the best you can is good enough
So I feel like I have to weigh in on this, if only because the word 'poptimism' seems as good a term for my attitude to music in 2003 as any other, and it's with regard to that year in particular that the validity of that attitude is being questioned. If I stumble while trying to put my thoughts on this together, I plead the excuse that the attitude being offered instead is alien to me almost to the point of incomprehensibility. Here’s a particularly troubling chunk:
"Worth reflecting that in 1985 those who pointed to the obvious poverty of pop in would inevitably have been accused of nostalgia. The tragic fate that awaits such cheerleading should serve as a warning to our current Poptimists. Didn't they know? Couldn't they see they were in a time of privation, of drought? Ask yourself this: is the choice between British Sea Power and Justin Timberlake really that much better than the choice between the Loft and Go West? Is Beyonce much of an improvement on 85's Whitney?"
Dealing with the specifics first: I have no idea who Loft were and I've never heard British Sea Power to my knowledge, so all I can say is you’re goddamn right I’ll take Beyonce over Whitney (as far as I know, the number of tracks recorded by the latter which are actually any cop can be counted on the fingers of one hand, possibly not an unmutilated hand either), and even though Justin seems increasingly intent on making a monkey of himself, I’ll still take two thirds of Justified over Go West (not the worst band of the 1980s by any means).
But the specifics aren’t really the issue here. The idea that there are a bunch of people who were really excited about the pop music of the day in 1985, who are now holding their heads in shame and skulking in the shadows because a few music bloggers have arbitrarily deemed that year to be a nadir in the history books – this is in itself laughable. What exactly is the “tragic fate” that awaits me if I continue in my reckless poptimism? Well, let’s see: the 2021 equivalent of K-Punk will decide that 2003 was a rubbish year for music, and I will be roundly mocked and have only my copy of Speakerboxxx / The Love Below (now deeply reviled by all credible music writers worldwide) to comfort me.
Go on, guess the extent to which I can live with that.
And yeah, nostalgia is a constant of human nature, that’s the whole point – while K-Punk seems to suggest that the pessimists can’t be guilty of it both then and now, but yes, yes they can. Saying “I’ve not heard much stuff that got me excited this year” is one thing, and always fair enough. Buy saying “Where is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing? They have gone like rain on the mountains…” etc etc – that IS nostalgia. And it still crops up all the time: just hang out on a music forum and watch the ‘Am I Getting Old Or Is Music Shit Now?’ threads pass by, regular as migrating birds.
The funny thing is, no matter how often the people who start those threads phrase the question like that, many are unreceptive to the idea that it might be the former option – not necessarily age, but just something about their approach. I’m not assigning blame here: we all need a nudge in another direction every now and again, whether practical (new avenues to provide new opportunities to hear new music) or in regard to our own ways of listening. Nor do I blame individual music fans for being reluctant to admit that this guidance might be needed. No, what I blame is something endemic in the culture of music criticism (which shapes the attitudes of most pop fans, however much we might want to deny it): the idea that your knowledge of popular music past and present has to be as near-encyclopedic as possible. If you don’t have encyclopedic knowledge, you’re obliged to fake it: what you cannot do is admit that maybe you’re just out of the loop.
This is pernicious precisely because admitting the possibility that one is out of the loop should always be the first recourse before one damns an entire year. If I say it’s been a good year for pop music, what I mean is that there has been sufficient music released this year that I’ve found enjoyable for me to feel satisfied. Whereas if I say this has been a bad year, I mean that I have failed to find enough music I enjoy – and doesn’t it require a certain amount of arrogance to assume that this is in no way a failure of my own? Sadly, this arrogance is pretty much a central requirement of ‘proper’ music criticism. (One of the reasons why blogs are great is that their highly personal nature frees them up from the need to feign omniscience that plagues the Rock Critic. When your opinion is just yours and not a publication’s, you can be that little bit freerer to be as casual – “I keep hearing that on the radio, it’s fun” – or as militant – “This IS the best song EVER recorded” – as you like.)
But not only does this mentality require music fans to know everything about the past and present, it also demands that they predict the future. The really sad thing about all this is how the writer in question ends the piece:
"(I hold the first TFF album in high esteem: and their decline, their massification and blusterization is symptomatic of everything that went wrong in the Eighties.)"
The pathos of parentheses. I want to buy the guy a drink and say DUDE, so you like the first Tears For Fears album? SO? Why would you burden yourself with feeling bad about it, why would you let your distaste for the band's subsequent work and what it may or may not be "symtomatic" of tarnish your memories or the enjoyment you get from listening to that album now? To think it's the former indie kids turned pop lovers who get accused of letting guilt cloud their judgment!
It's not the responsibility of music fans to answer for how history judges their era. It would be insane to try to do so, because of the way the music industry works. To take the most obvious example, a relatively unique band who achieve success are almost always followed by a stream of vaguely similar but often increasingly inferior bands. Is this a reason to want your favourite band not to sell any records, not to come to wider attention? Should I be worrying about my enjoyment of the Scissor Sisters record because we may soon see a rash of acts being signed and lauded who have an ounce of the style and none of the tunes? Well, there are people who do think like that, I know. But to me, like I said: insane.
