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.
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."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 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.
