The Music Club
Jody Rosen chatted online with readers about this dialogue on Dec. 20, 2007. Read the transcript.
Who thought we'd start out our chat about the Year of Arcade Fire Kanye In Rainbows "No One" pondering a band that I once thought good for nothing but some killer air keyboard? But Journey is so relevant now. Thanks to my pals at the fresh blog Oh! Industry, I was already embroiled in the latest Journey journey, a saga that captures so much about pop music in 2007.
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StumbleUponThe short version: While looking for the band's sixth lead singer (Relevant Element 1: ancient rockers soldiering on) on YouTube (RE 2: that damn Web), Journey guitarist Neal Schon came across Arnel Pineda, singer for the Quezon City, Philippines-based band the Zoo (RE 3: Filipino cover bands, a major export, according to this excellent 2005 article). Pineda's spot-on Steve Perry high notes suited Schon, and he's been hired, but not after some vehement protest from American Journey fans (RE 4 and 5: racism in rock, American nationalism).
More than errors in taste—something that I've always made, since I bought a Barry Manilow cassette at age 11—what concerns me as a critic now is keeping track of a pop world packed with such crazy stories. Every year now, time and space collapse further. Categories that once made my job orderly no longer suffice.
Is Kala a world-music album? Or does M.I.A. demolish that very term with her globe-trotting hard drive? Is Amy Winehouse totally retro, or is a postmodern self-awareness simmering beneath her beehive? (I side with professor Oliver Wang on that one.) When Cyndi Lauper pops up for a week as the iTunes top seller—and not because the highest-rated premium cable show features her song—is she suddenly relevant again, or has a weird wave of nostalgia simply overtaken us?
In the midst of all this time and space travel, I find it hard to focus. Thus, like many critics, I've written one too many Internet-besotted meta-pieces while losing focus of the real-time listening experience. On workdays I often keep a window open to Critical Metrics, my favorite snobby Top 40 station, and try to absorb what's new. But that doesn't mean I don't miss stuff. I miss more and more stuff every day.
As a daily scribe, I feel particularly pulled by the rapids of information flow. When can I take the time to sit down with music unconnected to the celebrity machine that I'm required to confront as a newspaper critic? And when I do, must I turn to the cocktail party favorites of the blogger elite?
Consider Grinderman, Nick Cave's latest project. I really dig it. The band's springtime debut has nothing beyond exactly what you'd expect: no innovative beats, no clever backstory, no novel hybridizations or next-step sounds. It's just a very solid, funny, sweaty rock record from some guys who've made them in the past, but found their footing again. Not a story. Plus, Cave is older than Miley Cyrus' dad.
I hate making Top 10s, and only after the fact did I realize that I overlooked Grinderman in mine. Such oversights happen when a critic has 10,000 CDs gazing longingly at her in the postal bins, saying, "Pick me! Choose me! Love me!" Half the time I don't even crack the bins; I go directly to Rhapsody or eMusic and channel surf like a stoned kid with a bowl of Cheetos and a soft couch.
Thank goodness for the car. There, I can listen to a whole album without distractions—except for the crazy people on Highway 110 who want to kill me with their Priuses. I walk, too, around the Los Angeles canyons, with a little aging Discman in my plastic backpack. That's how I got to know several favorite albums this year—Brad Paisley's excellent hoot; Joni Mitchell's shimmering, irascible comeback; LCD Soundsystem's master stroke.
One favorite walk was with Radiohead's In Rainbows, freshly downloaded for nada (sorry, guys, your site wouldn't process my American Express card). The public buildup had been so great that this private moment felt like coming downstairs to see what Santa had brought on Christmas. And this trike was really shiny! Radiohead put together a great playlist of hooky (for them), itchy songs that lived up to the surrounding frenzy. Thom Yorke singing about sex? Now that's revolutionary.
Another favorite listen this year came from unrevolutionary country gal Patty Griffin, who released the quiet genre-buster Children Running Through in February. Griffin's not a Young Turk, like Miranda Lambert (whom I like, too), nor a firebrand, like fellow redhead Neko Case. She's just a really good songwriter whose own albums get stuck in the "Americana" category that nobody thinks is sexy anymore. (Oops, I see a theme emerging: middle-aged critic defends middle-aged artists who don't make the "hottie" grade. Sorry to be solipsistic. I promise to write about Lil Wayne's bodacious rhymes in my next post!)
I'm a seasoned critic, skilled in tracing influences, trained to dig crafty sonic amalgamations and virtuoso turns. But when I listen to Griffin's song "Burgundy Shoes," I cry. I mean uncontrollably—the minute the music-box piano kicks in and she starts the simple verses.
In the song, Griffin finds the voice of a little girl riding the bus with her mother on a potentially scary, maybe wonderful journey to Maine. Her mom hums a Beatles tune, and the girl reflects on how great it is to be in the sun, without her big boots on, next to the most pretty lady in the world. I have a daughter, and in the four years that I've been immersed in the sentimental crap surrounding motherhood, I've never heard such a pure evocation of the volatile, relentless love mothers and daughters share.
