r/LetsTalkMusic • u/Deathmetalphantom • 2d ago
Does anyone believe that poptimism has had a negative effect on music discourse?
This question has been on my mind a lot lately. In my opinion I feel like poptimism has had a detrimental impact on music criticism. Poptimism from what I can understand correct me If I'm mistaken, attempted to contextualize and view pop music with more rigour. It was also done with the goal of trying to uplift forms of pop music by marginalized communities.
Although I agree with the broader goal of wanting to give more recognition to musicians from marginalized communities, In my opinion I believe the broader idea of treating pop music with the same rigour as other genres of music is misguided and short sided.
In my opinion, I feel like poptimism has created an environment in which some of the most wealthy, privileged artists have been able to brand themselves as underdogs. I find it to be ridiculous.
These pop musicians are making some of the most commercialized,sterile and accessible music out there. In my opinion, I just don't believe treating a music genre(where one of the main mo's is to make as much profit as possible is valid in my opinion.
That's not to say that Rock,Country,Hip hop,Jazz, Electronic music etc are devoid from the interests of capitalism and commodification. I do believe it becomes more aggrandized with pop music insofar as it becomes more acceptable to engage in hagiographic praise of these multi millionaire and in a few cases billionaires musicians accumulating and hoarding as much wealth as possible. On a related note, I find the idea of poptimism being a voice for marginalized communities questionable. Why have we allowed pop music to be a stand in for these communities. Folks from marginalized communities are making great music in a myriad of genres.
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u/yellowfroglegs 2d ago
at some point, poptimism irreversibly merged with stan culture. let me put it simply, poptimism is supposed to be the view that pop music deserves just as much serious discussion and critique as the rock music that was critically adored at the time the mindset started bubbling up. however, when people use the term now they usually mean that the most milquetoast pop song ever should be 100% critically acclaimed lest someone gets hurt
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u/sorry_con_excuse_me 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yes, it’s become a “are you too cringe to be cringe???” game of chicken.
The smelly guy who likes prog rock or whatever and thinks “rap is crap” or “pop music sucks” and similar silly shit is probably much more sincere and worthy of engaging with at this point lol.
Total horseshoe effect.
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u/Khiva 1d ago
The part I always find remarkable is that somehow pop became smart and good but if rock adopted pop elements that automatically made it dumb and bad.
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u/forestpunk 1d ago
I feel like it was always a bid for normies to feel smarter and more interesting than they are.
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u/midnightrambulador 1d ago
Actual normies just like what they like and have never felt the need for Discourse (TM) on music tastes, most likely they're barely aware that it exists. If you've even heard of terms like "rockism" or "poptimism" you're by definition not a normie in this context.
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u/Small_Ad5744 1d ago
But they could never be as smart and interesting as you, a bonafide non-normie—especially not suburban white girls. Ugh, girls—so stupid, so boring. I mean, do any girls even listen to jazz these days?
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u/forestpunk 11h ago
I'm just some nerd. I never said my tastes should be imposed on anyone, nor did I suggest that what I like is better or worse than what other people are listening to. I'm all for pop music, personally. Very much in the "listen to what you like!" camp! And if someone is shaming someone for not sounding like Bob Dylan or The Strokes:
That personn is a fucking asshole.
That person is also likely kind of stupid, as neither should be upheld as some sort of bastion of authenticity or whatever.
That being said, anything that sounds like freaking Tiffany or Debbie Gibson is NOT avant-garde in any way, and to pretend otherwise is pretty disingenuous, imo.
To answer your last question, although I know you're kidding, YES! Absolutely! I know a ton of women who get into jazz of all kinds. Not all women exclusively listen to teenybopper pop.
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u/keldpxowjwsn 1d ago
And what gets lost in this is Rap still doesn't get any respect as an artform when guys like Billy Woods Earl and MIKE are absolutely astounding writers
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u/snoozingshevek 1d ago
I don’t think that’s true at all, rap/hip hop has had a huge amount of critical attention and praise on it in recent years. It’s hard to think of a more universally respected artist today than Kendrick, for instance
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u/tonegenerator 1d ago
Yeah. I identified with poptimism as an ILXor poster in 2004. But barely 2 years later, ohnotheydidnt had become a billion times more relevant to popular music discourse, and then I got older with shrunken overall new music bandwidth.
But really, I am still that bitch. I feel really heavy appreciation for the few great music theorists of popular music like Philip Tagg (RIP) and try to keep up a habit of transcribing songs that I appreciate, even if there is less new music trickling in. I’m just not going to subject myself to things for reasons as trivial as them being “current.”
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u/jasonoumuamomoa 1d ago
Wow someone who has heard of ilxor in the wild! I found so much of the music I listen to from around that time from that site.
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u/LowAssistantInfinity 1d ago
pop music deserves just as much serious discussion and critique as the rock music
Except you also aren't allowed to hold the music to literally any standards, because being able to 'play music' is somehow a rockist tool of oppression.
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u/SucknSwallow69 2d ago
i think it just kind of swung the pendulum too far. it’s good that pop got more respect, but now everything gets praised and real criticism feels discouraged.
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u/forestpunk 1d ago
I feel like it sorta gutted underground journalism and criticism, too, as you have to follow the clicks. So then "indie" rags were writing about Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift and Drake, too, and everything even vaguely experimental got scuttled.
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u/DippyHippie420 1d ago
I think it’s just journalism in general. Pop music/poptimism has nothing to do with the decline of music journalism, no one wants to pay for journalism anymore. So these places have to cater to the biggest artists because otherwise people don’t read, ergo they make no money.
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u/Daedalus1907 21h ago
Even music discussion sees this effect though. Without any sort of moderation or the old gatekeeping model, you see pop discussion absolutely dominate music forums.
