Rockism and poptimism

Rock musician Pete Wylie is credited with coining "rockism" in 1981.[1]

Rockism is the belief in certain values thought to be intrinsic to rock music, making the genre superior to other forms of popular music.[2] A "rockist" may also be someone who regards rock music as the normative state of popular music.[3] Poptimism (or popism[1]) is the belief that pop music is as worthy of professional critique and interest as rock music.[4] Detractors of poptimism describe it as a counterpart of rockism that instead privileges the most famous or best-selling pop, hip-hop, and R&B acts.[5][6]

Magazines devoted to the serious discussion of popular music first developed in the 1960s and 1970s, with some formative rock critics suggesting that enduring pop music art was made by singer-songwriters using traditional rock instruments on long-playing albums, and that pop hits reside on a lower aesthetic plane as a source of "guilty pleasure".[3] The term "rockism" was coined in 1981 by English rock musician Pete Wylie[2][7][8] and soon became a pejorative used humorously by self-described "anti-rockist" critics in the British press.[2] Originally coinciding with the rise of New Pop in the early 1980s,[8] the term was not generally used beyond small music magazines until the mid 2000s, partly due to the increasing number of bloggers who used it more seriously in analytical debate.[2]

In the 2000s, a critical reassessment of pop music was underway, and by the next decade, poptimism supplanted rockism as the prevailing ideology in popular music criticism.[4] While poptimism was envisioned as the "antidote" to rockist attitudes,[5] opponents of its discourse argue that it has resulted in certain pop stars being shielded from negative reviews as part of an effort to maintain a consensus of uncritical excitement.[9] Others argue that the two viewpoints have similar flaws.[6]

Background

Early rock criticism

Robert Christgau, pictured in 2005, became one of the first professional rock and pop critics. He later criticized Rolling Stone for promoting the "boring rock-as-idealism myth".[10]

Until the late 1960s, "pop" was considered to have the same definition as "rock" or "rock and roll".[11] From the 1960s to the 1970s, music magazines such as Rolling Stone and Creem laid the foundation for popular music criticism[12] in an attempt to make popular music worthy of study.[5] Following the release of the Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, such magazines began drawing a contrast between "pop" and "rock" (with "rock and roll" now referring to the 1950s style),[13] creating a division that gave generic significance to both terms.[11]

"Pop" became associated with music that was more commercial, ephemeral, and accessible.[14] "Rock" became associated with a style of music that was usually heavier and centered on the electric guitar.[15] Because of its complex history and its tendency to borrow from other musical and cultural forms, it has been argued that "it is impossible to bind rock music to a rigidly delineated musical definition."[16] Modern pop music is associated with electronic dance music,[17] whereas musicianship remains a characteristic of rock.[14]

Besides general differences in the musical style, the two words became associated with differing values. British musicologist Simon Frith argued that one of the key characteristics of pop is that it is "provided from on high (by record companies, radio programmers, and concert promoters) rather than being made from below" and "in musical terms, it is essentially conservative."[18] Many early rock reporters believed that rock embodied a particular set of values, such as rebelliousness, innovation, seriousness, and sociopolitical intent.[19] Frith agrees that rock "combined an emphasis on skill and technique with the romantic concept of art as artistic expression, original and sincere."[14]

Not all critics supported the idea of integrating high culture values into rock music, nor did they all argue for the importance of personal expression. In addition, some believed that such values were merely impositions of the cultural establishment. For example, Rolling Stone's Jon Landau wrote in 1968 that "rock is not primarily poetry or art, but something much more direct and immediate than either. Rock and roll has to be body music before it can be head music, or it will wind up being neither". Additionally, Richard Meltzer in 1970 dismissed the idea of "heartfelt personal expression" in rock as "meaningless".[20] Nonetheless, a widespread belief among music critics in the 1960s and 1970s was that truly artistic music was made by singer-songwriters using traditional rock instruments on long-playing albums, and that pop hits reside on a lower aesthetic plane, a source of "guilty pleasure".[3]

Definitions and etymology

Rockism

"Rockism" was coined in 1981 when English rock musician Pete Wylie announced his Race Against Rockism campaign, an inversion of "Rock Against Racism".[7] The term was immediately repurposed as a polemical label to identify and critique a cluster of beliefs and assumptions in music criticism.[21] Former NME writer Paul Morley remembered,

