You may have noticed some of the recent coverage of the “Performative Male,” a new pitiable stereotype that people with too much time on their hands are (performatively!) mocking.
I have mixed feelings about Pauline Kael's criticism, and I think she was one of the true forerunners of today's poptimism. But I like what she said after her outlook became mainstream:
"When we championed trash culture, we had no idea it would become the only culture"
That whole situation actually disproved one thing Freddie said about all this stuff being purely affective. I've avoided listening to any of the Lamar/Drake stuff, including the Halftime Show, because I know it would require a *ton* of homework.
Nice one, and spot on. But Kael was never as hip as her fan base thought. The true aficionado of film crit needs to search out Negative Space by Manny Farber.
I got suckered by a Rosenbaum review to watch a Belgian film called Rosetta, and afterwards I, my girlfriend, and the rest of the sparse audience kind of nervously chuckled as if to say "how did I get convinced to sit in a theater for an hour and a half to watch *this*?"
Yet the monotony was sort of the point (it was about a young woman working dead-end jobs), and I learned a lot about film history from Rosenbaum's reviews. I reserve the right to my own taste, which is -- or at least was -- kind of the point of reading other peoples opinions, who may have more experience and knowledge. Maybe I'll change my view after reading them, maybe I won't!
Like a lab rat, I comment on these Poptimist articles. Yes a white man, yes a Poptimist, I admit I've been obnoxious with it but I don't deny its dominance. But just to say the worm is turning and the anti-Poptimist is on the rise; Pitchfork's all about MJ Lenderman and his skilful guitar playing and they published a bad review of a K-Pop artist last year:
And re Taylor Swift, the reception of her mediocre double album last year was muted by the wild ebullience over the Eras tour, but it was a critical flop. Even the fans largely admit it. The new one is produced by Max Martin of 1989 and Baby One More Time. You go to that guy when you know you need a hit. I expect overcorrecting reviews, same as Beyoncé's due. The moment is over.
Agreed. Looking at Pitchfork's top albums of 2024:
1. Cindy Lee: Diamond Jubilee
2. Charli XCX: BRAT
3. Jessica Pratt: Here in the Pitch
4. MJ Lenderman: Manning Fireworks
5. Nala Sinephro: Endlessness
6. Waxahatchee: Tigers Blood
7. Mount Eerie: Night Palace
8. Bladee: Cold Visions
9. Astrid Sonne: Great Doubt
10. Kim Gordon: The Collective
At least half would fall under the category of "the main instrument is a guitar and it can't be played at a dance party," and only BRAT would fall under the Poptimist umbrella.
Pitchfork's trying to claw its way back from telling its core audience to fuck off. Or worse, ordering them to stand there and be repeatedly told to fuck off. It's a lot to ask, but who else is talking about new music? So they might make it.
Just as concerning for them is the rapid demise of hip hop, which five years ago was assumed to be the dominant American musical form forever. Now there are no new stars, the big summer hits have stopped coming, and it starts to look like a dad thing...
As a dad there is a lot of new rap I like (Boldy James, Rio, Rod Wave, Glorilla, Big X, the new Clipse album is catnip for dads). But it's not nearly as popular, and there have not been mainstream stars. I tend to think this stuff moves in cycles. Country is really hot now, some of it is really good (love everything Tyler Childers puts out), and a lot of it isn't. But I imagine rap, rock, pop and techno will all have hot periods over the ensuing decades.
His book the Cult of Smart is still an excellent critique of education and has some excellent ideas that still need to be explored more thoroughly. I think his novels would be fun based on some of his better posts. I’m still trying to get through Infinite Jest and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings 😎
"The reason for this fixation, in turn, is that approximately 98% of people who work in media are two standard deviations above the mean in personal insecurity and it makes them feel good to reduce the rest of the world to clumsy generalizations while they maintain their self-conception as unique and beautiful individuals."
Oh man do I see this clearly. The diagnosis of their tribalism I think is this... they were those kids in grade school that suffered that insecurity to the point that after high school graduation they would not launch into a real life and thus stayed in school longer. That resulted in some academic credentials that the higher learning industry profited from by selling them the myth that it basically erases their insecurity to be replaced with high socioeconomic status. But that did not happen, and many of them had to accept low-paying journalism pool writing jobs where their long-standing burn of insecurity would be weaponized to seek retribution against all those that reminded them of their grade schoolmates that demonstrated high self-worth and personal confidence. Oh man do they hate that good-looking, confident, B-average captain of the school Lacross team that has a family, owns three car dealerships and was elected mayor of his town.
