Not that I'm the biggest Sasha Frere-Jones fan, mind, but this article on Justin quite simply nails it.

The second single—produced by Timbaland, the only man challenging the Neptunes for critical and commercial consensus—was "Cry Me a River," a complete 180 from "Like I Love You"'s jackrabbit lust. "Cry" is puppy love directed by Douglas Sirk, a CinemaScope ballad full of generous detail and disjunctive leaps and Timberlake's second consecutive hit. The song got an obvious boost from gossip columnists reading it as Justin's kiss-off to his ex, Britney Spears, but less obvious was the response from New Yorker music critic Alex Ross: "In the past year, rock critics found themselves in the faintly embarrassing position of having to hail Justin Timberlake's Justified as one of the better records of the year." The embarrassment must be Ross', as the critics didn't exhibit much. Rolling Stone gave the album four stars, and Village Voice critic Robert Christgau gave it an A-. The daily newspaper reviews were uniformly positive. But The New Yorker has a track record of approaching pop music with one hand holding its nose, so calling Timberlake an embarrassment is simply par for the course. Eustace Tilley has never been down with the kids. In fact, there is a historical trend for critics to discount hugely popular artists who sell to kids, especially girls. Sometimes, critics, borrowing a little fantasy back from the kids, like to pretend that these artists don't really exist.

Ross likes "Cry Me a River," praising its multiple layers and name-checking Duke Ellington, but the whole thing makes him uncomfortable: "In any case," he writes, "the songs on Justified aren't really Timberlake's. A dozen names appear in the credits, and it's anyone's guess how much of a song like 'Cry Me a River,' the album's best track, actually came from Timberlake's pen, if he owns one." There's probably more evidence George Bush doesn't own a pen, but Ross is making a funny. We salute that. But still, the crack is pure ideology. The Beatles, whom he praises, were a big collaborative pileup, so why would Ross object to Timberlake collaborating with Timbaland? There are just three writing credits on "Cry Me a River," one more than most Beatle songs: Timberlake, Timbaland, and keyboardist Scott Storch. Storch isn't a singer, and Timbaland usually relies on partners for pop songwriting. The most likely source, then, for "River"'s gorgeous harmonies is Timberlake himself. Throw on his previous work and you can hear it. The nimble rhythms and long vocal phrases Timberlake wrote for three of 'N Sync's best songs—"Pop," "Girlfriend," and "Gone"—are very different from the fierce, clipped vocals Timbaland favors on Missy Elliott's Under Construction. What "Cry" sounds exactly like is half Timberlake, half Timbaland. Timberlake tells us as much in the press kit: "As soon as Timbaland made that beat, I started humming this crazy melody. I really wanted one section of the song to follow that staccato rhythm, but wanted the other parts to feel like something new."

I'm too lazy to paste in all the links and italics, so go to the article for the full effect--there's lots more good stuff there. (Incidentally, Sasha: "Quick—think of a single solo disc by a famous producer … that's any good. We'll wait." John Cale, my friend. To say nothing of Eno's solo work.)

The whole thing addresses the "rockist" bias in, well, rock criticism, which is not all that surprising given its roots in Bangs/Christgau/Meltzer/Marcus/Wenner, the writes of the round table that forged "serious" rock-crit from whole cloth back in the "golden age," which currently is the 60's and which will be the 80's in another twenty years. (Just you wait.) What happened then though--and no one seems too eager to admit this--was as much a function of the business of music as the art of it. If you were a record company, and you're used to having to negotiate with generally very business-savvy songwriters (the producers of yesteryear) for publishing rights, given the opportunity to deal only with naive artists who also happen to write their own songs, which would you prefer? Which one would be easier to take advantage of? Hell, which one has been easier to take advantage of? The sudden shift in the 60's to music primarily played by the songwriters (Elvis v. the Beatles) and the newfound sense of legitimacy this conveyed was partially because the songs were better, sure. But while the songwriter-as-songwriter function persisted, it had become debased. Even if a songwriter could produce better songs than most artists, he was still a hack, a talentless nobody churning out tunes for cash instead of the love of the music. And then in the 80's this started to become the producer's job, to help write the songs, and here, too, the image of debased gun-for-hire persisted. If you're such a good songwriter, the logic went, why not just play and sing the song yourself? Well, because it can be better sung by someone else, of course.