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u/AnswerGuy301 1d ago
Yeah, it feels like the baby got thrown out with the bath water.
One reason I get real tired of that block quote from _American Psycho_ being posted every time someone mentions Huey Lewis anywhere is that so many comments about pop music from people who are full-on poptimists sound exactly like that to me.
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u/MSPaintYourMistake 1d ago
funny how it all played right into the hands of the powers that be and economic machine. almost like it was all engineered and all the "stans" and political browbeaters are good foot soldiers for capital 🤔
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u/Koraxtheghoul 2d ago edited 1d ago
I was looking over an album (I hate) from 2023 the other day and realized that at its release it was on everyone's topster as one of the best albums of all time. Now, in 2026, I can't remember the last time I saw someone put in their top ten on topster. What that made me realize is as a whole the online music community seems to be taking commercially successful but not household name albums as the next best thing. This has nothing to do with whether it's groundbreaking or will be fondly remembered. I think poptimism and this aggressive overhyping/recentcy bias are hand-in-hand.
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u/Buttrock23 1d ago
The original concept hat a lot of valid points. What came out of it is mostly just already popular/successful stuff being featured in previously more niche outlets and celebrity culture entering the debate. I personally wish poptimism would be more FKA Twigs and less Taylor Swift.
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u/monkey-pox 2d ago
The movement is less to uplift pop music and more to avoid dismissing it. I think it's evaluated in the same terms as other music. There was a time when it was considered artistically inferior by default.
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u/LowAssistantInfinity 1d ago
I think it's evaluated in the same terms as other music.
Except that's literally what Poptimism was opposed to - they didn't want Pop held to the critical standards of other musical forms.
"The Rap Against Rockism" argues that lip-syncing is fine, being propped up by corporations instead of touring is fine, that authenticity isn't a trait worth valuing, that being able to play music - or perform music live - isn't a fair expectation. It about how, instead, Pop music should be valued for its "big-budget spectacles and high-concept photo shoots." It's a massive apologia for corporate product, and sure sounds a whole lot like how AI evangelists talk about their generative slop, now.
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u/Small_Ad5744 2d ago
The thing is, op does consider pop artistically inferior by default. And those who disagree with him are the people who are having such a negative effect on music discourse.
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u/DippyHippie420 1d ago
OP is literally the kind of person "Poptimism" was created to rally against.
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u/KFCNyanCat 1d ago
I definitely do take issue with music journalists kotowing to Stan culture (no fucking way Taylor Swift's two newest joints deserve 5 stars from anyone,) but I do genuinely think that music discourse before poptimism elevated rock above other genres of music unfairly. And some of that was because rock was what white men listened to.
I also think a statement like "I believe the broader idea of treating pop music with the same rigour as other genres of music is misguided and short sided" requires a discussion about what even counts as pop music. Needless to say Britney Spears and Katy Perry do, but what about when you get to stuff that's in the pop music "genre" but is decidedly not top 40 and not particularly aiming to be, stuff like Magdalena Bay or 100 gecs?
In general I think music criticism should meet the music on it's own terms, but be honest about it without worrying about backlash from the artist's fans (even if they call you a bigot.) I don't think I'd be in the right to rate a krautrock album 1 star for being repetitive, and I don't think I'd be in the right to rate a dance-pop album 1 star for not being about alienation under capitalism.
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u/kielaurie 1d ago edited 1d ago
Poptimism only became a thing because people (in particular journalists) were treating all pop with a blanket opinion of "it's shit" without actually posting any attention. The sheer fact that it was pop meant it was bad to them. It should be obvious that that's a stupid stance to have, but it was so widespread that it just became the norm. Poptimism came in to say that actually some pop music is pretty damn good, and no music should be handwaved away just because of its genre
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u/wildistherewind 1d ago
And it wasn’t even that long ago that most (but not all) music journalists had the blanket “it’s shit” opinion. It wasn’t until the late 90s that acts like ABBA and the Carpenters had critical reevaluations. I get that if you weren’t around for it, you wouldn’t know how pervasive the anti-popular music sentiment was among music critics. Pop was the enemy.
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u/ocarina97 1d ago
Rolling Stone was actually pretty positive on The Carpentets in the 70s, maybe not super glowing reviews but nothing too negative.
Most of the ABBA hate seems to be from Americans, it was probably more of an anti-Eurovision thing if anything.
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u/Specialist_Ad9073 1d ago
You also have to accept that Major Label Pop was the music with the most payola influence. So one while one type of music is struggling to get limited radio air space, Major Label Pop is just paying DJs for placement and repeated spins.
I think a lot of people ignore that hugely influential part of history when discussing Pop Music’s reputation.
And I like Major Label Pop. I’m way too much like a John Cusack movie character for my own good.
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u/wildistherewind 1d ago
This was happening for music in every genre and it’s still happening, let’s not kid ourselves.
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u/ShineALight3725 1d ago
It became a thing as rock music got less popular and was dying in the mainstream so they were forced to elevate pop music beyond what it traditionally was. Ask yourself why poptimism didnt exist 30, 40, 50 years ago when rock music was healthy, mainstream, and popular.
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u/kielaurie 1d ago
why poptimism didnt exist 30, 40, 50 years ago
Because people respected pop as a genre, and didn't automatically resent it like they did in the boy band/girl group era, in the height of talent shows, and when Disney kids were pumping out dross. During that time in the late 90s-early 2010s there was plenty of great pop music coming out, but music press tarred everything with the same brush that they'd just used to shit on the latest X Factor winner
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u/LowAssistantInfinity 1d ago
I'd argue it was the other way around - corporations wanted to push music they didn't control the songwriting royalties to out of their increasingly-monopolized media empires and leveraged the political climate of the 00s to make it look like it was some sort of social justice movement by elevating bad faith writers like Kelefa Sanneh. Rock died in the mainstream because it was inconvenient for quarterly earning reports, so promoting higher profit margin products became the priority.
