pop/rocks

I agree with that. I want to be both.
Look, I mean, I have to agree with this:

I also suspect that many of my colleagues, like me, have embraced the anti-rockist critique with particular fervor as a kind of penance, atoning for past rockist misdeeds—for the party line we'd swallowed whole in our formative years and maybe even parroted under our bylines.

But it seems that after reading this that I'm supposed to pick sides. Like, either I can like pop music for real or ironically. Can't I do both? I mean, I really dig "Justified," for real. Or "Since U Been Gone," for that matter. But some pop is just crap, like Celine Dion, and I don't feel that I should be forced to like it just because I like some pop music.

So, I guess I can't be a full-fledged "poptimist." But I find "rockism" really tiresome these days, too. (Although anyone that knows me probably thinks that me condemning rockism is just about as bullshit as when the Beasties started changing the lyrics to all their old songs. I mean, it's part of who you are.) But again, that's how we were brought up. Nevermind was the album that knocked the hair bands into oblivion, but now we're supposed to like and appreciate those same hair bands? And disco? Nuh uh. Doesn't feel right. I agree that pop music can be as artistically valid as rock music (which is a conceit in itself, but one which I'm unwilling engage right now), I guess I'm just not concerned that it all is as valid.

Different music can be great and can be appreciated in different circumstances. Dismissing a single as undeniably awesome as "Since U Been Gone" just because Kelly Clarkson doesn't play the guitar is as lame as going to a houseparty and being forced to listen to tuneless, trendy dreck like Modest Mouse. All types of music can be great, is what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to get to a point in my music listening where it's about about what you like and when you like it, and not about excluding a whole genre based on a contrived label.* **

Or, mejor dicho:

Ideally, poptimism shouldn't be about critics working through their daddy issues and straining to prove that they're hipper than Greil Marcus. It should be about openness to all kinds of music—including music that seems to embody rockist ideals.

But Coldplay is still absolute shit.




*And don't argue with me in the comments about whether or not me liking one band or another in light of this post makes me a hypocrite, because then you're missing the point.

**Like, sometimes the rockists are right, because this is a badass album and the dude is obviously a rockist.