So respect the song, my rockist bretheren, and the writers who write 'em. Don't be fooled by transparency into thinking it's legitimacy, and don't assume you know so much about the biz that you can make informed assumptions about the songwriting process of pop. It's easier to analyze personalities, sure, but sometimes the song matters more.

Simon Reynolds semi-replies here, and ends up touching on one of Sasha's pet subjects, race. (Ah, those Brits.) But what I think is more interesting is his previous entry, which quotes Nietzsche and talks about pop-ism as close to rock-ism:

Adolescence without hang-ups--what's the point? This is why I believe Pop-ism is a lot closer to Hornbyism than it may realise. It's an oddly self-cornering ideology, progressively eliminating more and more of what actually is good and worth celebrating about pop (freak characters, innovator producers, sonic weirdness) as rockist criteria, residues of crypto-auteurism that must be purged.

...which is funny because, right after talking about pop-ism's assailing of indie-snobbery as a straw man argument, he gives us this: one of the biggest straw-man arguments I've encountered. Since when does popism (outside of Sasha, who as I say, I'm no great fan of) try to exclude things? My whole point about pop--and that of lots of other people too, near as I can tell, Tom Ewing included--is that the beauty of pop is in its inclusiveness. This, after all, is what Simon likes about rave culture (I think) and yet he comes out strongly against "dilettantism" and sees honor in sticking to one narrow area of the musical spectrum. And that's fine, I guess, but I think there's a pretty big contradiction there. I don't know which popists he's encountered who get all snobby about rockist criteria sneaking into pop music, but I think the point of the popists is that, as Simon says, they're ex-rockists, and so those particular set of values are assumed, are already there to be employed when useful; the diference is that instead of being the only standard, the exclusionary measure, they are simply one tool in the enjoyment arsenal. We judge Dylan by the rockist criteria; we judge Missy by the popist. And sometimes we switch 'em, just to see what happens, and if there's a useful take on the whole thing there.

So I'd be with Simon if he were to point out popists who were being snobby like this, but frankly, I don't entirely see it. Unless he wants to bring up Beat Happening again, in which case I'm with him all the way--but I most definitely think that the NYPLM crew of popists aren't anything like Calvin Johnson and his posse of the unholy undead. Beat Happening is a good example of popism gone to horrible extremes, to be sure.

Incidentally, the pop-as-inclusiveness theme nicely counters the main thrust of Simon's post, i.e. that popism is just another (fairly traditional) move in Da Discourse and "an option available to uber-hipsters who want to distance themselves from middlebrow peers." (Horrors!) Because--ha ha ha--we don't care if we're uber-hipsters. That's fine! We don't hate indie kids, we just want them to be happier. I don't want anyone to stop liking Godsmack (or whatever), I just want them to start liking Nelly and euro-pop. Call me a hipster all you want, man, I'm cool with that. Just dance to the damn music, OK?

UPDATE: If you've gotten this far, it's probably worth reading K-Punk's comments on the whole thing.

Oops, I really need to go to bed.
posted by Mike B. at 12:09 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, August 26, 2003

Toby Keith, hearteningly, is feeling a bit ambiguous about the war (non-subscription text here):

Away from the firepower of the stage, this fighting man from Oklahoma said that he has decided to call a cease-fire in his ugly feud with the Dixie Chicks ("We had fun with it, but I'm just done with it"), that he still has lingering questions about the necessity of the war in Iraq ("Honestly, I'm still doing the math on that") and that he wonders whether the hit song, "(Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue) The Angry American," has typecast him ("People think I bang the war drum, and that's not me").

"Look, my stance is I pick and choose my wars. This war here [in Iraq], the math hasn't worked out for me on it. But I'm smart enough to know there's people smarter than me. [National security advisor] Condoleezza Rice, [Secretary of State] Colin Powell, George Bush — this is their job, and I have to trust in them. I support the commander in chief and the troops."

Keith took a long pause to consider his words, and then added: "I was for Afghanistan, 100%. We got struck and the Taliban needed to be exterminated, but this war here, in Iraq, I didn't necessarily have it all worked out. It didn't work out for me. I know a tyrant is gone and all of that, but whether it was our duty to go do that, well, I haven't figured that out."

But as I've asked before, how can an artist communicate this ambiguity to his audience without losing them? It's a hard proposition, and I think I have more sympathy for Toby than other people do.

posted by Mike B. at 4:38 PM 0 comments

Um. Well, apparently he's said this before:

"A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it."
—George W. Bush, July 27, 2001

Boy oh boy.

posted by Mike B. at 4:14 PM 0 comments

Josh Marshall:

That should go over well.