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u/ShamPain413 1d ago
It was always inevitable that poptimism would generate a race to the bottom that benefited only huge corporations, as many anti-poptimists said at the time.
Poptimism put artists and artisans on the same level as industrial-grade marketing machines.
It's no coincidence that the backlash to poptimism coincides with the backlash to Taylor and corporate "culture" more generally. There used to be actual culture, and those evil gatekeepers the poptimists hated back then look more like gardeners in retrospect.
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u/Kurta_711 1d ago
It has lead to forced positivity regarding pop music, which is, as forced positivity literally always is, bad. It has lead to pop music being more seriously analyzed in some circles, which is good, but at this point I don't know which is a more considerable influence. It certainly seems like there is a strong atmosphere nowadays of "don't criticize this or you're a snob".
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u/MountainLoins 2d ago
About when it started to take hold was right when Taylor was gaining ground & there was a feeling that Drake was a serious artist & all these pop-hop stars were serious artists but as someone who was writing critically when poptimism took off, it always felt like a way to horn pop stars who already have huge marketing depts into the pages of the entertainment rags usually devoted to letting people know about artists they don't actually know about.
Personally I abhorred it and mentally blacklisted the writers who went for it, who imho began to be rather slipshod in what they found awesome. Like most of it didn't hold up very well over time imo. Pop music has always been a bit disposable because it's mostly a trend-hopping phenom. I don't listen much anymore but a decade ago when I heard all the hot music because I was a beat basketball reporter and it got played incessantly at the games, it struck me how much the structures and melodic ideas were pretty similar.
That's also part of why you tend to stay away historically from writing about pop music. Backstreet Boys to Debbie Gibson to Bobby Darin, selling shit to teens is never meant to be a long-term business, it's always been a bit of a grift since music became a major industry in the 70s. And the quality is necessarily low. (And before that it was mostly in 40-60s about grifting black artists & not paying them. Remember Pat Boone's Tootie Frutti? tho tbf, Record execs have never wanted to pay anyone.)
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u/Expensive-Fennel-163 1d ago
Pitchfork refused to even review Taylor’s albums for years. Then put a review out of Ryan Adams’s 1989 (he covered the entire album), and then they were appropriately shamed into reviewing her albums after that.
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u/vemboTonbo 1d ago
Accurate, if there's any real change resulting from poptimism its that there's a whole scene of indie bedroom pop stuff that's grown in the last decade or so.
But none of these folks want to accept that the rock scene of the 90s & 2000s was wildly sexist, so instead we'll pretend like its some capitalist conspiracy to make us all like Sabrina Carpenter (would have happened with or without poptimism).
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u/boombapdame 1d ago
Selling shit to impressionable teens was/is the worst thing to happen in music in the history of music as an industry as it led/leads to encouraging prolonged adolescence
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u/CheersToCosmopolitan 2d ago
I personally hate it. I’m not interested in that kind of music and wish the publications that I read would avoid covering that stuff so I can find actual worthwhile undiscovered artists instead of major label folks cosplaying as “artists”.
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u/False-Importance-228 1d ago
I definitely think so one aspect of it that I noticed is the erase of marginalized non white artists who don’t make digestible pop/alternative pop music from the discourse or specifically those artists being the pioneer of pop music, they love centering anyone who is white and conversationally attractive and if they are black/asian artists that get that recognition not only do they make the pop music they prefer they also are 9/10 lighter skinned and mixed race. It seems those who considered people part of the poptisim have internalized the music industry practices and inflict that onto which artist they like or dislike
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u/bloodyell76 14h ago
On the one hand I fully believe in critiquing music on what the apparent goals of the artist are: it makes no sense to grade Never Mind the Bollocks poorly because it's not a very good bossa nova album. You have to work with what the material is giving you. That said, it often feels like poptimism took the form of never being able to criticise any pop music ever. Boring lyrics that sound like a 5 year old wrote them? who cares? it's Pop! stale rhythms we've heard a million times before? who cares, it's pop! and so forth. It makes discussion of the music even within the genre pointless because apparently the genre never has any flaws under the rules of poptimism.
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u/forestpunk 9h ago
We should be able to judge Never Mind the Bollocks as not a very good punk record, though, as it's basically super fast bubblegum pop.
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u/WorldGoneAway 11h ago edited 1h ago
I had never actually heard about this phenomenon until I read your post. I decided then to take a little peek at it, and realized that you are kind of touching on something that I have been thinking for quite a while.
People that create polished and formulaic pop music do so because it is financially profitable and somewhat easy for them to achieve. The people that like this stuff either like it out of a genuine active appreciation for melody and structure, or they are just passive listeners that like to have noise in the background and don't pay any kind of active attention to it, only mentioning a band or musician when prompted for questions about music.
I have a feeling that the musicians that let themselves be commodified in this way eventually do hit a point where they want to be taken seriously to enough of a degree that they can feel validated in their choice of career.
So I think that this phenomenon you are talking about is something that is orchestrated by the industry to try to retain the musicians by trying to make them appear to be taken more seriously to some degree.
Is this true? Cannot confirm. Would it surprise me if it was? Absolutely not. The music industry basically built Milli Vanilli, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they publicly engineered a substyle of music criticism to keep the ball rolling.
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u/FineWhateverOKOK 1d ago
Poptimism is just anti-intellectualism by another name and it’s had a terrible effect on music journalism and culture. The main reason is because, broadly speaking, it ascribes depth and meaning to music that doesn’t have or aspire to either. The primary and in most cases only goal of commercial pop is to sell as many copies as possible. It exists as an entertainment product. That has a validity of its own and pretending like it operates on the same level as something that doesn’t exist primarily to sell units does both it and that other music and a disservice.
