something i want to say
So I made that post about my favourite songs of 2012 (including taylor swift and gangnam style etc.) and people just hated on it.
I just don’t understand.
I mean, I do understand. I have my own issues with ‘the industry,’ I have issues with how it’s hard to compete with a bunch of people with great connections, and that a lot of real artists get lost along the way because they dont have an ‘in.’ and that women feel pressured to act like strippers and its ok to make rape threats but its not ok to say your a feminist. However, I don’t see why we have to hate something just because it’s successful, or assume that because it is successful it has no substance.
Like, how can you hate Beyonce? Shes changing the world. She stands for people of colour and women everywhere succeeding in a stifling patriarchy without compromising her morals. And she makes challenging, interesting art. She’s always positive. She is everything good. And the fact that she is hugely successful is not a shitty thing. It’s an important and amazing thing and she clearly works hard for it.
and I’m sorry, but I think it’s fucking incredible that a korean language song is the most popular thing on the planet. Thats so good for humanity. Psy wrote and produced gangnam style himself and directed the video HIMSELF. No one made psy. psy is a genius and i dont think its so terrible that hes been recognized for this. It also doesn’t make him evil. His art is creating a generation of kids that will grow up seeing asian culture as being as valid as western culture which they currently don’t. I know because I grew up in Vancouver and half my high school was korean or chinese and the kind of shit i heard all the time was horrible. I used to walk around with my chinese boyfriend and people would yell slurs out of cars. Racism isn’t over. Sexism isn’t over. The only way things actually effect social change is by hitting the audience that perpetuates these ideas. therefore, when a deserving artist blows up its good for everybody.
I’m tired of people telling me I’m ignorant for liking pop and hip hop, because I’m not. I know whats up with music. I have thoroughly investigated both mainstream and experimental music. in fact, i was so dedicated to experimental music that I didn’t even bother to learn about pop and R&B until i was 21. I put out multiple records on a label that was run by my friends and released my music on tape because it was the cheapest option. so please don’t tell me that I haven’t been enlightened to the world of alternative music.
and yet I know very few adult males who consider themselves serious ‘music guys’ who don’t laugh when I say I like Mariah carey.
Why? because shes beautiful and people like her. therefore she must be selling sex, right? so obviously her music is terrible, right? ugh.
The first time I heard mariah carey it shattered the fabric of my existence and I started Grimes
—Claire Boucher/Grimes. She subsequently deleted the post and her entire tumblr.
We’ve got to do better.
I don’t get how people can just dismiss all pop or all hip hop or whatever. I get something out of all kinds of music – Grimes, Electric Wizard, DJ Screw, Beyonce, PSY, whatever.
i’m really happy grimes posted this and bummed that she felt attacked enough to delete it all. as someone who is asked pretty much daily to defend my earnest appreciation of justin bieber, i too feel mistrustful of/confused by/unable to relate to people who have passionately negative feelings about pop music. being mad at pop music for being popular is like being mad at ice cream for being cold
also re: beyonce/bob lefsetz this is v relevant
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davidhenson/2013/02/a-prophetic-dance-of-power-not-sex-beyonce-the-super-bowl-and-durga/
Indeed it is.
Thank you so much for saying this! I’m a writer in love with genre fiction, and I am so fucking tired of being dismissed because I’m not out to write the next Great American Novel. We have our niche, each, and none of us deserves to be belittled because we don’t fit someone’s elevated idea of classicism. Whether you sing pop, rock or opera – I’m for you. Whether you write classic lit, horror or fan fiction, I respect you. If you ever — even once — made anything from nothing, I love you. Cheers, Grimes.
The problem here seems to me the fact that people don’t know how to say they dislike something without it turning into a manifesto. It’s OK to dislike something, I believe strongly, so long as you don’t turn it into a jeremiad against an entire genre (or gender), that’s just sloppy thinking. I can say I dislike Mariah Carey without turning it into an ad hominem attack of someone who obviously works very hard and has legions of devoted fans who do very much like what she does.
I like everything except country and rap ( ﾟ_ゝﾟ)
Got to agree: chacun a son gout. I*f you like something that’s great, whether it’s a wonderful piece of meaningful art, or enjoyable ear candy. If someone else enjoys something that’s not your thing, then it’s not your thing. Fair enough: end of. As the saying goes, it would be a boring world if we were all the same (and a bit creepy). Harshing someone’s mellow is being a dick – enjoy your thing, and let them enjoy theirs. Enough with the hate already!
(I know – I’m preaching to the choir here. Haters gotta hate. Maybe they’ll learn one day, if we keep setting a good example).
Frankly, it’s not that R&B and hip-hop are too pop (as it’s supposedly understood by these people: i.e. easily digestible and unchallenging), it’s that they’re often too innovative and downright weird for a lot of their detractors. Then add a tough woman to the mix… and, well, you can see why these fools don’t like Nicky Minaj.
Yep, fucking sexist, conservative fools.
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Agree. I’ve spent most of my adult life not listening to Top 40 but some of it is inescapable, and some of it terrific and perhaps necessary to experience to really understand what music is like now and how it’s evolving. Push comes to shove, “Somebody That I Used to Know” or “Pumped-Up Kicks” are more pleasurable to me than most of Animal Collective or Tim Hecker or The Weeknd. I credit Sean’s unabashed enthusiasm for Beyonce and other pop acts as well as those Matthew Perpetua annual survey playlists for exposing me to a lot of good pop/dance/”mainstream” stuff, or reminding me of stuff I had forgotten I knew and liked. Not to mention that my kids can’t stand most of what I put on in the car and make me change to the radio. Music is as essential as protein. If you’re getting it in steak or oysters or soy, who am I to judge? That is, one’s definition of music being good or bad shouldn’t be based on whether it’s popular, on a major label, written or produced by multiple people, etc.