A recurring weekly feature where we highlight some of the most interesting music writing from across the web.
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(Not) My Superman by Nona Willis Aronowitz (Rookie): Being a teen girl who is in love with hip-hop is a weird thing; it must be odd to be drawn to music that explicitly treats you like an object. For Aronowitz, it forced her to constantly redraw and police the boundaries of her tolerance – how much could she tolerate the misogyny in an NWA song she otherwise liked?
But for Aronowitz, Eminem was different – she was drawn explicitly to the misogyny of Eminem raps like “Kim”, directed at his ex. For Aronowitz, Eminem’s misogyny was front-and-centre, not a casual line dropped in here and there. And, in the end, Aronowitz felt that being drawn to Eminem helped her work through a lot of issues, helped her safely explore thoughts that might have hurt her down the line.
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Bangerz vs Prism vs ARTPOP: A Pop-Album Battle Preview by Molly Lambert (Grantland): Coming out over the next 2-3 months – in time for Christmas – are new albums by Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, and Rihanna. However, as Lambert alludes to – the shiny plastic pop genre seems very 2010. It’s 2013 now, after weirdos like fun. and Gotye got to the top of the charts. Lambert’s skewering of the promo campaigns trying to position their new albums are cannily observed. And funny.
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Naked Women In Pop Videos: Art, Misogyny or Downright Cynical? By Peter Robinson (The Guardian): In the US, the maths of the charts are such that YouTube video views count. And so it turns out that the way to increase video views is BREASTS. BOOBS. TITS. Hey, it worked for Robin Thicke. And whether or not the boobs are put in arty or misogynist contexts (etc.), the maths mean that Robin Thicke probably got to #1 in the US partly because he was making softcore porn for teenage boys.
Though I dunno. Let’s say that you actually want to watch porn on the internet. Instead of music videos where you only sometimes see boobs because there’s also footage of some bloke singing at you, why not just watch actual porn? It is the internet we’re talking about here. [Because music videos make it guilt free? SFW? "PC"? All of the above? - Ed.]
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Kevin Shields by Ryan Dombal (Pitchfork): In February, My Bloody Valentine’s MBV came out, their first record in over two decades after the impossible-to-follow-up-really Loveless. At the time this was semi-unbelievable, and garnered good reviews. I mean, The Avalanches will one day release a follow up to Since I Left You, and it might not even take two decades (I’m not holding my breath).
Anyway, MBV came and went in the critical world, really. It was a nine days wonder. Of course, most people don’t live in the critical world; a fair few people likely made MBV part of their lives, downloading the songs or buying the LP. (The same thing happened with Lana Del Rey – the critical world basically shut up about her as soon as her actual record had been out a month, and nobody seemed to notice that she still had a career).
Which is to say that this is a fine, insightful interview which explains lots. And that if reading this is the first time you’ve thought about MBV in months you may well be missing out.
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Low Fidelity: The Reality of The Record Business, Circa 2013 by Neil Jameson (Decibel Magazine): Neil Jameson might be in a black metal project with Thurston Moore, but he’s also a record store guy, managing a shop in New Jersey. It’s interesting to hear a modern perspective on what that’s like, and the way that business is now also split across the internet and how difficult that is (but also, stay for the funny asides – e.g., people who’ve seen Pawn Stars thinking their shitty scratched vinyl is worth a fortune.)
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Cash On The Pinhead by Sasha Frere-Jones (The New Yorker): Frere-Jones here hosts a conversation with a variety of music industry types with different focuses/opinions on stuff, from Damon Krukowski who was in Galaxie 500 to Dave Allen, who was in Gang of Four. It’s interesting to see the variety of perspectives on offer; Frere-Jones says that his old record label (he was in a band called Ui, and he’s probably unaware that his band name is slang for a U-Turn in Australia?) hasn’t bothered with Spotify because their admin costs would be more than the money they’d make from it.
This one’s worth reading, because there’s articulate opinions, well-expressed, and because it makes you realise that, in reality, there’s no one right answer for the music industry. However it goes, there’ll be winners and losers.
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Gypsy Is His Autopilot by Robert Christgau (Barnes & Noble Review): Christgau is that strange thing, the rock critic who’s basically at retirement age who is still more interested in new music than old. And for Christgau, that means he’s into stuff like Gogol Bordello, a band formed in NYC (but now based in Brazil) that’s more focused on the immigrant experience, than on the indie scene of the Strokes or the high society of Vampire Weekend. We now live in a world, as Christgau argues, that is full of microniches. Where, say, Placebo still have a career because they’re huge in Croatia all these years after their "break". And so "niche" stuff like Gogol Bordello is probably bigger and more popular than you’d think.
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The Incredible Power of Kidz Bop by Reyan Ali (Pacific Standard): In the late 1950s, the likes of Pat Boone and Fabian had careers not necessarily because they were good, but because they were the acceptable face of rock and roll music, and acceptability matters, because parents have to give money to the teens in order that the teens can buy the things; as Little Richard said in Dancing In The Streets, they put Pat Boone on the bed to display for their parents, and they put Little Richard in the drawer.
Kids these days want to hear modern pop music, but their parents rightly get a bit upset about how explicit it gets. So the Kidz Bop franchise – and how it humorously bowdlerised ‘Thrift Shop’ recently – sort of serves the same purpose as Pat Boone did.
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