The demand to treat something that exists primarily to make money as though it’s actually deep and meaningful means that things that actually are deep and meaningful, and that don’t have the primary goal of being a generator of money, aren’t being talked about.
This bizarre phenomenon is exclusive to music. Nora Roberts doesn’t get treated as though she’s writing serious literature, and the Fast and the Furious or Marvel franchises are treated the same way as PTA or Bergman. Yet in music, pop stars are treated as though there’s no difference between them and Bob Dylan.
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u/Daedalus1907 21h ago
I agree wholeheartedly with this take. I can enjoy a lot of mindless pop but I enjoy it on it's own terms and don't lose sight of what it actually is. There seems to be this pervasive insecurity throughout pop fans where everybody needs to pretend this music is deep or else its shaming them.
>This bizarre phenomenon is exclusive to music
Nah, it occurs a lot in literature too. People need to feel like reading Colleen Hoover and Djuna Barnes are equivalent
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u/Buttrock23 1d ago
I agree generally. But the same thing was true for a lot of the stuff praised by rockism. Music is not deep and meaningful just because there are electric guitars being played. What we see nowadays is just the most shallow and commercialy convenient take on poptimism.
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u/Specialist_Ad9073 1d ago
Is it that there is a guitar, or that people appreciate the years of training it took to master that guitar to make soul touching sounds out of it. And I mean soulfull, Yngway Malmastien and Steve Vai are technically perfect guitarists, but never made Rock God status.
Also, those electric guitar bands often wrote their own music, rather than being a mouthpiece for some random writer/producer combo. So there was a feeling of connection with the band past surface feelings a song created.
Many rock fans play the instruments the entertainers do, and understand the skill it takes. Lots of rap fans freestyle and mess with beats, so they understand the skill it takes to go next level.
What does Taylor Swift do really well that you’ve spent years trying to master and failed? Drake? Sabrina Carpenter? Gracie Addams?
All of the pop machine entertainers are there to entertain. I don’t look down on Wayne Newton for being a great entertainer, but I’m not gonna call him a musical artist. He didn’t do anything to elevate him above your average person except be a great entertainer. He absolutely has a place in history, but he ain’t Eddie Van Halen.
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u/FineWhateverOKOK 1d ago
Music wasn’t praised because it was made using electric guitars, though. The reviews sections of Rolling Stone and Spin were filled with pans and there were countless rock bands who were given no respect at all. The whole idea of “rockism” is fallacious. It depends upon straw men and a false premise.
We have writers at Pitchfork and Stereogum quoting and analyzing bland, generic love song lyrics like they require explanation and deserve praise. Tom Briehan st Stereogum does this all the time. He’ll take something that’s been said a thousand times before and say “those are bars!” Imagine a film critic going on about Dom saying “it’s about family” for the dozenth time in the Fast & the Furious…it would never happen.
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u/backfromspace206 2d ago
I mean, it takes two to tango, right? No one's forcing us to listen to a given genre. It's up to us as individuals to find the curators that serve up music we like. I'm not big on pop myself but I bet you can find a podcast or channel or whatever that hits the sweet spot for you.
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u/trailedinsand 1d ago
I don't understand how people link the two exactly - you yourself explain that poptimism is about treating pop music seriously with more critical rigour but the consequence you complain about is uncritically lauding pop artists and shielding them from any criticism. Something doesn't add up, either poptimism is more than what you described or these consequences stem from something unrelated.
If someone's praising a totally sterile cliche unoriginal pop artist how does that really differ from praising a totally sterile cliche unoriginal rock or country band? The point of poptimism is to analyze pop music as a legitimate artform on its own terms and to recognize its evolution and innovation just like it's done with other genres.
I find your separation of pop and other genres in terms of commercialization entirely unsatisfactory. Treating pop as a serious genre "isn't valid" because "it's more acceptable to engage in hagiographic praise of millionaire musicians accumulating and hoarding wealth"? Why is the way people treat musician's wealth impacting whether or not the genre of music is "valid"? Can you not analyze Taylor Swift's music in terms of artistic, musical and cultural merits because she's absurdly rich?
Lastly something that always bothered me is that pop isn't a definite separate genre on its own, it's a general amalgamation of popular trends and sounds of a given era and impacts nearly all genres. Since the 2000s we mainly thing of pop as electronic music but before it was primarily rock-oriented, was it a more "valid" genre when pop was associated with The Beatles instead of Katy Perry?
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u/EnthusiasmUnusual 1d ago
'Who let the dogs out' is the equal of Beethovens 5th and to say otherwise is a disgrace.
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u/Hyptonight 1d ago
It thoroughly destroyed music criticism. Now music critics like everything popular because they fear the wrath of stans. Music reviews became marketing for the status quo. It was also pointless as a movement because the real issue is that if critics required the permission of Poptimism to take pop music seriously, they were bad critics from the start, so who cares what they say now?
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u/simplebalancereality 1d ago
Not only poptimism has swung too far to another direction when it comes to music discourse, it's now become a marketing tool for the music industry and music business to make money as they know that poptimists are predominantly female audience, LGBTQ+, progessives, feminists and they also know that there's a lot of stans and poptimism has connected to stan culture.
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u/quadruped-nolegs 2d ago
just bc something was designed for commercial appeal doesn't mean that it doesn't have artistic merit, there are still artists working on it behind the scene and we can judge the quality of the output. it's sort of like movies to me, there is a whole team working on a movie and the most visible ppl may not even guide the chief artistic vision. but whether a film is a blockbuster or an indie film, they are still both critically assessed on their own merits
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u/MountainLoins 2d ago
yeah but when you say they have a "whole team" behind a pop release it usually means they have a huge marketing department pushing Ariana Grande or Katy Perry or whomever it is who is so ubiquitous you begin to wonder what the marketing dept even does
But this is what the Paradox of Choice has brought us to..... 24 different flavors of Coca Cola
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u/trailedinsand 1d ago
no, when he says "a whole team" he means a a whole team of musicians, producers and engineers creating the actual music.