When I hear it, I think of my 83-year-old mom, who had to enter an assisted-living facility this year but still wears coral lipstick to supper and wants to go to Wisconsin to visit her sister. I think of my 4-year-old girl, who tells me that I'm not very nice and that I'm beautiful in the same breath.
I think of my daughter's birthmom, who misses her spitting-image child fiercely as she builds her own young life. And my sister-in-law, with three girls, trying to not interfere when the oldest gets rejected by her best friend and the middle one wants to wear the craziest outfit ever to her first day of kindergarten. And I can't help it. I'm lost in the memory Griffin constructed, as it makes a bridge into my own life. I'm gone.
I can't always find a way to write publicly about these moments now, or even to make room for them in my nonexistent "down time." But aren't such private connections still a key part of loving music, even as everything gets harder, better, faster, stronger? I'd like to know what your private loves were this year. And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go get a tissue.
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Remarks from the Fray:
Why can't we just admit that Nickelback is the greatest Rock artist of our generation? By your standards of appreciation for Daughtry (post-grunge, big lungs, showmanship, populism, and oodles of record sales) then clearly Chad Kroeger has usurped the throne of Kurt Kobain down to Jimi Hendrix.
So why not? They have better guitar solos too. Why not them? They've made it themselves - working their way through dingy snowed out Canadian bars. Why not them? Every 18 year old knows the words to "Rock Star" and "How you Remind Me." Why not them?
Because they suck suck suck suck suck, and you know it. Their music is unoriginal (yet somehow Daughtry manages to ape THEM), their lyrics are the worst kind of ham-handed laughable tripe, and the "rocking" is the most middle-of-the-road ho hum of studio slickery ever to be committed to tape. They're a clumsy, artless band - the post grunge equivalent of Turner Bachman Overdrive or Grand Funk Railroad - at least those guys had good competition.
And here you go, giving Daughtry props for being popular. Michael Jackson, the Beatles, Elvis and Bing Crosby were popular, but they were also cultural touchstones as celebrity icons who represented what was good in their generation. Daughtry just represents what IS. He is the sound of reality TV, an Icon of the Bush Decade Generation. You know as well as the rest of us who aren't willing to substitute populism for depth that we will look back on all that with pity at best.
--jwschmidt
(To reply, click here.)
If you think the Shins are boring, you are a populist, open-minded musicologist. If you think Lil' Wayne is boring (just because something is up-tempo doesn't mean it can't be boring), then you are an elitist hipster douchebag. Just wanted to clear that up. Also, can we start backlashing on the whole poptimist thing yet? I mean nobody is saying that Transformers should end up on critic's end of year movie lists, or that "Dancing with the Stars" is better than "The Wire", or that the best novel of last year was by James Patterson. Why is it that popular opinion can't be ignored in music, but it can be for every other media outlet?
--Utz_the_Crab_chip
(To reply, click here.)
I started to write this long justification of how I'm a huge indie guy, how I go out of my way to be as anti-mainstream as possible but will always have a soft spot for Journey. But then I realized how trivial that is because you will never like it and the people that love it just do. And the people that love the song, have loved it for a quarter of a century now. That's substance. You can ignore it by trying to make your criticism sound like a social science by adding historical anecdotes but dropping names isn't dropping bombs. Schlock is putting down a song then dismissing any argument because "you're not buying it." That's cheap. That Brittney Spears or Soulja Boy you list might be on a soundtrack 10 years down the road, but it'll be put there ironically. You can say that a message of "Don't Stop Believin'," is 'hyperemotional' but is it really more shallow than a song that's about "Supermannin'" that ho and has a dance to go along to it??? Oh, and Brittney? At least Steve Perry was writing his own shit.
If I just gave you the middle finger and told you to fuck off would be pretty rock n' roll but I won't since I'm not from the "rebel generation." I'm inheriting an earth that could possibly be facing mass extinctions in 50 years with enough nukes to destroy the world ten times over. I have to go to grad school now, on top of college, just to stay competitive, just so I get a job that makes me wait in line for the Baby Boomer that decided to put off his retirement until he turns 75. So, in those moments where I can let my guard down, allow my heart to shake my cynicism- if only for 4 minutes- give me a song that espouses optimism. I'll listen to my indie, electronic, and underground hip-hop at home so let us all sing the chorus drunk or sober in the bar. Is it cliché? I don't know anymore. It's a post-modern world where every "heresy" and taboo has been upended. Don't you think it's a little more edgy, more "rebellious," these days to sing songs of determined hope?
--SatoriThroughAllegory
(To reply, click here.)
I always find it interesting that music critics have to pay attention to and know all genres of music very well while most listeners (including Slate fray posters) seem to pretty much like one or two genres and dismiss everything else.
It's funny to see Double Up and Sound of Silver on the same list. I listen to a good swath of current "mainstream" music. I don't know that much about "indie" and other "underground" scenes, though I did start to get into some of the French inspired dance music stuff this year.
I found out about this stuff on the recommendation of critics who also give Timberlake, Timbaland, and The Clipse good reviews. The point of this rambling post is that if you see an artist on one of these top 25 lists that you have never heard of, give him / her a try, you may find something that you like.
--Alcibiades
(To reply, click here.)
(12/20)