My mom was brilliant, curmudgeonly and stubborn. Despite my unpopularity in school, and even at rare moments a crushing sense of despair, I feel so fortunate to have been raised by her, with an ethic of, in the words of a Richard Feynman book "What Do You Care What Other People Think?"
To be fair, were I a writer the answer would clearly be "Because that's how I get read"
While the critique of poptimism remains compelling, I’d argue that the “performative male” trend is no longer a critique of men who don’t engage with pop! Especially recently, it’s been focusing more on what men listen to - artists like Clairo and Laufey, who broke into the scene with distinct indie sounds but have made poppier music in their respective 2024 and 2025 releases. This is still pop sound!
The demonization of the “performative male” is less pro-pop (these two artists have had a wave of attention through August; they are riding the wave and manufacturing more discussion) and more misandrist - skepticism, and perhaps some veiled emasculation, of men who share female-coded interests.
It’s disappointing, but only just so - Laufey’s latest album isn’t very good anyway.
Gotta say, this one washed right over my head, Freddie. I vaguely recognize the name "Matt Yglesias," but not enough to want to hunt down anything he's written (though, you know, if he made a cameo appearance on "The Real Housewives of Miami," I'd watch with added interest.) The other names? Nada, nil, niente.
I mean _anyone_ who writes _anything_ is performative, no? By definition: We're all seeking audiences. I'm not sure how archly capitalizing the word so it reads "Performative" changes that.
Honestly, popularity _is_ the most reliable metric in the present tense. It's not the "death of taste" at all. It's taste convergence. But critics in general like to see themselves as soothsayers; their somewhat arbitrary decisions—"This is quality; this is not"—are a shot at prophesying the tastes of the audience that will be around once "now" becomes "then." Sometimes they get it right; mostly they don't. The future is a hard room to read.
I was kind of wondering why you cared so much until I got to the third-from-the-last paragraph & realized: "Okay! He's writing this preemptively to ward off bad review juju for his novel!"
Though _how_ this essay is supposed to accomplish that, I'm stiil not sure. Personally, I'm a big fan of cringy sex scenes—the cringier, the better!—so I'm a tad disappointed there are none in yours, but I've already pre-ordered the book.
I see so many think pieces about Poptimism but I have never once heard a regular person who doesn't work in media use the term ... I am beginning to think it is not a real thing.
I think it is mainly an Extremely Online phenomena. Which isn't to say I don't know a few dudes personally who regularly and ostentatiously post about their love of the latest trivial pop ephemera on Facebook (itself now the social media of the old) in a way that strikes me as kind of performative.
I think the normie experience is less about who won a war they didn't know about and more about shattering of the monoculture. Now we all have our own algorithms and podcasts and a million other different options to find music. Who can be bothered to try to follow what's popular, if anything outside of a few notable exceptions can even be said to be popular anymore?
I think that's because anyone who is an ardent fan of today's Pop doesn't use that label. Its the label given to them by people who don't like Pop, and is so used by a smaller crowd.
That is possible, but I have literally never heard anyone use it outside of writers about media. Even people who like pop and don't like the label might say something like "I dislike the term poptimism" but again I have not heard it used a single time.
Not sure exactly what the distinction is between being a thing vs having an agreed upon meaning and people using the term. This is in contrast to, for example, the word "woke" which I definitely hear people outside of media circles using, whether they are for or against it .... "poptimism" however has never once been uttered in my presence..
"The death of the critic as a guide to things you don’t already know is one of the most lamentable elements of the evolution of cultural criticism in the past fifteen years"
My dad and I watched Siskel and Ebert back in the 80's and we both agreed Ebert was the better critic, because we often didn't share his opinion on movies but we could generally tell from his reviews whether we would like a film.
Ebert wrote about this dilemma himself: being honest with an audience about what you think of a film versus trying to help them understand if they would like it. His ability to do both without condescending was an art form no one else has surpassed him at.
