Guilty pleasures

version

Well-known member
It is, today, entirely acceptable within circles of music snobbery to commend the merits of Beyoncé, Britney, and Bieber; positive reviews by traditional tastemakers from Rolling Stone to Pitchfork asserts as much. Cheesiness, cheeriness, and the cliché (if ironically attended to) are in vogue, and fandom of pop acts serves as a signifier of democratic discernment, of unbiased and open-minded opinions.

This was bang on, imo.
 

sus

Well-known member
Which bits would you now take issue with?

Maybe nowadays I'd be more apt to stress a frame where pop and indie are playing different games, where the rules/criteria against which to measure success differ. That the seeming subordination in taste acceptability of say, The Killers or Camera Obscura or Coldplay to Rihanna or Lana Del Rey—where the first group gets criticized for surface lyrics and earnestness/treacle, while the latter gets a pass—is more a result of that division than it is the ambiguity of social signaling. Also twee shit is just cringey because it's recent, and we all know assholes who try to be twee. Give it 20 years it'll look great.

Also I'd have read Bourdieu's Distinction, which I think does a super thorough job of demonstrating one phenom I try and gesture at in the piece—the way people distinguish themselves from their immediate enveloping social context.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
total fucking gash deeply irredeemable but i'd be lying if it didn't make me fantasise being in ibiza nirvana circa 1998 with the lads getting totally debauched and forgetting, for one week, that I am a moody brown geezer from North London who mostly likes his dance music to punish or headfuck people.


It's got enough of that pulp hard house and the most rudimentary sense of a disco bassline to ensure it doesn't go full eurotrance tedium.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
there's also this, but I love the patrick adams sample and the sheer sledgehammer
bolshie guts of it, so not a guilty pleasure really. proper cheddar done right. not that I'd play it as part of some ironic RA approved poptimist dj set, but it's great.

 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
Not very often, the secret is to slightly overcook it, add extra veg and herbs and a dash of olive oil.

It looks fuckin gross but so what. Sorted!

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