solutions, unfortunately, but there simply has to be better ideas out there than insisting on semi-voluntary patronage, throwing Scooby snacks their way based on individual discretion, no longer tied to any actual unit of fixed value.

THROWBACK 1973 || The Southside Movement "I've Been Watchin' You"

"I've Been Watchin' You" is perhaps best known for the plethora of hip hop songs the opening riff has been sampled for: Brotha Lynch Hung's "24 Deep", Diamond D's "It's Nothin'", Beastie Boys' "So What'cha Want"... the list goes on.

Starting off in Chicago as the backing band for (even more obscure) soul duo Simtec & Wylie, the Southside Movement recorded their self-titled debut in 1973 for Wand Records. The next year's follow up, Movin', produced another oft-sampled track in "Save the World". After releasing a third album in 1975, the band dissipated.

Giovanni James: "Shame On You"

Giovanni James is a hot young talent about which I've been able to dig up very little, aside from the facts that he has been picked up by major label Warner Brothers with only two singles under his belt, of which "Shame On You" is the most recent. It will be interesting to see if WB allows him to develop along this stylistically singular display of talent, or if they will insist on pairing him up with EDM/trap producers and attempt to mold him into a crossover pop star.

Harriet: "American Appetite"

I suppose this single has been out for a few months but I'm just now catching up with this week's release of Harriet's debut album of the same title, American Appetite. There's an almost gospel-like urgency in the arrangement that no doubt owes a great deal to the contributions of keyboardist Alex Casnoff, who used to play in Dawes, one of the more sweeping, expansive sounding bands in the Americana/roots rock genre of the past decade. The spare logistics crescendo as the song peaks to swelling effect, with Casnoff's own vocals providing a warbling, uncertain counterpoint. Dawes' loss is Harriet's gain, and ours as well.

Black Tusk: "Desolation of Endless Times"

Black Tusk is not the only Savannah-based metal band to face vehicular-based tragedy in the last year or so: while their own bass player Jonathan Athon lost his life in a motorcycle accident in late 2014, fellow Georgians Baroness collectively survived a tour bus crash, only for two of their members to have to bow out of the band due to critical spinal injuries afterward. But whereas there is a certain amount of resigned pathos to be found on the latter's new Purple album, Black Tusk come roaring back pissed and looking for a fight as ever on new single, "Desolation of Endless Times".

RIP Thin White Duke

Unlike news outlets, who smartly compile obituaries for celebrities ahead of time so all they have to do is plug in the date and cause of death when it finally occurs, I'm never really prepared for these sorts of things. Especially when the artist in question does such a commendable job of keeping their condition on the DL. So, that said, I'm going to collect my thoughts and come back with something more meaningful here in the next few days, but pending a full eulogy I leave you with a representative slice of David Bowie genius, and while it would be both easy and expected to post something off of his carefully crafted farewell, last week's Blackstar, I'm going to skip the obvious ("Lazarus"? Really?) and go with something that straddles the line between apt and distasteful, which is for me the dichotomy that Bowie did best.

Tindersticks: "Were We Once Lovers?"

Tindersticks are pretty O.G. when it comes to this whole dialed down, darkened mellow shit. Starting off in the early 90's as an early, fairly straightforward chamber pop ensemble - think Belle & Sebastian on methadone but with surprisingly advanced musicianship - the band have spent the past two decades mutating that sound slightly but never deviating too jarringly from their central ethos. "Were We Once Lovers?" attests to this, the chamber pop elements subdued up front but gently creeping in over the gently shuffling indie pop backbone as the song advances.