Back during the British mandate period, there was a pipeline that shipped oil from Kirkuk to the Israeli port city of Haifa. The pipeline is still there. But, for what are probably obvious reasons, it's sat unused since 1948. As we reported in late April, the possibility of reopening the pipeline was being actively discussed in Israel, by members of Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, and by certain persons in the US government.

Now Ha'aretz has reported that the Israeli Prime Minister's office has asked for and received from a "senior Pentagon official" a telegram asking the Israelis to investigate financial and technical questions relating to refitting and restarting the pipeline. According to Ha'aretz, the Prime Minister's office "views the pipeline to Haifa as a "bonus" the U.S. could give to Israel in return for its unequivocal support for the American-led campaign in Iraq."

Now, given that one of the Iraqis' big suspicions is that we're after their oil, you might think that rerouting almost half of the country's oil through Israel, and using a pipeline last used when Palestine was ruled by the British, might at least create some perception problems.

But that doesn't seem to be all of it. That oil from the Kirkuk oil fields is now transhipped through Turkey. And folks in government circles in Jerusalem seem to think that these American hints about the Kirkuk to Haifa pipeline are, as Ha'aretz says, part of an "attempt to apply pressure on Turkey."

This deserves more attention. Why are we even remotely considering this scheme to send half of Iraq's oil through Israel? And why do we seem to be trying to sow discord between two of our most important allies in the region?

Good point.

posted by Mike B. at 3:05 PM 0 comments

Um...did I just read this right?

"Even the president is not omnipotent," Mr. Bolten [White House budget director and formerly Mr. Bush's chief domestic policy adviser] said of the House opposition to the AmeriCorps money. "Would that he were. He often says that life would be a lot easier if it were a dictatorship. But it's not, and he's glad it's a democracy."

He's...uh, he's being sarcastic there, right?

posted by Mike B. at 11:55 AM 0 comments

This one's for Matt:

During a break at the New Pornographers show tonight, they had a Q&A session. There were some lame things about Canada and some random song requests, so I yelled, "What's your favorite song on the radio right now?"

Rather quickly, Kurt-the-drummer answered: "Shania Twain! Oh, that's embarassing, but I love that Shania song. It sounds like Abba or something."

"Yeah," Carl said, "we were just talking about this. When you hear a halfway-decent song on the radio, you have to be real supportive, like with a retarded kid. 'Oh, there you go, that's a good job!'"

Then they told some stories about Newfoundland (?) and did a rather lackluster version of "Ballad of a Comeback Kid," which is too bad really as it's my favorite song on the album. At any rate, it's an interesting comment.

The show was good overall, but the crowd was annoyingly lackluster. The rondo in "Testament to Youth in Verse" was really really good. They covered, pretty clearly without any preparation, three (!) Journey songs during the second encore, prompted by someone's random comment. They all seemed very comfortable--at times it felt like we were sitting in on a rehersal. Very nice. More dancing next time though, you New Yorkers.

posted by Mike B. at 1:10 AM 0 comments

Monday, August 25, 2003

Best bit of the generally-good Salon article on Snoop Dogg:

We're waiting on Snoop at a small house in the Valley, where he'll shoot a segment for one of his final Jimmy Kimmel appearances. Crew members are discussing last night's show, which featured Snoop and the rapper he toured with this summer, the enormously successful performer credited with the recent East-Coast rebirth of gangsta rap: 50 Cent. "Is Snoop a real gangster?" one staffer asks me. Before I can respond, another staffer interjects. "You know who's a real gangster? That 50 Cent." All nod in reverent silence.

Several bodyguards arrive at the house; others arrive later with Snoop, who's running on what Abbott calls "Snoop time." One bodyguard regales me with stories of his trip to Brazil, where Snoop was shooting the video for "Beautiful." The video has a different aesthetic from Snoop's previous video, which served up gangsta delights: blue bandannas, low-riders, and an abusive LAPD officer. The bandanna, however, was worn by a Snoop doll; the low-rider was an outrageous Snoop DeVille; and the officer a comic dwarf. If 50 Cent's aesthetic is "real," used as an un-ironic epithet even in a post-postmodern era ("50 is real, so he does real things," reads his Web site), Snoop's is so deliberately artificial it's camp.

Yeah, "real." Hahaha.

