It appears Slate has finally upgrading its music reviews. The latest, by Sasha Frere-Jones, attacks rockism head-on, using Justin Timberlake as the occasion. As a rockist who furthermore thinks that Timberlake’s “street” performance is laughable, I have to admit that much of what Frere-Jones says is right:
Ross’ attack on Timberlake’s legitimacy is simply another appearance of the long-standing critical bias toward a certain kind of musician and a received take on how they make records. Take Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Sleater-Kinney, or Jack White, artists who use tools deemed “basic”Â-guitar, bass, drums. You can hear what each person is doing, physically, with their hands and voices. So the critic assumes a link straight from the artists to the putative listener, and praises the work using that metric. If a producer is listed, his role is brushed off as merely engineering and arranging, since producers usually don’t get songwriting credit.
But other genresÂ-dance pop, hip-hop, R & BÂ-depend on different modes of production that don’t hinge on single auteurs and often lean, happily, on technological innovations. Hip-hop threw a big wrench into the singer-songwriter paradigm by using bits of other people’s records and introducing a layer of digital technologyÂ-samplers, keyboardsÂ-between the listener and artist.
The argument is at times straw man (there might be less pop-culture phobic music critics than the New Yorker’s), and I think that rockism is also based in things other than fear/hatred of teenage girls. But the critique is right: rock fans often forget that production and the mass produced product of the record/CD does a lot to sublimate the spontaneity of live performance into an emotional, cathecting whole (am I getting my Freud all mixed up here?). And the line separating that kind of creative whole from producer- and studio-crafted pop music is arbitrary.
I wonder, though, if the review is flogging a dead horse. Critical rock snobbery is still there, certainly, but not only is it entirely cut off from the charts (in a way it wasn’t in the 1980s or early 90s), but it’s the minority opinion among professional critics. Look at the Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll. Not too long ago, the list showed great concensus, usually gravitating toward alternative and indie rock. Then the critics entries started showing grumblings about the narrowness of critical taste. Now, pop music genres, particularly dance, hip hop and rap, seem as well-esteemed as rock. World and roots music even makes a respectable show.
No comments have been added to this post yet.