What's Missing from the Appreciation of Music?

Popular music criticism has always been a problematic place, ever since the seriousness of the Beatles' approach to music in the latter half of their career inspired journalists to start writing about it like they once did baseball. For one, you notice from the get-go that critics often use it as a place to grandstand their own purposes, usually only properly listening to a bit of it, so that, even if their reviews are positive, they are not wholly accurate and involve a lot of philosophizing that has nothing directly to do with the music. After the Beatles, the critics had evolved an approach that made them appear to know more about music than the musicians themselves, which was equally ridiculous. Sadly, the more ridiculous component in this scene were those musicians themselves, who became so caught up in the criticism that they did back-flips trying to please these critics, who weren't really listening to them in the first place. What amazes is the way critics would fall all over themselves complementing and extolling the virtues of a musically mediocre band whose lyrics (however semi-literate) appealed to the socio-political notions of the critics. By this stage there was much talk about "authentic" rock and roll, forgetting that, in popular music, there never was nor ever will be anything you can call "pure"; it's always been a hybrid medium, and that has always been its virtue. All of this messy lack of really listening was driven as much by commercially-driven agendas as the critics claimed the music of the musicians was. Sell those newspapers and magazines to the hip crowd, appeal to their sense of elitism, while also appealing to their post-adolescent insecurity about embracing a popular music that seeks to be about something more than the aggressive anticipation of a hot date or the bemoaning of a doleful breakup,. This the deftly critics accomplished by also claiming that for popular music to be legitimately "serious" it must be about rebellion and nothing else. and rebelling is a lot easier than thinking or feeling. In the end, this tradition of criticism was gunning for any band that attempted instrumental cultivation, dynamic orchestration and lyrical sophistication, ready to fire off a gun-blast that sounded the fatal word (or so they hoped), "pretentious". These critics finally found their darlings in the Punk Revolution, which they hailed as "the saviors of popular music". From there on, these critics shot down without premeditation anyone deviating from this musically crude ideal, and street credit (at least among white performers), depended on having some form of "punk leanings". Thus was an era of progressive development in popular music undone, and though there still have been some wonderful moments since, the music overall has never been as good. The sad thing is that, though we know better now, the histories and reference books of popular music that deal with the latter half of the twentieth century have been written either by these old school critics with their puritanical notions of what "true rock and roll is", or by hacks who merely paraphrase what these critics said decades ago, thus perpetuating a misinformed understanding of music from the sixties and seventies. This blog will seek to undo the effects of that in way more consistently articulate and analytical than what one finds in write-in reviews on Amazon. It certainly will have be more forthright than the feeble attempts at critical revisionism found in most popular music information websites. The reviews and comparative studies essayed here will have no motive in profit, but only in what makes for good listening for different moods and different seasons. In short, if you are restless listener, seeking always to explore and deepen your engagement with popular music, this will be the site for you.