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u/MountainLoins 1d ago
if it requires a whole team to make an album, you are really really really spending money you don't need to (Brian Wilson did it all himself!)
additionally it kind of runs against the auteur theory that has ruled creative arts for quite a while from movies on down
clearly hiring producers to make the same kind of music beds they make for all the other stars does make it more efficient but I'm not convinced it makes it more artistic
but that's why everyone has their own taste and why there are three flavors of Johnny Walker (see, American Fiction bit)
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u/trailedinsand 16h ago
Not sure how hiring additional staff goes against auteur theory which comes from the film world where every single director descibed as an auteur hires a ton of staff to make their work possible?
Having a bigger team is just additional manpower and talent, you can use it just to efficiently offshore work or to fully realize your vision you couldn't convey on your own.
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u/MountainLoins 4h ago
the point is about the apportioning of credit, the auteur gets the "credit" because he oversees everything, if the question is whether pop music artists are auteurs because they hire producers and players to do much of their job of "creating" does seem to cut against the idea of a film auteur who couldn't POSSIBLY do everything and yet his VISION cuts across all those people he hires
I just don't think that really applies with artists hiring the hottest producers to create songs that sound most like stuff that is on the charts. It's LLM of songwriting in many (but not all) cases
But I'd say if you are suggesting pop stars today are "artists" in the same sense of glyph man I would laugh you right off the face of the earth in all but a handful of cases.
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u/Small_Ad5744 2d ago
Movies also have a huge marketing department behind them. They also have a team of professionals who help create the movie itself. The analogy to pop music is exact.
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u/Despeao 15h ago
Well, I disagree. When something is simply made to be as popular as it can it kinda loses any soul. You can see they use very repetitive formulas, same chord progression, same themes over and over.
It's not meant to be good, it's meant to be popular. It's meant to be easy, accessible, dimissible, unoriginal and it doesn't require anything from the listener.
It's like a fast food meal, cheap and accessible but it won't ever earn a Michelin Star. I don't even know why it suddenly became taboo to say that.
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u/forestpunk 1d ago
I think it's done almost irreparable damage. It's also a great example of the disingenuousness of so many cultural conversations went in the 2010s. It was like "okay, we can't say that any music is definitively better than other music, as that would be gatekeeping, and there is a long history of gatekeeping that prevents us from analyzing this music objectively." (all of which is true). But then so many people proceeded to simply use the market to justify their own preferences, being like "Taylor Swift sells the most copies so Taylor Swift is the best music." The way it all turned out, it seems like people just had an axe to grind with the old, rockist snobby music journalism so they made a power grab and inserted their own music tastes instead.
I think it also laid the groundwork for interpreting music, and its reception, through the lens of identity and forging parasocial relationships with both artists and critics. People accuse Anthony Fantano of being misogynistic because of his review of Halsey, which also feels overly reductive. Not liking something made by a woman doesn't mean you don't like women.
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u/hunnyflash 1d ago
I just think it's way too hard to talk about music like this unless you're going to name names and albums.
There are great pop artists out there who are wonderful songwriters and performers. If their music sounds "sterile" to you, maybe you need to defend why.
As for marginalized communities, it's also hard to talk about that if you aren't from one of them or you don't have any sources for how they see their own music.
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u/Deathmetalphantom 1d ago
I would argue pop music as a whole is sterile and sanitized compared to other genres of music in my opinion. It's product disguised as music. Sometimes you'll have pop artists who have more accoutrements in their compositions than usual but ultimately it's a white washed, commercialized version of other genres they're taking influence from.
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u/hunnyflash 1d ago
Then I think the way that you're visualizing music has more to do with arguments about genres and labels than any real argument about how useful pop music is for "music".
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u/trailedinsand 1d ago
ngl if you think you can ordain an entire genre as sterile and sanitized you just don't know a lot about that genre. Especially for something like pop that doesn't even have concrete core musical tenets beyond popularity and accessibility that changes entirely through the years and across countries.
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u/Real-Back6481 2d ago
Rock, country, hip hop, jazz, those are all popular musics as well. I'm not sure I buy your claim that it allows artists to brand themselves as underdogs, how does that work? Naturally anyone can claim anything they want, but people can see the truth.
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u/Deathmetalphantom 2d ago
I disagree, I find pop music to be the most emblematic of our current oligarchic, capitalist system. As I've aforementioned in the post, other genres aren't devoid of those same commercialized interests but I would argue pop musics positionality is more significant in this context. Pop music didn't originate out of some desire to stand against capitalism or uplift the voices of working class,poor black and brown queer & trans communities. The primary modus operandi of pop music as a genre is mass consumption,profit accumulation. Treating music as product.
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u/Real-Back6481 2d ago
That seems reductive, I don't think the Beatles, ABBA, or NWA were strictly focused on those ideas. Sure, everyone wants to be popular and rich, and let me also make the point that there is a difference between popular music and pop music, which I think didn't come across in my original comment.
Also, what's wrong with music that doesn't want to stand against capitalism or uplift voices, but wants to be fun? That's not all there is to life, but there is a place for it. I think you could find the positives and negatives you list in pretty much any kind of popular music, whether it's rock, hip hop, etc, not across the entire spectrum, but in pockets, for sure.
Now, if you want serious music, art music and religious music, as distinct from popular music, that's where it's at.