Most criticism nowadays just seems like an effort by the critic to get noticed as a writer.
Yeah Siskel and Ebert was a real gem. Thoughtful, intelligent criticism _mostly_ without any hint of pretension. I don't remember ever feeling "talked down to" with these two, they felt like regular Joe's.
"Most criticism nowadays just seems like an effort by the critic to get noticed as a writer."
Correct. As Freddie has often said, the No. 1 goal of most of these folks is to gain insider status with other peers in media. To be hip and cool and not mock-able.
Reading this as a Guy Of A Certain Age leaves me wondering whether I’ve already entered a terminal cascade of sr. bewilderment, or I’m just experiencing another run-of-the-mill Rip Van Winkle moment. But as a lifelong LoCali resident the fault lines were clear way back. As the LA Times assumed complete dominance of the region they sported a lineup that included Leonard Feather (jazz), Robert Hillburn (pop & rock, w/able assistance from Kristine McKenna et al) and Charles Champlin (movies). It was a strong lineup but Champlin, a relentless cheerleader for H-Wood commercial product, was the weak link, and everyone who read his reviews and took a genuine interest in film knew it. Anyway, for locals the LAT and our site-specific rags all but obviated the need for guidance from Rolling Stone, which had become thoroughly mainstream by the mid-70s anyway. So some of us read Creem instead, which was a true alternative with enough readership to stay afloat. That’s where I got the lyrics to accompany the roots music that relegated AOR and ultimately even most of the edgier, punkier stuff of the time to my personal dustbin. No regrets about that, but since I knew a lot of people with similar tastes I find it weird to wake up in Century 21 and find out about so many smarty pants people advocating for the schlock of the moment on the implicit grounds of…racial sensitivity? Feminism? White Male atonement? Was I practicing cultural appropriation when I bought an album by Professor Longhair, or supporting white supremacy by making a Hank Williams mixtape? Ugh. Seems like you’re right about taste. On life-support thanks to peer pressure and the cunning valorization of hype, apparently. I hate to think of it dead, but seems as if its only chance is some sort of Fahrenheit 451 exile.
Poptimism, rockism. You mean to tell me actual people spend a lot of time thinking about and even orienting their lives around this? Good Lord, our society is way too rich and has way too much time on its hands. I almost pray that SMOD or Mamdani in New York destroys society so we can start over again . . . or at least put us out of our misery.
Rich Juzwiak? The Slate sex columnist? (insert Jim Downey meme here) Anyway…
“…a poptimist ideology which forbids ever suggesting that music should be appreciated at any other level than whim”
As someone who doesn’t know much about either rock or pop, I found this interesting — I’d gotten the impression that another feature of poptimism was the idea that the music of Taylor Swift (for example) was great art, rivalling Shakespeare or Beethoven, and the only reason someone could disagree is if they devalue the accomplishments of women. But if that’s the case, then you’d think there should be more analysis, not less! This doesn’t seem like a coherent ideology.
I basically agree - and think populist treatment of K-Pop is sorta interesting.
Like you said, pretty rare for popular music press to give a negative review to K-Pop album.* What this looks like in practice is new K-Pop projects a generally aren’t covered in the music press.
That’s kinda weird, though? Couple possible explanations:
1. K-Pop is popular but not with English-speaking audiences. These reviews won’t get clicks, so staff ignore them.
2. Staff didn’t like the music, but is afraid of backlash, so would rather not cover it than put out a negative review.
3. Staff just doesn’t want to write about K-Pop, so they don’t. Notwithstanding the fact that it is in their commercial interests to do so.
1 seems fairly implausible to me - there’s an audience. K-Pop Reddit is English speaking and massive. The K-Pop Demon Hunters movie is smashing US charts, as well as global. Big groups headline US festivals. A highly negative/positive review would get you a ton of traffic.
2. Is possible, but kinda weird - since when have music reviewers cared about standing on their artistic integrity and declining to cover something vs writing a negative review. Some C-list “pop star” like Addison Rae will get a positive review because she’s adjacent to Charli Xcx and it’s in the reviewer’s interests to talk themselves into kinda liking it.