... one or two music journalists writing in the one or two music magazines that existed then were very pleased. I was one of them, and was using the term "rockist" the minute after I read Wylie say it. ... If the idea of rockism confused you, and you lazily thought Pink Floyd were automatically better than Gang of Four, and that good music had stopped with punk, you were a rockist and you were wrong. ... Anti-rockism was always violently pro-pop, largely because we original campaigning anti-rockists had been given such a tough time at school for liking [David] Bowie and [Marc] Bolan and not ELP and Led Zep.[2]

Regarding the definition, music writer Ned Raggett noted: "Every article, every discussion, anything which involves the word seems to get bogged down or get taken apart in ways which prevent there from being any consensus."[21] During the 1990s, to be a "rockist" was defined as demanding a perception of authenticity in pop music despite whatever artifice is needed.[12] Design critic and indie pop musician Nick Currie (aka Momus) compared rockism to the international art movement Stuckism, which holds that artists who do not paint or sculpt are not true artists.[22] Popmatters' Robert Loss wrote that "traditionalism" describes the policing of the present with the past, making it a better word for "rockism".[5]

In 2004, music critic Kelefa Sanneh offered a definition of rockists: "[S]omeone who reduces rock 'n' roll to a caricature, then uses that caricature as a weapon. Rockism means idolizing the authentic old legend (or underground hero) while mocking the latest pop star; lionizing punk while barely tolerating disco; loving the live show and hating the music video; extolling the growling performer while hating the lip-syncher.".[23] He further accused rockists of projecting a sexist, racist, and homophobic point of view.[23] Seattle Weekly's Douglas Wolk acknowledged the loose definition of rockism and proposed: "Rockism, let's say, is treating rock as normative. In the rockist view, rock is the standard state of popular music: the kind to which everything else is compared, explicitly or implicitly."[12]

In 2006, as a response to confusion over what the term meant, Morley said that the definition had "something to do with" the following five points:

Poptimism

There is a name for this new critical paradigm, 'popism'—or, more evocatively (and goofily), 'poptimism'—and it sets the old assumptions on their ear: Pop (and, especially, hip-hop) producers are as important as rock auteurs, Beyoncé is as worthy of serious consideration as Bruce Springsteen, and ascribing shame to pop pleasure is itself a shameful act.

—Jody Rosen, May 2006[3]

Poptimism (also called popism)[2] is a mode of discourse which holds that pop music deserves the same respect as rock music and is as authentic and as worthy of professional critique and interest.[4] It positions itself as an antidote to rockism[5] and developed following Carl Wilson's book about Céline Dion's album Let's Talk About Love and Sanneh's 2004 essay against rockism in The New York Times.[9] In the article, Sanneh asks music listeners to "stop pretending that serious rock songs will last forever, as if anything could, and that shiny pop songs are inherently disposable, as if that were necessarily a bad thing. Van Morrison's 'Into the Music' was released the same year as the Sugarhill Gang's 'Rapper's Delight'; which do you hear more often?"[23] Loss cited Sanneh's article as "a sort of ur-text on poptimism", elaborating:

By its impoverished terms, the rockist represents traditional values of authenticity while the poptimist is progressive, inclusive, and sees through the myths of authenticity. The rockist is nostalgic—the old fart who says they don’t make any good music anymore—while the poptimist looks forward and values the new. The rockist makes Art out of popular music, insists on serious meaning, and demands artists who sing their own songs and play instruments, preferably guitars; the poptimist lets pop be fun and, if not meaningless, slight. The rockist is a purist, the poptimist a pluralist; the rockist is old, the popist is young; the rockist is anti-commercialist, the poptimist could care less.[5]

After Sanneh published his 2004 article, an argument about rockism developed in various web circles.[2] In 2006, music journalist Jody Rosen noted the growing backlash against rock's traditional critical acclaim and the new poptimism ideology.[3] By 2015, Washington Post writer Chris Richards wrote that, after a decade of "righteously vanquishing [rockism's] nagging falsehood", poptimism had become "the prevailing ideology for today’s most influential music critics. Few would drop this word in conversation at a house party or a nightclub, but in music-journo circles, the idea of poptimism itself is holy writ."[4]

Criticism of poptimists

Overlap with rockism

Paul Morley (left), a longtime critic of rockism, argued that many of poptimism's traits were indistinguishable from rockism.