On the other hand, the article kind of reads like it was written for some other publication, doesn't it? It's got more of an Esquire tone than a Salon tone.

posted by Mike B. at 3:33 PM 0 comments

Atrios writes:

A few people rightfully took me to task for not mentioning the critical role that Bob Herbert played in helping get some belated justice for the Tulia defendants. Kudos to Mr. Herbert.

More generally, I don't understand why we don't see more of this kind of thing. We have numerous columnists with twice weekly soapboxes in national newspapers. Once upon a time there was, I believe, a greater tendency for our media to focus on the "little guy" versus "the powerful." Maybe this was the much exaggerated "liberal media." I'm not sure why that's such a liberal thing to do - comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable seems to cut across political spectrum.

...which is funny, because I was just reading Bob's column and thinking that he always seems to go after fairly safe causes--the unjustly accused, preparation for a terrorist attack, etc.--and wondering why the only black columnist the Times has plays it so close to the chest. Well, that's the Times for you, I guess.

But regardless, there's no denying that the causes Herbert does champion are good ones, and Atrios makes a good point. To expand on it, though, I think the tradition of columnists trying to Help Out The Little Guy has not disappeared, but shifted. Newspaper columnists at outfits big and small are still very much interested in focusing attention on small-scale or individual events in local communities, in bringing the overlooked story to light--in other words, writing critical human-interest stories--but the impetus and the desired outcome have now changed. Whereas before the HOTLG story was written out of a sense of injustice and the desired outcome was a fair resolution to the situation, righting the power imbalance one case at a time, what you see now take the form of "outrages of the week!" and don't seem designed to actually, well, do anything besides further deepen people's faith in institutions. I think you know the kind of story I'm talking about. Conservative bloggers are real fond of these. The woman sues McDonald's because their coffee caused horrible burns all over her lower body; the campus conservative gets hauled before the judicial board for barging into a women's studies meeting; etc., etc. It's no accident that these stories often revolve around tort or liability cases and campus speech codes, while more often than not venturing into racial issues, etc.

The problem is, of course, that they don't seem to actually care what happens to The Little Guys in these cases. (It's also problematic that they're getting "outraged" about things that should, at best, provoke mild annoyance--you'd think they'd be used to the fact that there are unintelligent people out there--but that's a whole other issue.) Partially this is because they're often siding with the big institutions in the court cases, which directly contravenes the principles of the genre of HOTLG stories, but even in the case of the campus speech codes, where they're ostensibly siding on behalf of the individuals, it seems weird that free-market conservatives would try and force an independent institution which the individual has voluntarily placed himself under the care of to change its self-created rules. So it seems less like they want resolution in these independent cases and more that they want the bigger issues resolved--but even here, I don't think that's the case. The continued existence of campus speech codes, for instance, galvanizes recruitment efforts and provides a way to demonize anyone coming out of academia. The ability of individuals to sue institutions is a key weapon in the conservative arsenal, and without it, these sort of issues might be resolved in the legislature instead, which would be horrible, of course. They don't want change, they just want to score points, to work up more "outrage," to build a cause qua cause by deligitimizing institutions. In other words, they're performing that signature conservative slight-of-hand of appearing apolitical but doing so in a deeply political and partisan way--attempting to bring down the government for their own personal gain.

These stories are examples of what I like to call "Andrea Yates stories." They're widely reported and widely debated but they don't actually mean anything; no one's going to argue that killing your kids is OK. It's just news-as-entertainment, something to debate about to make ourselves feel like we're participating. And that's OK--I don't want to trash news-as-entertainment, which I think is peachy keen. But I do think that in reporting these stories, our commentators could have a bit better political perspective. And I don't just mean a liberal one.

This is all tied up in the state of political humor today--and, indeed, a lot of these "outrage of the week" stories end up being grist for the late-night-show-monologue mill. Because a lot of comedians take shots at political issues and would probably describe various jokes as "political," but they would also loudly claim to hate both parties and politicians in general. And that's stupid. But moreover, that's not political humor--that's just bitching. Political humor would take a stance, act as argument, present something to be attacked or defended. It would not simply put everything down like the stereotype of a cynical Gen-X slacker while purporting not to care about the whole business. Denis Miller, for instance, is the political version of an insult comedian. "Your policy sucks--aaaah, I'm just kiddin' guy, hey he's a good sport, give the guy a round of applause." It may be funny sometimes, but it ain't political.

Speaking of good HOTLG columnists, here is a fucking awesome Jimmy Breslin column.

posted by Mike B. at 3:32 PM 0 comments