3. I think it’s 3. K-Pop is not cool. It’s not the sort of music that a 30-40something music reviewer who went to Brown and lives in Brooklyn was taught was “cool.” He didn’t grow up with it in the 90s and 2000s - this genre isn’t something he would have found authentically interesting in the formative period of his youth - and more importantly, it’s not high status in 2025 social circles. Addison Rae is cool - cool young people like her and watch her Tiktoks. Cool people don’t know who IVE is and they don’t tweet Le Sserafim fancams. K-Pop fans watch anime (ew), went to UC Irvine and have boring STEM/PMC corporate jobs. Many of them are first/second gen immigrants, etc etc. Maybe they go to Korean church on the weekends. Lame! No cultural cachet.**
Tastes change though, and if there’s one thing music reviewers hate, it’s being out of touch with the youths. And observationally, American youths are starting to eat K-Pop up.
So, I would bet that within 5 years, you’re gonna see K-Pop artists getting Best New Music accolades and read retrospectives “reclaiming” Red Velvet, Teddy, etc. Maybe BTS will be Beyonce-level unassailable critical darling. If NewJeans never relaunches, there will be a “What could have been” thinkpiece or three.
(The people writing these pieces will be many of the same people who expressed 0 interest whatsoever in the genre in 2022.)
*Pitchfork is sometimes willing to go there: Joshua Minsoo Kim has thrashed Blackpink multiple times IIRC, as well as some of their members’ solo projects. Deservedly in my opinion.
** Sort of an interesting contrast with other K-Wave culture - Korean movies are highly respected in US film crit circles.
Pretty sure in this context Performative Male means "Performative Male Feminist"?
Pitchfork readers? Ha! I scoff at them! Arrivistes!
I'm old school--I'm a WIRE reader.
I have mixed feelings about Pauline Kael's criticism, and I think she was one of the true forerunners of today's poptimism. But I like what she said after her outlook became mainstream:
"When we championed trash culture, we had no idea it would become the only culture"
lol I agree with your first point but as far as arguing over hip hop goes, just look at the Kendrick Lamar halftime show man!
That whole situation actually disproved one thing Freddie said about all this stuff being purely affective. I've avoided listening to any of the Lamar/Drake stuff, including the Halftime Show, because I know it would require a *ton* of homework.
Nice one, and spot on. But Kael was never as hip as her fan base thought. The true aficionado of film crit needs to search out Negative Space by Manny Farber.
I'm more of a Jonathan Rosenbaum guy but without Farber you wouldn't have Rosenbaum so credit where credit is due
I got suckered by a Rosenbaum review to watch a Belgian film called Rosetta, and afterwards I, my girlfriend, and the rest of the sparse audience kind of nervously chuckled as if to say "how did I get convinced to sit in a theater for an hour and a half to watch *this*?"
Yet the monotony was sort of the point (it was about a young woman working dead-end jobs), and I learned a lot about film history from Rosenbaum's reviews. I reserve the right to my own taste, which is -- or at least was -- kind of the point of reading other peoples opinions, who may have more experience and knowledge. Maybe I'll change my view after reading them, maybe I won't!
Like a lab rat, I comment on these Poptimist articles. Yes a white man, yes a Poptimist, I admit I've been obnoxious with it but I don't deny its dominance. But just to say the worm is turning and the anti-Poptimist is on the rise; Pitchfork's all about MJ Lenderman and his skilful guitar playing and they published a bad review of a K-Pop artist last year:
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/rose-rosie/
And re Taylor Swift, the reception of her mediocre double album last year was muted by the wild ebullience over the Eras tour, but it was a critical flop. Even the fans largely admit it. The new one is produced by Max Martin of 1989 and Baby One More Time. You go to that guy when you know you need a hit. I expect overcorrecting reviews, same as Beyoncé's due. The moment is over.
Agreed. Looking at Pitchfork's top albums of 2024:
1. Cindy Lee: Diamond Jubilee
2. Charli XCX: BRAT
3. Jessica Pratt: Here in the Pitch
4. MJ Lenderman: Manning Fireworks
5. Nala Sinephro: Endlessness
6. Waxahatchee: Tigers Blood
7. Mount Eerie: Night Palace
8. Bladee: Cold Visions
9. Astrid Sonne: Great Doubt
10. Kim Gordon: The Collective
At least half would fall under the category of "the main instrument is a guitar and it can't be played at a dance party," and only BRAT would fall under the Poptimist umbrella.
