On the other hand, Weingarten, intentionally or not, dismisses Fleet Foxes (in his example) by rehashing the rockist argument against “easy listening.” Fleet Foxes is “boring” and “bland” for the same “inherent” reasons that, say, Celine Dion is “boring” and “bland.” Basically he’s arguing against all lifestyle music. And lifestyle music is, for one, the way the majority of people experience music. Just because critics are no longer gatekeepers between music fans and their lifestyle music doesn’t mean that lifestyle music is a new phenomenon. Most music fans never interrogate their tastes, and never think about the “why” that Weingarten calls for. Not to mention that in the endless rehash of the reification of music (particularly indie rock) as a youth culture, the very music fans to whom Weingarten appeals have been incredibly dismissive of lifestyle music in ageist and sexist terms. Just as Eric Weisbard or Carl Wilson or anyone else analyzing the semiotics of adult contemporary. Weingarten’s argument against NPR music uses the same types of slander as are used against adult contemporary. (“It’s not the music that’s the best, it’s the music that the most people can stand, the music that the most people can listen to” sounds like the argument of the dude in the cubicle who’s mad that they’re pumping the Hot AC station through the speakers at the workplace!) Should everyone think critically about her/his cultural consumption? Absolutely yes. But by drawing on this idea of an “avant-garde” as the platonic ideal (the “truly adventurous,” in his words), Weingarten simply reuses a bullshit high culture vs. low culture dichotomy—a bizarrely backwards-looking argument in an otherwise very much of-the-moment and on-point presentation.
The Rockist term gets thrown around a bunch. For me, definition relates to how the practice is used. For me Rockism is an attack on other genres usually associated with some sort of marginalized group (gays, blacks, women) like Disco, Pop, R&B, and or even easy listening music, in such a way that always favors the values and tastes of the liberal arts (predominantly white) dudes that became music critics. Why would that extend to bands like Fleet Foxes, whose raison d’etre seems to be making the most comfortable people in the history of the world even more comfortable? You can’t really compare their blandness to the purported blandness of Celine Dion. From a pure usage standpoint, who listens to Fleet Foxes? hmmm?
“Rockist” might not have been the best shorthand for what I was getting at here. My point was not to say that Weingarten was being rockist by dismissing Fleet Foxes, but that he was relying on the same type of arguments that rockists use to dismiss Celine Dion. Certainly Fleet Foxes fans could be conceived of as rockists (more easily than could, say, Weingarten himself). But Weingarten’s argument against Fleet Foxes as lifestyle music is very close to the argument against easy listening as lifestyle music. The whole rockist argument rests on constructed ideas of art and of authenticity, and Weingarten leans on that first idea pretty heavily in his critique.
As a lapsed user of the r-word I think it pretty much always obscures more than it clarifies! I only really know Weingarten’s taste from following his stuff on Twitter, and from that I’m aware that he locates his edge and his other in places I don’t go looking for mine. But that’s not really the issue - the point is that crowdsourcing (or whatever you want to call it) sucks because it works to reinforce a comfort zone and undermine serendipity. He thinks the effect that places Fleet Foxes at the centre of blogosphere attention is awful, and he also happens to think that Fleet Foxes are awful themselves, but the latter isn’t directly relevant to his broader argument. Sometimes the method is going to turn up stuff that doesn’t suck but that wouldn’t neccessarily vindicate it. (There’s also the Frank Kogan argument about music ‘becoming lame in the context of our approval’ which feels relevant here too.)
Maybe Weingarten thinks there’s no place for comfort in listening. That would be silly, I agree! But I don’t believe he DOES think that, only that methods of alloting attention which reinforce comfort ought to be more carefully examined.
Yeah, I think the underlying point here doesn’t have anything to DO with “lifestyle music,” it has to do with critical conversations and critical listening. By definition most lifestyle listening is uncritical — this might be as obvious as elevator music or as complicated as me listening to an album I’ve thought a shit-ton about for the thousandth time, somewhat mindlessly, as I do the dishes. But the problem is that even if these two modes aren’t cleanly “separate” in one’s listening experiences, they are in one’s writing and conversation. I can’t “write mindlessly,” but crowds can, simply by using things like frequency of listening and like/dislike options (a thumbs up or thumbs down) as a validation of merit.
Of course, that’s not the real problem with criticism, which Chris touches on but kind of dances around. The problem with criticism is simply that it sucks, and there are lots of reasons why — though I don’t think these reasons have categorically changed from what e.g. Frank Kogan was talking about in the 80’s, they’ve merely accelerated and had more demonstrable impact on little pockets of engaging music writing that pays reasonably well (Village Voice springs to mind, though you could just as easily blame corporatization of the alternative press as the internet, I think). So, ironically, I think Chris has actually missed the “what” in his talk, though it was gratifying to hear him emphasize the “because” after “I liked this.” Still, in most (even terrible) music writing, that because is there — it’s just a shitty “because.” And I’m not sure what exactly that has to do with crowdsourcing.
EDIT: Actually, I’ll take a stab at the real reason why “stuff rising to the middle” is actually making bigger waves recently — it’s because the POOL IS SMALLER. It was a big deal that (band I happen to love, FWIW) Arcade Fire’s first album just missed the Billboard 100 Albums in 2004, yet in 2007 when their album debuted at #2, it wasn’t really that big of a deal, and that’s because the ceiling got much much lower in that period of time. Bands like Grizzly Bear and Fleet Foxes (neither of whom I happen to like, but that’s not really the point, it has more to do with how they got popular, from which critical venues etc.) routinely go Top 10 or Top 20 on the Billboard charts now with sales that wouldn’t have put them in the same universe as the Top 20 ten years ago. It’s really important not to lose sight of how few people are actually listening to these bands, just that it’s more obvious where those few are by dint of them having more of a say in chart placement. This is the inverse of the chart-pop sea change of indie’s dreams: if we can’t go up to the charts, we’ll bring the charts down to us.