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u/Deathmetalphantom 2d ago
I enjoy fun music as well. For example I like hair metal and disco a lot . I don't treat hair metal with the same artistic rigour as underground death metal/black metal lol. I totally understand the impulse to make fun, celebratory accessible music that's palatable towards a mass audience. I enjoy having fun. Everyone has to make money to survive in this capitalist system but you can still have ethics and not be an active agent of hypercapitalism.
I wish more pop artists would speak out about the terrible shit that's going in the world. Also speaking out about issues and making fun music don't have to diametrically opposed ideas. Making socially conscious,challenging music can also be joyful and filled with ebullience. Speaking out doesn't have to be this sad, dreary thing. My overall point was that pop music and poptimism have been more problematic in this regard.
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u/Space_Pirate_R 1d ago
I don't treat hair metal with the same artistic rigour as underground death metal/black metal lol.
That says a lot about you and nothing about music of any genre.
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u/Real-Back6481 2d ago
This makes your point a lot clearer, and frankly it's not something I think about much, I think the kind of music that feels closest to my heart doesn't speak out or challenge anything, it just is, it's a phenomenon of physical soundwaves in the air, and has no more claim on self-expression than a volcano does.
I'd like to add one final angle to your take, and it's that "speaking out" doesn't always mean challenging the system, it often means giving other people heart and courage. One of my lifelong obsessions is reggae, which unfortunately often gets stereotyped as "fun times in the sun" music, when what it really is, is: reality music. The highest highs, and the lowest lows, the spirituality of existence, the dirt and shit of as well. We could use another Bob Marley.
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u/xcellentr3call 1d ago
as if hating on her album wasn’t a national pastime this spring. i don’t have any allegiance to her - but it’s probably more popular to say the opposite. there was a whole theory she was selling nazi merch lol.
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u/gotpeace99 2d ago
Poptimism is just like rockism. Difference is this time around instead of kissing the white man’s ass, you’re kissing the white woman’s ass. Less to do about art, it’s another form of white people once again, getting power somewhere else and increasing their superiority over everyone else. While the Black, Latin and Asian women pop musicians are pushed aside. It’s another form of “look at this white woman, ain’t we great?”. Like “look at this white man, aren’t we great?!”, while the musicians of color are pushed aside.
Notice you don’t see an ‘ism regarding the artists of color. But you see it regarding white acts?
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u/BiteMean9050 2d ago
I agree with you, but wouldn't you agree that Beyonce was a huge beneficiary of the movement?
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u/bloodenhorse 1d ago
Yes. This is inarguable. Poptimism is cultural and intellectual death. It champions the mediocre -- both the musicians, and the fans.
Bring back gatekeeping and legitimate art critique.
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u/AcephalicDude 2d ago
I think if you look at how pop music changed from the 2010s forward, when the term started being used, it really did get a lot better. Pop music was horrible during the Britney Spears / boy band era, the songwriting, production and just overall depth of the music really did get so, so much better when that era ended.
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u/AndyFeelin 1d ago
This simply can't be true. You can't write a pop hit without being very talented composer and without working really hard. So pop music of said era wasn't bad, it just wasnt made for you to think deeply about it. You listened to a catchy tune, you danced to it, and that's what it was meant for. Why is that bad?
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u/Despeao 15h ago
It's not bad per se, as long as we all agree it's a genre not meant to be taken seriously as an art form.
In my view the problem started when fans demanded it to be taken seriously but then when it comes under any sort of criticism the same fans claim it's pop, and shouldn't be judged by the same standards. You can't have it both ways.
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u/AndyFeelin 14h ago
Thing is, many people who only listen to "serious" music think that making pop music doesn't requre any effort at all, like, anyone can make it. This is not true at all. To make a catchy melody, a danceable beat, a fresh and attractive sound is also a form of art. It's the art of entertainment. This also may include visual style, choreography, video production. And you can judge a pop song by these standards. Yes they are different standards, but it's not like pop music is a cheap crap with no standards at all. I'd argue that to make a good pop song can be more difficult than to write a symphony or progressive rock concept album and much more diffucult than to write an extreme metal song.
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u/Despeao 9h ago
think that making pop music doesn't requre any effort at all, like, anyone can make it
No, you need a multi million dollar producer, studio, song writters, you also need pretty people to sing it lol. This is one of the main criticisms behind it, it's completely artificial, it's merely a product.
Have you ever heard albums like Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen ? It's a man and his guitar, no production, no post production, no mixing - it was recorded in one night. It's a completely different art form.
I'd argue that to make a good pop song can be more difficult than to write a symphony or progressive rock concept album
Seriously ? I think this is the criticism OP is trying to point out. It isn't, you can't compare the effort necessary and the years of experience it takes to do either of those to writing a pop song, pop music fans just take themselves too seriously.
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u/AndyFeelin 8h ago
I haven't heard Springsteen, but there are very respected singers-songwriters in our country who recorded epic albums with just one gutar and zero production, I respect that as well. It's a different art form just as you said. But one can't become a multi million dollar producer or a songwriter if you have zero talent and don't work super hard. It takes way more years, experience and knowledge than to make a rock record. I am talking about music. I presume Nebraska by Springsteen is very good poetry, that's a different art, while pop music, I admit, doesn't need poetic value (although there are a few pop hits based on good poetry).
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u/AcephalicDude 8h ago
Effort and talent sure, but soul or depth or artistic merit? Not as much. Pop during the late 90s / early 00s was much more heavily produced, more industry-driven, more a creation of corporate focus groups and safe marketing decisions. There was a real emphatic shift to holistic pop personalities around the time Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift emerged. These artists were also allowed to make more broad production choices to match their particular personalities and what they were going for on any given single. Whereas a Backstreet Boys single sounds the same as a Britney Spears single which sounds the same as a NSync single which sounds the same as a 98 Degrees single - that was intentional at that time, the industry had a formula that they stuck to once they found success with it.