In 2006, Morley derided the seriousness of contemporary music writers: "Many of the self-proclaimed American anti-rockists – or popists, or poptimists, or pop pricks – actually write with a kind of fussy, self-important rockist sheen. And for all their studious over-analysis, any definition of rockism is the same today as it's always been."[2] That same year, Rosen spoke positively of the new movement but forewarned of possible excesses; that a hierarchy of music biased toward pop is no better than one biased toward rock because both genres have respectable qualities that cannot be ignored.[3] A week later, PopMatters' Rob Horning responded to Rosen's writing with a more negative view of poptimism, writing that it is "sad to think the sharpest critics drowning in self-importance while believing they are shedding themselves of it. Basically by rejecting all that was once deemed important by a previous generation and embracing the opposite, you can make the case for your own importance. This is not optimism, it’s reaction."[24]

Writing for The Quietus in 2017, Michael Hann argued that "the poptimists are just as proscriptive as the rockists", and lists the following as a few poptimist "sacred cows, which are beyond challenge":

  • "The solo release by the member of a manufactured group is no longer the sad addendum to the imperial years; it is a profound statement of artistic integrity."
  • "The surprise release by the big-name act is in itself, a revolutionary act."
  • "To not care about Taylor Swift or Beyoncé or Lady Gaga or Zayn Malik is in itself questionable. It reveals not your taste in music, but your prejudices. In the worst-case scenario, you may be revealing your unconscious racism and sexism. At best, you're trolling."
  • "Commercial success, in and of itself, should be taken as at least one of the markers of quality. After all, 50m Elvis fans can't be wrong."
  • "Just as 'authenticity' is worthless as a symbol of a music's worth, so contrivance and cynicism might be elevated and celebrated, as evidence of the maker's awareness of the game they are playing."[6]

According to Loss, rockism and poptimism are ultimately the same thing, and both rockists and poptimists treat music as a social commodity while mystifying the conditions in which music occurs.[5] He adds that—as is common in "a culture wherein history isn't valued much"—poptimism neglects its historical precedents. As it presents itself as a radical break in the discourse of popular culture, older rock critics and journalists are usually depicted as "a bunch of bricklayers for the foundations of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame", a notion which Loss disputes; "Like film studies, rock criticism of the late '60s and the '70s was an attempt to make popular music worthy of study; it was poptimism before its day. It's somehow become generally accepted that rock criticism before the new millennium was overwhelmingly rockist."[5]

Commercial bias

After the 2000s, the effects of poptimism attracted a belief that once a pop star reaches a certain level of stardom, many critics will safeguard them from negative reviews.[9] Richards argued that poptimism cheerleads the already successful while privileging consensus and smothering dissent.[4] New York Times Magazine's Saul Austerlitz called poptimism a product of click-driven internet journalism that aspired to the lowest common denominator while being actively hostile to people who are fans of genres and bands associated with rockism. He further criticized it for allowing pop music fans to avoid expanding their taste and contrasted the types of music lauded by poptimists with the literature and film praised by book and film critics.[25] Loss agreed with Austerlitz's text: "When [he] wrote that '(m)usic criticism's former priority—telling consumers what to purchase—has been rendered null and void for most fans. In its stead, I believe, many critics have become cheerleaders for pop stars,' I imagined an editor and a record label exec swooping down on him saying, "Don't tell them that!" We like to believe criticism is devoid of crass commercialism, but Austerlitz gives away that it never was in the first place."[5] He also noted a minuscule number of lowly-rated albums in publications such as Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and PopMatters, and that "telling consumers what to purchase is still the point of a lot of music 'criticism'."[5]

Hann says that when writers deal with "upmarket" readership, they "need to be able to justify your coverage, and that [means] thinkpieces hailing the cultural significance of the new pop stars. ... And once you've decided these subjects matter, it's hard to turn round and say: 'Actually, you know what? This isn't much cop.'" He recalls his experience as music editor for The Guardian, where he has "been commissioning those pieces, knowing they will be read ... if no one wanted to read about Taylor Swift, you would never see another thinkpiece about her. Instead, we enter an arms race of hyperbole, as we credit her with forcing Apple to change its streaming terms, dismantling the musical patriarchy, creating new paradigms in music and society."[6]

In other fields

Flavorwire's Elisabeth Donnely argued that literary criticism "needs a poptimist revolution" in order to understand current literary phenomena such as Fifty Shades of Grey and better connect with the reading audience.[26] In 2015, Salon published an article subtitled "Book criticism needs a poptimist revolution to take down the genre snobs", in which Rachel Kramer Bussell argued that book critics ignore often very good work and alienate readers by focusing only on genres considered "literary".[27]

