#rockism

[elitegymnastics]

About ten years ago, I was standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier with Kelefa Sanneh. From where we were standing, we could see downtown San Diego, where Comic-Con was happening. Every street was visibly choked with undulating masses of gooning, sunburnt redditors. As the plastic lanyards they all wore around their necks caught sunlight, they glittered, in aggregate, almost as much as the ocean.

"The Story of Rockism" by Jaime Brooks (2025)

[anotherkindofmindpod]

Dr. Allison Bumsted joins Phoebe and Daphne to discuss how rock journalism in the 1970s re-shaped Paul McCartney’s critical reputation for the next three decades (and beyond).  Also discussed in this episode: authenticity, gatekeeping, rock aesthetics and rhetoric, hyper-masculinity and the inherent inclusivity of pop.  (X)

[hyenabutter]

Not that I really want to give Ryan Adams any more attention than he’s already getting, but something I failed to mention that really bugged me was all that press he got a couple of years ago when he covered Taylor Swift’s 1989 in its entirety: looking at it with the knowledge that’s recently come to light it seems like apart from the commercial coattail-riding, there could pretty easily have been much more sinister ulterior motives behind the decision to cover the record.

But Adams is not really the specific issue here: it’s that whole rockist idea that pop music--and specifically pop music made by women--is just vapid trash, but if a man takes that vapid trash and refashions it in the vernacular of sad white guy music he can legitimize it. 

It’s like how every now and again Miley Cyrus will post some video or appear on an awards show and sing some old country song or something and the responses are always Hey She Can Really Sing. Like...a woman doesn’t have to cut some acoustic folk/blues record to be considered talented. I know this isn’t exactly the most original take on the issue but goddamn. Get over yourself. 

[grommelot]

Salvador Sobral's statement "music is not fireworks" sounds a bit rockist to me. Theatrical performance is a valuable part of a song, and "fireworks" are not a sign of inauthenticity.

Sometimes music and theater are mixed in the same artwork.

[anatomyofaneedle]

Hopefully the debate about ‘nu-metal’ and the hidden racism behind it is finally over.

It's not a secret that since Rock & Roll became a white-skin-only genre rockstars have seen non-traditional instruments-music like Hip-Hop, Pop music or EDM like a piece of shit, something to look down to. Rockism, 'Disco Sucks' and 'selling out' have been part of that strategy.

The reason behind the backlash about nu-metal was not only about taste but a long history of white musical conservatism towards other genres from different backgrounds. Rock and Hip-Hop purists -not all-, conservative and alienated fans, classic-guitar-based-virtuosity-driven culture, ignorants and music industry closed-minded executives are to blame for bullshitting a genre that was rich, diverse, intense, inclusive and invite people from other genres tastes to crossover traditional lines, just as Aerosmith and Run DMC, Public Enemy and Anthrax, and the former and Chemical Brothers did before. Kiss my ass Gene Simmons!

[arthurkrumins]

What does listening mean?

Just turning to Twitter and seeing a couple posts in response to a recent article in The Quietus condemning poptimism’s possible hegemony. The people I follow were quick to point out that while in general the article lacked solid examples, and anyway the claims of poptimism’s possible negative qualities are generally missing the point. It seems like a far better thing to be open to consider the critical merit and value in some sense of a wider variety of music, a plurality of voices (as advocated by poptimism) rather that adhere doggedly to rockism’s central tenets of veneration of rock’s central figures and claims to copyright on artistic integrity and authenticity, and as rock as popular music’s natural state.

My first formal encounter with poptimism’s basic ideas in writing came from the book Let’s Talk About Love by Carl Wilson a couple of years ago. I was very interested to start to think about the ways in which the value we place on music and our listening habits depends on class, as well as gender, regionality, language, and a whole host of intersectional attributes. In discussing his initial aversion to Celine Dion, Wilson made me question my own preconceived notions about what musical styles I might exclude from my listening habits, and that I would downplay in my own taste profile.

I’ll still have to think more about how or what kind of general framework might be useful for analyzing the meaning of music listening in my life. But for now I think I’ll continue to look for alternative ways to form listening habits. Although I must admit that I do feel that what I listen to is informed by critical opinion, whether read online or in a book or ‘zine, or passed on from a friend by word of mouth. I’m still unsure how I feel about the shaky ground I stand on when I base some part of my identity on what I choose to listen to. There’s a part of me that celebrates that. And there’s a part of me that acknowledges the ways that that is constructed, and also problematic.

[fortressofserenity]

Some nuance

As I realised from listening to musicians like Sarah Geronimo, Nat King Cole and Edith Piaf is that there's a difference between not writing your own songs (or playing one's instrument) and being made to fit an image of somebody that you're not, which gives me the impression that the Backstreet Boys and the like are manufactured in a way The Platters, Four Tops and The Temptations aren't, well to the same extent in terms of fitting a prefabricated persona around the person. In this sense that it could be argued that Mina Mazzini and Pilita Corrales are authentic, but in the sense of being merely themselves.

They may not necessarily write their own songs and play instruments, but authentic in the sense of presenting themselves as they are. Well as far as I know about it, that kind of turns notions of authenticity on its head. Especially now that K-Pop boy bands have members who do contribute to music in other, more recognisably rockist ways like doing songwriting and producing themselves, but living out personae that don't necessarily or entirely reflect who they actually are in person. Somebody like Wonho might not necessarily like you if you met him in person, if you ever had the misfortune of encountering his bad side.

Or for another matter, Nick Carter himself whether if you like it or not. But even then I feel there are other ways of expressing musical authenticity, but in the sense of being merely yourself and not be too concerned about living out a public image that somebody crafted for you (or something you crafted for yourself).

[didim-dol]

A decade of sore winners

The underdogs that are top dogs, the upstarts who are establishment — these people refused to admit they had any power, even if they had all

There is something to be said for developing a critical sensibility, in which passion and detachment can coexist and enforce each other, in which things are serious (sometimes deadly serious) without being about you. Politicians aren’t your friends or your teammates; neither are movies, books, or Taylor Swift. In a critical approach, in which the stakes are preserved but depersonalized, it is possible to use strong language without having to lapse into wondering how all of this makes you look, and without invoking an imagined, generally future, audience that will validate you. It means politics is about what politicians offer you, not the hazy world of electoral commentary in which politics is about an inscrutable mixture of personality, “electability,” and narrative.

In the arts, what this means is that passionate engagement and appreciation and hatred can all exist because the things you’re discussing don’t exist for you. They may be commodities, but they aren’t consumable products, like a tube of lipstick or a hamburger. They are rather objects that exist independently from you and with which you can build your own relationship. It means love without identification and hatred without rejection. It is impossible to imagine a critical sensibility that does not exist socially. But it is possible to imagine one in which social paranoia is not foundational, and in which social reception — of work, of ourselves — does not have to determine our reaction to each other.