To be honest, the idea of sitting around and thinking “1985: that was a dark year for music – how on earth do we stop that from happening again?” seems like an enormously unproductive, unenjoyable and just plain unnecessary way to pass the time. It reminds me of something my mate Cavsy likes to say: "We fought in the Britpop wars, and lost - but the world was a better place for it" - a joke at the expense of the accepted history, because how do you know? How do you know that the pop landscape turned out better because you were buying Elastica and Pulp records but telling as many people as you could that Cast were a pile of shite? You don’t. That’s not why you did it. It should never be why you do it, not really. To base your tastes on “will this album be hailed as an innovative classic, or be found in many a car boot sale?” is lunacy. It is suicide for your enjoyment of music.
In the end, this also makes me think of probably the smartest thing Matthew ever wrote:
"Importance and relevance is a scam and a trap. Don't bother with it. Don't think too much about it. Once you stop thinking about things in those terms, all of music and art becomes far more enjoyable."
***
A possibly off-topic addendum inspired by some of the comments on the K-Punk piece over at that link, and other things: it strikes me as ironic that it’s the “poptimists” who are accused of being in love with novelty, when it’s the killjoys who become so jaded so quickly. The Neptunes productions? Played out. Timbaland & Missy? Boring. Pharrell Williams? Overexposed, and therefore no longer any good. I’ll admit that Clones failed to light my ass on fire in the way I’d expected, but it sure has its moments – The Neps’ crowning achievement in 2003, however, was probably the holy trinity of sparkly, cool breeze pop tunes: ‘Frontin’, ‘Beautiful’, and ‘Change Clothes’. Meanwhile anyone who heard ‘The Jump Off’ and ‘Pass The Dutch’ with open ears knows Tim & Missy can still knock it out the park. I really feel sorry for those hipsters who have suddenly decided they can’t show the same enthusiasm they once did for Missy now that the whole world’s caught on - Miss E… So Addictive may never be surpassed in album terms, but she’s still an extraordinary presence in pop world. Plus, if you’re counting ‘Milkshake’ as a 2003 track, I don’t see how you can deny that The Neptunes filled their annual “staggeringly good record” quota (unless you’re in the tiresomely puritan “Kelis has made a song about sex and thus sold out!” camp).
So I feel like I have to weigh in on this, if only because the word 'poptimism' seems as good a term for my attitude to music in 2003 as any other, and it's with regard to that year in particular that the validity of that attitude is being questioned. If I stumble while trying to put my thoughts on this together, I plead the excuse that the attitude being offered instead is alien to me almost to the point of incomprehensibility. Here’s a particularly troubling chunk:
"Worth reflecting that in 1985 those who pointed to the obvious poverty of pop in would inevitably have been accused of nostalgia. The tragic fate that awaits such cheerleading should serve as a warning to our current Poptimists. Didn't they know? Couldn't they see they were in a time of privation, of drought? Ask yourself this: is the choice between British Sea Power and Justin Timberlake really that much better than the choice between the Loft and Go West? Is Beyonce much of an improvement on 85's Whitney?"
Dealing with the specifics first: I have no idea who Loft were and I've never heard British Sea Power to my knowledge, so all I can say is you’re goddamn right I’ll take Beyonce over Whitney (as far as I know, the number of tracks recorded by the latter which are actually any cop can be counted on the fingers of one hand, possibly not an unmutilated hand either), and even though Justin seems increasingly intent on making a monkey of himself, I’ll still take two thirds of Justified over Go West (not the worst band of the 1980s by any means).
But the specifics aren’t really the issue here. The idea that there are a bunch of people who were really excited about the pop music of the day in 1985, who are now holding their heads in shame and skulking in the shadows because a few music bloggers have arbitrarily deemed that year to be a nadir in the history books – this is in itself laughable. What exactly is the “tragic fate” that awaits me if I continue in my reckless poptimism? Well, let’s see: the 2021 equivalent of K-Punk will decide that 2003 was a rubbish year for music, and I will be roundly mocked and have only my copy of Speakerboxxx / The Love Below (now deeply reviled by all credible music writers worldwide) to comfort me.
Go on, guess the extent to which I can live with that.
And yeah, nostalgia is a constant of human nature, that’s the whole point – while K-Punk seems to suggest that the pessimists can’t be guilty of it both then and now, but yes, yes they can. Saying “I’ve not heard much stuff that got me excited this year” is one thing, and always fair enough. Buy saying “Where is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing? They have gone like rain on the mountains…” etc etc – that IS nostalgia. And it still crops up all the time: just hang out on a music forum and watch the ‘Am I Getting Old Or Is Music Shit Now?’ threads pass by, regular as migrating birds.
