I initially had a lengthy section about Sanneh's watershed article, "The Rap Against Rockism," the moment most point to as representative of the decisive turn against rockism, which I critiqued in-depth and then compared to his frankly almost wistful recent piece "How Music Criticism Lost Its Edge," but I really don't think I could afford to go on any more tangents.
Attentive readers will notice a confusing pattern emerge in the work where it seems as though the definitions of terms, or the contexts they are in, springboard around a lot. For instance, I rail against championing easily-digestible pop as being as valuable as something more difficult or complex, and then I later argue that cultural items are not necessarily so difficult as the way they are presented, which would imply that so-called "difficult" work is, in fact, as "easily-digestible" as anything else (the Molchat Doma example exemllifying this in the inverse, where a pop context turns something "difficult" into pop). I noticed this impression on my last read through last night but didn't want to awkwardly shoe-horn anything more into what was already more than a bit messy, so I am going to attempt to clarify some of that here instead.
First: I think it is NOT AS difficult to begin the contemplation of a work as the discourse surrounding it often makes it seem. The challenges of reading something like Ulysses for instance are not insurmountable. Second: I think that something like TikTok takes something like Molchat Doma and places it in a pop context, a meme context, whatever, and it IS through this process nevertheless degraded (like various motifs from works of classical music taken out of context in pop culture, or images of the Mona Lisa or the Sistine Chapel or whatever), but it does at least expose (as those other examples do) the base ability of most people to appreciate the beauty of these cultural items, even in their degraded context.
It is absoluuuutely happening with fiction, which I briefly allude to in a line taking aim at "upmarket fiction" swamping out the literary landscape, but we also see it with growing acceptance of the "romantasy" genre and such. There's a bookstore down the street from me, beautiful spot really that even has a gorgeous front patio, but they only sell that sort of schlock. It's not a good sign.
First, love the emphasis on redistribution of cultural capital in socialist states. Dead on.
Second, the Food Network did poptimism for food via Guy Fieri, and now I can see the results: Gordon Ramsey giving tasting notes in a triscuit commercial (real). It’s hard to capture why and how it made me as mad as it did.
Christ, not a bad point, I think I've underestimated how badly this has already impacted food culture. And who can forget that there are now "world class chefs" who contribute limited-time specials to some fast food joints, etc. The whole of our culture is taking a hit from poptimist runoff.
I have kind is a Frankenstein relationship with the whole vibe, really celebrated it while it was happening but now have a “what hath g-d wrought” feeling
This was an incredible read, and I have so many thoughts swimming that I won’t even bother to try to capture all of them.
I hate to be a "we’re in a sea of anti-intellectualism" guy, but I certainly think that a number of factors (toxic stan culture, a recognition of the inherent racism and sexism in “rockism") have lead to a generation of critics that are forced to find something a "there” in pop music when there isn’t actually anything there.
This is music that is made to be disposable, and while some have taken the form and made a real art from it — Robyn (and to an extent Beyoncé) as a musician and Madonna and Gaga (especially Gaga) as performance artists — the idea that we have to take the likes of Tate McRae and Sabrina Carpenter, etc seriously as artists is insane.
I think what we’ve experienced is an over correction but as such, the state of criticism has painted itself into such a corner (and the aforementioned stans are so terrifying) that we’ve been stuck having to take objectively useless art as subjectively worth analysis.
(Also, I love me some Celine, but because she is such a talented vocalist that she is able to make her corny ass music truly emotionally cathartic! And that’s fine, but let’s just say that)
Absolutely agree. And I think there definitely IS a strong strain of anti-intellectualism, often ironically posed under the suggestion than "women" in particular won't get it (people complaining about, say, "men" liking something like Ulysses, a book plenty of women I know love, but the resultant effect on culture is that books like that wind up shelved in favour of some sort of YA shit).
And a a Quebecker rag we could never knock Céline, but I would definitely look askew at someone trying to take her work too seriously.
This is a brilliantly well-articulated piece. I appreciate your engagements with Bourdieu and Adorno to challenge this distillation of the capitalist culture industry as though it were a countercultural force of some kind.
I would be curious to hear your thoughts on “art pop,” as a genre and descriptor. Of course, this is a broad and even nebulous concept, representing quite a wide range of relationships to mass consumption, record labels, and art movements. Perhaps this is why I’m so interested in it. I recently saw an online debate about whether Björk’s Vespertine should be considered “art pop,” as there is a sort of engagement with (or transformation of) the structures of pop music in a way that is far more creatively significant and challenging than the work of a classic pop artist like Carpenter or Swift. Still, compared to even Björk’s own more experimental work, there is more of an acknowledgment of popular music as a form.
