bury me in a treasure trough

[brendan62442]

- Be Kind Rewind was very sweet; I don't want to see it again but I loved it the first time. The word "quirky" sort of just means a movie is full of gimmicks, but Michel Gondry's gimmicks are all scene-stealers.

- Slow songs don't mix great with fuzz-pedals, and most of them are boring in the first place. Sorry, Distortion. Stephin Merritt drops

Comments

[weasel_seeker]

I think there's space for both. I think SOME of it can be a bit of a stretch, but some of it isn't. While I might disagree about which parts are/aren't a stretch, there's a conversation to be had there that can be as worthwhile in some ways.

Not to exclusion of all else, clearly.

Part of it ties into ideas about authorship and agency and a) their value, but b) (especially since I do find these ideas valuable wrt imparting meaning and value to music in certain cases) a willingness to remove that agency/meaning/intent from music labelled as pop. There's nothing wrong with disposable pop. There's something quite wrong with assuming that all pop is faceless, shallow, etc.

Kogan's column, like I said, can sometimes be a stretch, but is often on the mark to my ears.

Also, while there are certain pop artists/albums who I'd argue have more going on beneath it, not all of them do. Just like Radiohead, Keane and Coldplay aren't alll the same, ditto for Ashlee/Avril/Paris/whoever. (Although I would count Ashlee Simpson's first album ["Ashlee", Ashlee/KaraDioguardi/JohnShanks, whatever], Autobiography, as having a lot going on underneath it. In a different way than Radiohead or Broken Social Scene, although not that different from the way Dylan has stuff going on, but still is a frequently complex, relatable, interesting record. But that's another conversation.) Either way, I wouldn't say that those are the most interesting discussions going on there.

A lot of the discussion about pop stuff that's interesting is the stuff surrounding it. Not what it means, etc. but how it gets used, how it gets shaped, how people react to it. It can become a placeholder discussion for broader cultural or societal conversations and assumptions. It can be musically interesting, lyrically interesting, etc. I mean. The wheat/chaff ratio is probably not substantially different from any other genre, and the conversation is there once you're willing to go for it.

[Just noticed the "See You Again" quote and am chuckling.]

It's too late for me to articulate well and defend a stance, and I need to function tomorrow so I can finally start writing a 12 page paper due Saturday and study for a Monday exam. Plus, it's Passover, so despite my more rational tendencies, I persist in eating dry stale unleavened bread for a weeek. I'll leave it at this: like most forms of art, you get out what you put in. Big Brother, Survivor, Miley Cyrus, Ashlee Simpson, Spider-Man, Sandman, V for Vertigo, Andy Warhol, M.I.A., whatever. Taste it with your full tongue, there's as much to think about and learn from as Broken Social Scene, Radiohead, Dylan, Dostoevsky, Renoir, Mozart, Six Feet Under, Battlestar Galactica, whatever. Absorb it without contemplation, and they're all equally valueless.