Writing for Salon in 2016, Scott Timberg wrote about critics giving more respect to celebrity chef Guy Fieri saying "Love or hate what is called poptimism, the impulse seems to be coming to food and restaurant criticism". Timberg likened food critics "'in defense of' movement" of Fieri to rock critics who "began writing apologias for Billy Joel and composed learned deconstructions of Britney Spears".[28]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Gormely, Ian (December 3, 2014). "Taylor Swift leads poptimism's rebirth". The Guardian.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Morley, Paul (May 25, 2006). "Rockism - it's the new rockism". The Guardian.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Rosen, Jody (May 9, 2006). "The Perils of Poptimism - Does hating rock make you a music critic?". Slate.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Richards, Chris (April 16, 2015). "Do you want poptimism? Or do you want the truth?". The Washington Post. Retrieved November 19, 2015.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Loss, Robert (August 10, 2015). "No Apologies: A Critique of the Rockist v. Poptimist Paradigm". PopMatters.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Hann, Michael (May 11, 2017). "Is Poptimism Now As Blinkered As The Rockism It Replaced?". The Quietus.
  7. 1 2 Gorman, Paul (2001). In Their Own Write: Adventures in the Music Press. Sanctuary. p. 281. ISBN 978-1-86074-341-2.
  8. 1 2 Stanley, Bob (2014). Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!: The Story of Pop Music from Bill Haley to Beyoncé. W. W. Norton. p. 286. ISBN 978-0-393-24270-6.
  9. 1 2 3 Lobenfield, Clair (January 12, 2016). "Poptimism Isn't the Problem". Village Voice.
  10. ↑ Christgau, Robert (November 1989). "Rolling Stone Presents Twenty Years of Rock & Roll". Video Review. Retrieved April 2, 2017.
  11. 1 2 Gloag, Kenneth (2001). The Oxford Companion to Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 983. ISBN 0-19-866212-2.
  12. 1 2 3 Wolk, Douglas (May 4, 2005). "Thinking About Rockism". Seattle Weekly. Archived from the original on June 4, 2005.
  13. ↑ Zoppo, Donato (2014). Prog: Una suite lunga mezzo secolo (in Italian). Arcana. ISBN 978-88-6231-639-2.
  14. 1 2 3 T. Warner, Pop Music: Technology and Creativity: Trevor Horn and the Digital Revolution (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), ISBN 0-7546-3132-X, pp. 3–4.
  15. ↑ J. M. Curtis, Rock Eras: Interpretations of Music and Society, 1954–1984 (Madison, WI: Popular Press, 1987), ISBN 0-87972-369-6, pp. 68–73.
  16. ↑ P. Wicke, Rock Music: Culture, Aesthetics and Sociology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), ISBN 0-521-39914-9, p. x.
  17. ↑ Christgau, Robert (2014). "Anti-Rockism's Hall of Fame". The Barnes & Noble Review. Retrieved August 18, 2015.
  18. ↑ S. Frith, W. Straw, and J. Street, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), ISBN 0-521-55660-0, pp. 95–105.
  19. ↑ Lambert, Philip, ed. (2016). Good Vibrations: Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys in Critical Perspective. University of Michigan Press. pp. 7–8. ISBN 978-0-472-11995-0.
  20. ↑ Downes, Stephen (2014). Aesthetics of Music: Musicological Perspectives. Routledge. pp. 33, 36. ISBN 978-1-136-48691-3.
  21. 1 2 Raggett, Ned (June 1, 2005). "Rockism". Stylus Magazine.
  22. ↑ Currie, Nick (November 5, 2004). "Design Rockism". Aiga Design Archives. Archived from the original on April 5, 2007.
  23. 1 2 3 Sanneh, Kelefa (October 31, 2004). "The Rap Against Rockism". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 5, 2015.
  24. ↑ Horning, Rob (May 11, 2006). "'Poptimism' The Death of Pop Criticism". PopMatters.
  25. ↑ Austerlitz, Saul (April 6, 2014). "The Pernicious Rise of Poptimism". The New York Times Magazine. Archived from the original on October 31, 2015.
  26. ↑ Donnelly, Elisabeth (August 28, 2014). "Why Book Criticism and Literary Culture Needs a Poptimist Revolution". Flavorwire.
  27. ↑ Kramer Bussell, Rachel (May 19, 2015). "Simon Pegg has a Franzen moment: Book criticism needs a poptimist revolution to take down genre snobs". Salon.
  28. ↑ Scott Timberg (September 21, 2016). "The Fieri-ssance is here". Salon.

Further reading

  • Cateforis, Theo (2011). Are We Not New Wave: Modern Pop at the Turn of the 1980s. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0-472-03470-3.
  • Christgau, Robert (July 24, 2014). "Anti-Rockism's Hall of Fame". The Barnes & Noble Review. Retrieved March 22, 2017.
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