The funny thing is, no matter how often the people who start those threads phrase the question like that, many are unreceptive to the idea that it might be the former option – not necessarily age, but just something about their approach. I’m not assigning blame here: we all need a nudge in another direction every now and again, whether practical (new avenues to provide new opportunities to hear new music) or in regard to our own ways of listening. Nor do I blame individual music fans for being reluctant to admit that this guidance might be needed. No, what I blame is something endemic in the culture of music criticism (which shapes the attitudes of most pop fans, however much we might want to deny it): the idea that your knowledge of popular music past and present has to be as near-encyclopedic as possible. If you don’t have encyclopedic knowledge, you’re obliged to fake it: what you cannot do is admit that maybe you’re just out of the loop.
This is pernicious precisely because admitting the possibility that one is out of the loop should always be the first recourse before one damns an entire year. If I say it’s been a good year for pop music, what I mean is that there has been sufficient music released this year that I’ve found enjoyable for me to feel satisfied. Whereas if I say this has been a bad year, I mean that I have failed to find enough music I enjoy – and doesn’t it require a certain amount of arrogance to assume that this is in no way a failure of my own? Sadly, this arrogance is pretty much a central requirement of ‘proper’ music criticism. (One of the reasons why blogs are great is that their highly personal nature frees them up from the need to feign omniscience that plagues the Rock Critic. When your opinion is just yours and not a publication’s, you can be that little bit freerer to be as casual – “I keep hearing that on the radio, it’s fun” – or as militant – “This IS the best song EVER recorded” – as you like.)
But not only does this mentality require music fans to know everything about the past and present, it also demands that they predict the future. The really sad thing about all this is how the writer in question ends the piece:
"(I hold the first TFF album in high esteem: and their decline, their massification and blusterization is symptomatic of everything that went wrong in the Eighties.)"
The pathos of parentheses. I want to buy the guy a drink and say DUDE, so you like the first Tears For Fears album? SO? Why would you burden yourself with feeling bad about it, why would you let your distaste for the band's subsequent work and what it may or may not be "symtomatic" of tarnish your memories or the enjoyment you get from listening to that album now? To think it's the former indie kids turned pop lovers who get accused of letting guilt cloud their judgment!
It's not the responsibility of music fans to answer for how history judges their era. It would be insane to try to do so, because of the way the music industry works. To take the most obvious example, a relatively unique band who achieve success are almost always followed by a stream of vaguely similar but often increasingly inferior bands. Is this a reason to want your favourite band not to sell any records, not to come to wider attention? Should I be worrying about my enjoyment of the Scissor Sisters record because we may soon see a rash of acts being signed and lauded who have an ounce of the style and none of the tunes? Well, there are people who do think like that, I know. But to me, like I said: insane.
To be honest, the idea of sitting around and thinking “1985: that was a dark year for music – how on earth do we stop that from happening again?” seems like an enormously unproductive, unenjoyable and just plain unnecessary way to pass the time. It reminds me of something my mate Cavsy likes to say: "We fought in the Britpop wars, and lost - but the world was a better place for it" - a joke at the expense of the accepted history, because how do you know? How do you know that the pop landscape turned out better because you were buying Elastica and Pulp records but telling as many people as you could that Cast were a pile of shite? You don’t. That’s not why you did it. It should never be why you do it, not really. To base your tastes on “will this album be hailed as an innovative classic, or be found in many a car boot sale?” is lunacy. It is suicide for your enjoyment of music.
In the end, this also makes me think of probably the smartest thing Matthew ever wrote:
"Importance and relevance is a scam and a trap. Don't bother with it. Don't think too much about it. Once you stop thinking about things in those terms, all of music and art becomes far more enjoyable."
***
A possibly off-topic addendum inspired by some of the comments on the K-Punk piece over at that link, and other things: it strikes me as ironic that it’s the “poptimists” who are accused of being in love with novelty, when it’s the killjoys who become so jaded so quickly. The Neptunes productions? Played out. Timbaland & Missy? Boring. Pharrell Williams? Overexposed, and therefore no longer any good. I’ll admit that Clones failed to light my ass on fire in the way I’d expected, but it sure has its moments – The Neps’ crowning achievement in 2003, however, was probably the holy trinity of sparkly, cool breeze pop tunes: ‘Frontin’, ‘Beautiful’, and ‘Change Clothes’. Meanwhile anyone who heard ‘The Jump Off’ and ‘Pass The Dutch’ with open ears knows Tim & Missy can still knock it out the park. I really feel sorry for those hipsters who have suddenly decided they can’t show the same enthusiasm they once did for Missy now that the whole world’s caught on - Miss E… So Addictive may never be surpassed in album terms, but she’s still an extraordinary presence in pop world. Plus, if you’re counting ‘Milkshake’ as a 2003 track, I don’t see how you can deny that The Neptunes filled their annual “staggeringly good record” quota (unless you’re in the tiresomely puritan “Kelis has made a song about sex and thus sold out!” camp).
<< Home