Fuck yeah, Kim Gordon's on there.
Pitchfork's trying to claw its way back from telling its core audience to fuck off. Or worse, ordering them to stand there and be repeatedly told to fuck off. It's a lot to ask, but who else is talking about new music? So they might make it.
Just as concerning for them is the rapid demise of hip hop, which five years ago was assumed to be the dominant American musical form forever. Now there are no new stars, the big summer hits have stopped coming, and it starts to look like a dad thing...
As a dad there is a lot of new rap I like (Boldy James, Rio, Rod Wave, Glorilla, Big X, the new Clipse album is catnip for dads). But it's not nearly as popular, and there have not been mainstream stars. I tend to think this stuff moves in cycles. Country is really hot now, some of it is really good (love everything Tyler Childers puts out), and a lot of it isn't. But I imagine rap, rock, pop and techno will all have hot periods over the ensuing decades.
The book might do better than you think, man. You’re a great writer. And you reach more people than most writers.
His book the Cult of Smart is still an excellent critique of education and has some excellent ideas that still need to be explored more thoroughly. I think his novels would be fun based on some of his better posts. I’m still trying to get through Infinite Jest and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings 😎
"The reason for this fixation, in turn, is that approximately 98% of people who work in media are two standard deviations above the mean in personal insecurity and it makes them feel good to reduce the rest of the world to clumsy generalizations while they maintain their self-conception as unique and beautiful individuals."
Oh man do I see this clearly. The diagnosis of their tribalism I think is this... they were those kids in grade school that suffered that insecurity to the point that after high school graduation they would not launch into a real life and thus stayed in school longer. That resulted in some academic credentials that the higher learning industry profited from by selling them the myth that it basically erases their insecurity to be replaced with high socioeconomic status. But that did not happen, and many of them had to accept low-paying journalism pool writing jobs where their long-standing burn of insecurity would be weaponized to seek retribution against all those that reminded them of their grade schoolmates that demonstrated high self-worth and personal confidence. Oh man do they hate that good-looking, confident, B-average captain of the school Lacross team that has a family, owns three car dealerships and was elected mayor of his town.
My mom was brilliant, curmudgeonly and stubborn. Despite my unpopularity in school, and even at rare moments a crushing sense of despair, I feel so fortunate to have been raised by her, with an ethic of, in the words of a Richard Feynman book "What Do You Care What Other People Think?"
To be fair, were I a writer the answer would clearly be "Because that's how I get read"
While the critique of poptimism remains compelling, I’d argue that the “performative male” trend is no longer a critique of men who don’t engage with pop! Especially recently, it’s been focusing more on what men listen to - artists like Clairo and Laufey, who broke into the scene with distinct indie sounds but have made poppier music in their respective 2024 and 2025 releases. This is still pop sound!
The demonization of the “performative male” is less pro-pop (these two artists have had a wave of attention through August; they are riding the wave and manufacturing more discussion) and more misandrist - skepticism, and perhaps some veiled emasculation, of men who share female-coded interests.
It’s disappointing, but only just so - Laufey’s latest album isn’t very good anyway.
Yeah I'm not saying that Performative Males are a part of the poptimism war, just that they're a recent Type of Guy
Gotta say, this one washed right over my head, Freddie. I vaguely recognize the name "Matt Yglesias," but not enough to want to hunt down anything he's written (though, you know, if he made a cameo appearance on "The Real Housewives of Miami," I'd watch with added interest.) The other names? Nada, nil, niente.
I mean _anyone_ who writes _anything_ is performative, no? By definition: We're all seeking audiences. I'm not sure how archly capitalizing the word so it reads "Performative" changes that.
Honestly, popularity _is_ the most reliable metric in the present tense. It's not the "death of taste" at all. It's taste convergence. But critics in general like to see themselves as soothsayers; their somewhat arbitrary decisions—"This is quality; this is not"—are a shot at prophesying the tastes of the audience that will be around once "now" becomes "then." Sometimes they get it right; mostly they don't. The future is a hard room to read.