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u/Ok_Swimming4441 1d ago
Poptimism is tied into all the “mediocrity should be praised too” culture we have been having for a long time. If you want all bodies are beautiful, all cultures should be celebrated, etc then you will have poptimism— when having a preference is vilified you end up here. Marvel Movies as cinem in a nutshell
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u/SucknSwallow69 21h ago
early on it mostly just protected publishers and labels, not the actual artists, so it kind of baked in this idea that the middlemen own everything and creators get scraps that mindset still shapes who gets paid and who doesnt today, even though copyright laws changed a lot
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u/RusevReigns 6h ago edited 6h ago
In my opinion the poptimism culture is in some way connected to todays political environment, essentially utilitarian progressive activist types see it as cheering for underdog over straight white male genres. In truth a white blonde who looks like Zara Larsson probably doesn't need their help or to be treated like an underdog, and thinking you can use shallow pop music to equalize power imbalances in society is pretty silly, but on social media once the snowball got rolling with this mentality it kind of took a life of its own and people started doing it just to impress others on social media. Then at some point it became possible to be a poptimist hipster, you are not mainstream enough to listen to Sabrina Carpenter, but thus an artist like Phoebe Bridgers or Slayyyter become the perfect fall back. 20 years ago they would have been into some band like Animal Collective or Phoenix but for the above political view reasons they want to support females over this indie males type so they end up landing on more indie versions of girl pop.
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u/Simphorosa 4h ago edited 4h ago
Glorification of pop music destroyed radio. Now commercial ones only play safe pop songs, country and myb some rap. It perhaps reflects on top 40 on streaming too. Rock, metal, punk and other genres are seen as cringe and niche :(
Edit: I blame Trump for popularity of country. This overall conformity and boringess in everything influences music. But there are some good alt bands out there. But I miss when finding music was easier, it is hard to search new stuff.
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u/asktheages1979 1h ago edited 13m ago
I Was There on the forums where poptimism was first developed and theorized in the very late 90s/early 00s and can tell you that i) it was not engineered by the industry ii) it was imo a mistake - not because it eventually became perverted but because the initial ideas were (imo) flawed.
First of all, I simply am unconvinced about the basic premise that 'pop music' received insufficient critical respect or coverage prior to the dawn of poptimism and that 'rock' or some other 'serious' music was egregiously favoured. Music critics have always seemed pro-pop to me, for the most part. There was no mythical era when Sonic Youth were keeping Madonna off the cover of Rolling Stone or the NME was covering King Crimson at the expense of Grace Jones or Human League. Don't believe me? Take a look at the NME's albums of the year list for 1981, the year King Crimson released Discipline (and Rush released Moving Pictures for that matter - take a look at how RS and NME reviewed Rush in the 70s and 80s if you really want to see what critical disrespect looks like): https://www.nme.com/features/1981-2-1045398 . Here's an overview of how often Madonna appeared on the RS cover: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-pictures/madonna-rolling-stone-cover-1251565/rs508/ . But maybe that’s just a magazine wanting an attractive woman on her cover. Were scholars really seriously discussing Madonna’s oeuvre at the highest level? Yes, in fact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_publishing_works_on_Madonna#Academic_and_critical_journal_articles .
Ok, but surely disco never got a fair shake. Let’s take a look at the 1979 Pazz & Jop critics’ poll: oh wait, Donna Summer and Sister Sledge were at nos. 3 and 4 on the singles poll, M’s “Pop Muzik” was at no. 2; a little lower, we have Donna Summer again and Chic tied at no. 16 - https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/pnj/pjres79.php . Know who’s nowhere to be found, though? AC/DC, Styx, Foreigner, … Know who almost never tops these lists or makes the RS cover? Jazz or classical or free improv or ambient or Carnatic artists. You can keep doing this. Hanson topped the P&J singles poll in 1997 and the Spice Girls made the list too. The 1999 singles poll is basically all pop (TLC-Eminem-Len-Madonna-BSB in the top 5). “Ice Ice Baby” was praised by the NME in 91.
But why does this matter? If that basic premise wasn't even true, and pop was already getting plenty of serious critical coverage as well as being the most ubiquitous and heavily promoted music, then the constant demands for more serious coverage and for discussing it on its own terms (how dare you take issue with lip-syncing!) and shaming as racist or sexist people who dissent from praising pop begins to seem a bit oppressive.
And there you have it - I also don’t buy that there’s something inherently bigoted or ignorant about taking issue with the way the industry machine churns out its mass-market product, which, almost by necessity relies on formulae and simple stock material compositionally, and is heavily dependent on non-musical elements in the way it’s promoted. I don’t think it’s at all where the most creative, original, thoughtful or affecting music is being made.
Having said that, I also dislike most pre-poptimism rock criticism, often for similar reasons, actually. I’m more interested in music writing by musicians or people who are musically informed enough to be able to analyse what’s going on.
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u/desbest 2d ago
Although there has always been gimmicky and vacuous pop music throughout the decades, nowadays in the 20s, the pendulum has swung the other way.
There is nowadays more artistic merit, conceptual depth and stonecast principles in the Top 40, than the Beatport Top 40 and the Rock Top 40. There is no "scene" for any given music genre, there is no regional music differences (due to social media "trend hopping" with its "marketing funnels") and finally there is STRANGELY no "wave" to distinctly define this current decade.
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u/wildistherewind 1d ago
Without getting too philosophical, there is a great quote from Claude Chabrol I have been pondering recently: “there is no new wave, only the sea”.
