September 2010
A Space Age Christmas
“Christmas cards might well be a thing of the past by 2003. Already people can speak on the telephone to friends and relations thousands of miles away, and by 2003 you might even be able to see the person you are talking to, if the videophone comes into common use. Christmas messages might possibly also be sent on recording tape, and as this could well be the thickness of a human hair,...
"A Journey", Livetweeted →
The very definition of “so you don’t have to” but I’m glad someone did.
(via @dubdobdee)
Joe Coscarelli: Kanye West's "I'm Sorry Taylor"... →
Man I love Twitter… I’ve always been at the mercy of the press but no more… The media tried to demonize me. They wanted yall to believe I was a monster in real life so you guys wouldn’t listen or buy my music anymore. I feel like they were waiting for the opportunity to go in all the way on me and…
Tick vg.
Five Drafts Revisited
popcornnoises replied to your post: Five Drafts Of Pop History
So which one do you identify with? (The Now?) Also, couldn’t you read this as a reflection of baby boomer attitudes sequentially by decade? (#1 is the 60s, #2 the 70s, and so on)
Re: boomers - maybe! I don’t think the boomers are as important in the UK really. I don’t know how they generally engage with stuff from the 80s,...
bowielovesbeyonce asked: Using this in lieu of comments: But the singer DIDN'T escape the trap of "Common People," did he? He's enormously angry, at consumed by the situation as his target, maybe even moreso thanks to the curse of awareness.
Common People: A Lyrical Discussion/Dissection →
ILX thread about this song. I was planning on posting something about the blurb in the Pitchfork list, but I’m sure this - approaching 100 posts! - epic will if not cover it at least make similar points.
So here’s simply what I think’s going on here.
1. Being one of the “common people” is a horrible experience: it narrows your options and expectations...
And again
So if you’re making, say, a list of top tracks of the 1990s, there might be a general expectation that “Smells Like Teen Spirit” would come out on top. Or “Common People” or “Nothing But A G Thang” but those would be filling exactly the same function: the story of 90s popular music as the story of the rise of multiple subcultures and of what happened...
General Theory Of The 1990s
The 90s (and 00s to some extent) are when all the stuff that happened in the 80s paid off - when the vibrant thrilling subcultures that had been fermenting heroically all through that decade each got a turn in the spotlight, a chance at least to become the biggest music in their country or in the world. Hip-hop, house and dance music, Britpop, alternative rock, all the successor kingdoms of pop...
Five Drafts Of Pop History
1. THE NOW: This is the moment and this is what matters.
2. THE PROPHECY: The moment has just now passed. This is our wager on what remains important.
3. THE FULFILLMENT: We remember the moment, but it passed some time ago. What matters in it are the seeds of the new moment we now live in.
4. THE STORY: The moment is a story passed down to us. We retell it in our own words.
5. THE ARCHAEOLOGY:...
My 90s →
I have stuff to say about the Pitchfork list, but in the meantime here’s my own long-ago top 100 of the 90s, posted one a day on Freaky Trigger during the dying months of ‘99.
“Of course, 4AD’s approach is usually called an “aesthetic”, which sounds a lot...”
– Oh, ouch. (via jonathanbogart)
It’s one of my favourite words too! And I think you could say, well, Vaughan Oliver has an aesthetic and 4AD based their branding heavily on that. Or just use the word “aesthetic”! The point - well, one point - of the piece is that the language of...
And as if by magic... →
This is a link to this week’s Guardian column, on pop and branding. Obviously it was written before the latest Swift discussion: if anything it was a reaction to the Arcade Fire one earlier in the week, not that you could tell from the content.
This is one of those columns where what seemed like subtle and nuanced points while writing them now look kind of obvious! The basic idea is that...
another overview of recent Taylor Swift debate
agrammar:
Somewhere in that Twitter discussion, Tom Ewing suggested the issue is really about Swift’s content/product versus her brand — if you look at the image that’s being marketed around her, the criticisms are valid, whereas if you listen to what she’s actually writing and singing, they might not.
I’m not going to say much about Taylor Swift (audience perks up) because I want to...
Hurts →
Peculiar as it sounds, cosmic disco existed, which doesn’t seem to be something you can say about disco lento. Every internet reference to it appeared around the same time Hurts began to get attention. Some of the artists they cite are real – it’s testament to the weirdness of Italian electronic pop that there really was a singer who called himself Gazebo and had hits called I Like...
A Cyber-House Divided →
But Mr Zuckerman frets that the internet really serves to boost ties within countries, not between them. Using data from Google, he looked at the top 50 news sites in 30 countries. Almost every country reads all but 5% of its news from domestic sources. Mr Zuckerman believes that goods and services still travel much farther than ideas, and that the internet allows us to be “imaginary...
Cr4Bdbgs: I guess this is good an excuse as any... →
Does anyone else have similar experiences translating their music (or media) criticism to what they “do” in a meaningful way?
Yeah, and vice versa: trying to work out why people choose what they choose is pretty much the bedrock of market research.
Windows Of Opportunity
perpetua:
[on NIN’s “Closer”] I kept thinking about how the best sort of hits can only be possible in a very narrow cultural window of opportunity. The songs that seem like they would’ve been hits no matter what are never as exciting and enduring as the ones that are basically cultural miracles that speak of a specific time and place.
I like this idea, it gets at...