I was kind of wondering why you cared so much until I got to the third-from-the-last paragraph & realized: "Okay! He's writing this preemptively to ward off bad review juju for his novel!"
Though _how_ this essay is supposed to accomplish that, I'm stiil not sure. Personally, I'm a big fan of cringy sex scenes—the cringier, the better!—so I'm a tad disappointed there are none in yours, but I've already pre-ordered the book.
I mostly write to organize, concretize and test my thoughts.
When is the book drop for preorders? Assuming the early critics have read advance copies.
I done pre-ordered mine on Amazon sometime ago. October 7 for kindle delivery.
I see so many think pieces about Poptimism but I have never once heard a regular person who doesn't work in media use the term ... I am beginning to think it is not a real thing.
I think it is mainly an Extremely Online phenomena. Which isn't to say I don't know a few dudes personally who regularly and ostentatiously post about their love of the latest trivial pop ephemera on Facebook (itself now the social media of the old) in a way that strikes me as kind of performative.
I think the normie experience is less about who won a war they didn't know about and more about shattering of the monoculture. Now we all have our own algorithms and podcasts and a million other different options to find music. Who can be bothered to try to follow what's popular, if anything outside of a few notable exceptions can even be said to be popular anymore?
I think that's because anyone who is an ardent fan of today's Pop doesn't use that label. Its the label given to them by people who don't like Pop, and is so used by a smaller crowd.
That is possible, but I have literally never heard anyone use it outside of writers about media. Even people who like pop and don't like the label might say something like "I dislike the term poptimism" but again I have not heard it used a single time.
It’s definitely a thing, but most don’t call it that or even know what the word means.
Not sure exactly what the distinction is between being a thing vs having an agreed upon meaning and people using the term. This is in contrast to, for example, the word "woke" which I definitely hear people outside of media circles using, whether they are for or against it .... "poptimism" however has never once been uttered in my presence..
"The death of the critic as a guide to things you don’t already know is one of the most lamentable elements of the evolution of cultural criticism in the past fifteen years"
My dad and I watched Siskel and Ebert back in the 80's and we both agreed Ebert was the better critic, because we often didn't share his opinion on movies but we could generally tell from his reviews whether we would like a film.
Ebert wrote about this dilemma himself: being honest with an audience about what you think of a film versus trying to help them understand if they would like it. His ability to do both without condescending was an art form no one else has surpassed him at.
Most criticism nowadays just seems like an effort by the critic to get noticed as a writer.
Yeah Siskel and Ebert was a real gem. Thoughtful, intelligent criticism _mostly_ without any hint of pretension. I don't remember ever feeling "talked down to" with these two, they felt like regular Joe's.
"Most criticism nowadays just seems like an effort by the critic to get noticed as a writer."
Correct. As Freddie has often said, the No. 1 goal of most of these folks is to gain insider status with other peers in media. To be hip and cool and not mock-able.
I agree. I used to choose books based on reviews, but not anymore.
Ebert was truly brilliant. I miss his perspective and writing so much.
Reading this as a Guy Of A Certain Age leaves me wondering whether I’ve already entered a terminal cascade of sr. bewilderment, or I’m just experiencing another run-of-the-mill Rip Van Winkle moment. But as a lifelong LoCali resident the fault lines were clear way back. As the LA Times assumed complete dominance of the region they sported a lineup that included Leonard Feather (jazz), Robert Hillburn (pop & rock, w/able assistance from Kristine McKenna et al) and Charles Champlin (movies). It was a strong lineup but Champlin, a relentless cheerleader for H-Wood commercial product, was the weak link, and everyone who read his reviews and took a genuine interest in film knew it. Anyway, for locals the LAT and our site-specific rags all but obviated the need for guidance from Rolling Stone, which had become thoroughly mainstream by the mid-70s anyway. So some of us read Creem instead, which was a true alternative with enough readership to stay afloat. That’s where I got the lyrics to accompany the roots music that relegated AOR and ultimately even most of the edgier, punkier stuff of the time to my personal dustbin. No regrets about that, but since I knew a lot of people with similar tastes I find it weird to wake up in Century 21 and find out about so many smarty pants people advocating for the schlock of the moment on the implicit grounds of…racial sensitivity? Feminism? White Male atonement? Was I practicing cultural appropriation when I bought an album by Professor Longhair, or supporting white supremacy by making a Hank Williams mixtape? Ugh. Seems like you’re right about taste. On life-support thanks to peer pressure and the cunning valorization of hype, apparently. I hate to think of it dead, but seems as if its only chance is some sort of Fahrenheit 451 exile.