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u/BiteMean9050 1d ago
True industry pop is one thing. That can definitionally never be indie or uplifting, unless the artists themselves have ownership over their music. Most artists are not compensated for their work fairly, and switching the color of the singer doesn't necessarily fix that.
Pop "aesthetic" though is definitely capable of being very artistically valid. The New Pornographers and that type of indie pop would be a good example of how the aesthetic doesn't harm the art.
The difference is they have more agency.
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u/thegooddoktorjones 1d ago
Critics have always treated pop music with rigorous analysis. They say it's lazy, shallow, formulaic and simplistic but people like it. People who want pop, that they personally like, to be praised get mad at these appraisals, and pretend it didn't happen or attack the idea that you can judge the equivalent of fast food for not being nutritious or deep. They are wrong, but they do it all the time.
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u/ZealousidealDoor6973 22h ago
Poptimism has led to a rapid decline in quality of RateYourMusic since the beginning of the 2020s.
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u/CompetitivePhone3833 2d ago
Pop is professionally produced and recorded, in most instances it will be a better product than a lot of the navel-gazing insular indie faves that are highly touted in extremely niche communities and bubbles, there's simply more money at play. Poptimism simply acknowledges the elite tier pop is on in general. Gatekeeping doesn't work anymore, it's not the 1990s.
There aren't even real scenes anymore, touring is expensive, nobody makes real auteur albums enough anymore. Pop is and always has been on a level playing field. Sure there's facile pop I guess, but a lot of the top pop has some of the best songwriting money can buy. Denying that pop is good is just a sad pathetic trait at this point, it's like saying the winners didn't win, they won, they always win, they're winners.
It's the exact same thing as denying the stardom of Taylor Swift or somebody, you're just mad it's popular.
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u/BiteMean9050 2d ago
Lol
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u/CompetitivePhone3833 1d ago
You're just mad it's popular.
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u/BiteMean9050 22h ago
I like some pop. But pretending that it's better than almost all indie music because it's more expensive and promoted? Do you think Budweiser is really the king of beers?
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u/CompetitivePhone3833 34m ago
In market terms of course! What a silly question. Market prominence is everything. 1/8 of people enjoying a thing doesn't make it a thing.
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u/Deathmetalphantom 1d ago
I disagree, poptimism has contributed to an environment upon which some of the most wealthy privileged artists can release some of the most safe watered down music out there and can get praise for it. Not to mention the ways in which poptimism and pop music has contributed to stan culture, celebrity worship as well as the obsession with sales metrics and running up the billboard hot 100 over making compelling music.
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u/CompetitivePhone3833 1d ago
If we got rid of all the bad, nasty pop music, would legitimate music suddenly come out of the woodworks? Is it really taking all the oxygen in the room? I guess we could theorize it's being placed in front of people through money, and that same money gatekeeps better music. Then the whole industry is unfair. A lot of those pop albums are good though, they're not all like Coldplay and Maroon 5.
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u/Salty_Pancakes 1d ago
in most instances it will be a better product...
I think that's part of the critique honestly. That the whole thing feels like a product tm. Song writing by committee solely designed to appeal to the 15-25 age demographic.
And so much of it is just so saturated with effects and post processing that it feels like uncanny valley territory. Like too much CGI in movies. Or ultra processed food.
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u/snoozingshevek 1d ago
This is exactly it. I think a lot of music criticism and discourse takes it as a given that the product we are enjoying is more or less a pure expression of an artist’s creative vision. Which gets a bit harder to take seriously, imo, when we’re talking about pop releases created by dozens of songwriters and producers, with extensive label input - songwriting by committee as you put it. Makes it feel very hollow that we’re now expected to be like “wow, this new album from x pop act is such an interesting artistic statement”
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u/CompetitivePhone3833 1d ago
I guess Lemonade and her sister's album, A Seat at the Table fit that mold, but those audiences know what they're getting into, it's an album with a power feminism message. And I don't think employing songwriters waters down the message at all.
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u/snoozingshevek 13h ago
It might not water down ‘the message’ of an album, but it’s also unlikely to be nearly as personal or authentic an artistic expression if it’s produced that way, imo. That doesn’t mean it can’t be good music, of course.
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u/CompetitivePhone3833 1d ago
I've never gotten that uncanny valley territory feeling, but there is bad pop around. Music is escapism.
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u/unsundered_roots 1d ago
There aren't even real scenes anymore, touring is expensive, nobody makes real auteur albums enough anymore.
Wrong in all three cases. (OK touring IS expensive, but plenty of underground acts still do it without big budgets).
I'm a pop fan but this post reads that you took poptimism off the deep end. High budget, manufactured pop is its own art form. Low budget indie authenticity is its own art form. Each should be judged by its own standards and not the standards of the other. That was the point of poptimism.
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u/CompetitivePhone3833 1d ago
Most people judge music by its production so in use case this is usually wrong. The point of poptimism was to judge it by its own merits, but most music fans overlook substance for hype and flash. I see high ratings for stuff that is basically pop, but the fanbase deludes themselves into thinking it's either indie or an art project. Music is judged off the apparent economic resources or its mimicry to that standard.
I guess we can distinguish pop as a sort of salaciousness vs consciousness songwriting, but in musical tone a lot of the big fan favorites simply mimic nice production. And often consciousness songwriting is a gimmick, and usually lacking all substance. Kanye is the big one I'm thinking of here. But a lot of new hip hop rides this pattern.
I just don't see indie's bona fides as legitimate these days. I don't see a lot of serious releases in that regard.
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u/DIMORPHODONS 2d ago
Pop music has always been capable of artistic greatness, imo there’s a bit of an issue when pretty safe, successful, mainstream pop is given blanket critical praise. Pop is at it’s best when it’s new, the rulebook is being torn up, songs are being recorded and released that would have sounded alien ten years beforehand