I feel like Tommy Lee Jones in No Country For Old Men...
Many old men don't care what people think.
Take a look at the Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications.
Probably not even on the radar of the poptimists.
A whole world based on waves you can't see.
Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications-- https://archive.org/details/dlarc
I was obliged to pass on our big regional hamfest happening today. Twist the knife!
Poptimism, rockism. You mean to tell me actual people spend a lot of time thinking about and even orienting their lives around this? Good Lord, our society is way too rich and has way too much time on its hands. I almost pray that SMOD or Mamdani in New York destroys society so we can start over again . . . or at least put us out of our misery.
Rich Juzwiak? The Slate sex columnist? (insert Jim Downey meme here) Anyway…
“…a poptimist ideology which forbids ever suggesting that music should be appreciated at any other level than whim”
As someone who doesn’t know much about either rock or pop, I found this interesting — I’d gotten the impression that another feature of poptimism was the idea that the music of Taylor Swift (for example) was great art, rivalling Shakespeare or Beethoven, and the only reason someone could disagree is if they devalue the accomplishments of women. But if that’s the case, then you’d think there should be more analysis, not less! This doesn’t seem like a coherent ideology.
I basically agree - and think populist treatment of K-Pop is sorta interesting.
Like you said, pretty rare for popular music press to give a negative review to K-Pop album.* What this looks like in practice is new K-Pop projects a generally aren’t covered in the music press.
That’s kinda weird, though? Couple possible explanations:
1. K-Pop is popular but not with English-speaking audiences. These reviews won’t get clicks, so staff ignore them.
2. Staff didn’t like the music, but is afraid of backlash, so would rather not cover it than put out a negative review.
3. Staff just doesn’t want to write about K-Pop, so they don’t. Notwithstanding the fact that it is in their commercial interests to do so.
1 seems fairly implausible to me - there’s an audience. K-Pop Reddit is English speaking and massive. The K-Pop Demon Hunters movie is smashing US charts, as well as global. Big groups headline US festivals. A highly negative/positive review would get you a ton of traffic.
2. Is possible, but kinda weird - since when have music reviewers cared about standing on their artistic integrity and declining to cover something vs writing a negative review. Some C-list “pop star” like Addison Rae will get a positive review because she’s adjacent to Charli Xcx and it’s in the reviewer’s interests to talk themselves into kinda liking it.
3. I think it’s 3. K-Pop is not cool. It’s not the sort of music that a 30-40something music reviewer who went to Brown and lives in Brooklyn was taught was “cool.” He didn’t grow up with it in the 90s and 2000s - this genre isn’t something he would have found authentically interesting in the formative period of his youth - and more importantly, it’s not high status in 2025 social circles. Addison Rae is cool - cool young people like her and watch her Tiktoks. Cool people don’t know who IVE is and they don’t tweet Le Sserafim fancams. K-Pop fans watch anime (ew), went to UC Irvine and have boring STEM/PMC corporate jobs. Many of them are first/second gen immigrants, etc etc. Maybe they go to Korean church on the weekends. Lame! No cultural cachet.**
Tastes change though, and if there’s one thing music reviewers hate, it’s being out of touch with the youths. And observationally, American youths are starting to eat K-Pop up.
So, I would bet that within 5 years, you’re gonna see K-Pop artists getting Best New Music accolades and read retrospectives “reclaiming” Red Velvet, Teddy, etc. Maybe BTS will be Beyonce-level unassailable critical darling. If NewJeans never relaunches, there will be a “What could have been” thinkpiece or three.
(The people writing these pieces will be many of the same people who expressed 0 interest whatsoever in the genre in 2022.)
*Pitchfork is sometimes willing to go there: Joshua Minsoo Kim has thrashed Blackpink multiple times IIRC, as well as some of their members’ solo projects. Deservedly in my opinion.
** Sort of an interesting contrast with other K-Wave culture - Korean movies are highly respected in US film crit circles.