Furthermore, I may just be less “tapped in” with poptimism as a discourse but I rarely see poptimists heralding more experimental or less commercially appealing works, even if they structurally or narratively are more recognizable to pop listeners than more “out there” works of experimentation.
This is very long but I would be curious to hear your thoughts if you have any!
I think it's probably the case that a lot of poptimists—not all, but I imagine a not insignificant amount—don't really engage with much experimental/less commercially-appealing work. It ties I think into what Austerlitz was saying about the influence of click culture. This month you could write that piece about the new Sunburned Hand of the Man, or you could write about the new Cardi B. One of those pieces is going to drive more engagement, and engagement is now ranked on a piece-by-piece basis rather than a collected print issue, and so you're going to do more stuff on Cardi B, and eventually you get to a point where you don't really have the time to promote something like Sunburned, you won't dedicate as many resources to writing about it, and you certainly won't be promoting it as heavily. As a result of this process I imagine a lot of music journalists just... aren't really listening to stuff outside of mainstream pop stuff anymore, outside of maybe commercially-viable indie stuff like boygenius or something, because there's just no incentive.
I think that "art pop" does engage more, and I think its deconstructive properties provide some nourishment because it often invites us to question our preconceptions and the role of pop music and pop culture, and the music itself is generally more challenging and thoughtful and incorporates some dissonant qualities that provoke a different kind of engagement. Some hyperpop too; 100 gecs legitimately blew my mind when I first heard it, although much of its own aesthetics are now being subsumed into pop music more broadly I think and being stripped of their radical potential, like what happened with pop art as I described above. Once it gets hollowed out and becomes just more consumer banality through the process of cultural production it does lose something, again this returns us to Adorno and how art gets crushed into pulp to feed out as commodities for consumption. Some stuff just gets branded with the "art pop" label as a branding exercise—Lana Del Rey gets the label sometimes and I really don't see the "art" in much of it, but maybe that's just me.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply! I agree that click culture plays a significant role in this sort of engagement. You see this, I think, when mainstream pop and “alt” groups rub up against more challenging experimental works, even when they are broadly aesthetically recognizable. There’s this element of shock when a music critic like Fantano or any number of Pitchfork writers overlook aesthetically profound and challenging works of musical art but rave about “controversial” pop artists like Cardi B or Sexy Red being unrecognized geniuses.
You bring up a good point about “art pop” being a branding tactic as well — I find it interesting how similar Taylor Swift and LDR’s music is but how different they — and their audiences — tend to be perceived in music discourse.
However long ago, NPR posted their list for best albums of that year, almost none of which were mainstream pop releases, and the response on social media was disappointing, to the say at the least, as most commenters were clearly anticipated a battle of their ‘faves’ and not "random stuff no one has ever heard of.” But I like to believe that at least a few readers took note and listened to music they never would have discovered on the Billboard Top 100.
It's the same when people say that trashing bookslop like romantasy is sexist. It just shows how a lot of people associate women with bad taste, whether they realize it or not.
Excellent article. I think the status aspect of it is the tricky part. Because no matter how much you say “it doesn’t matter if you have good taste in music,” there is status associated with having good taste. And people really hate the idea of status hierarchies where they aren’t on top. Okay, that seems like human nature. But I think there’s something particularly American about the next step, which is actively tearing down (or attempting to tear down) “unnecessary” hierarchies. Fairness and equality are essential principles but there are some ugly sides to them, too. Second, and I don’t know why this is true, but at some point people lost the ability to say “okay, some people get status from this thing, but I don’t really and that’s fine.” Almost nobody is comfortable saying: “You know what, music isn’t really my thing and I haven’t developed my musical taste, I pretty much just like pop.” (I am actually comfortable saying this which is why I know it’s weird, because people always react like it’s weird). But really, part of being an adult is recognizing there are some games you aren’t going to win (and for a lot of people, these are games they aren’t even playing!) and that’s okay. I don’t know why this is so hard for people. But a lot of poptimism comes from “how dare you have higher status at this thing than I even though I haven’t put the effort in.” It’s okay to like pop music, have a personal relationship to and find meaning in it! That doesn’t mean you have a greater understanding of music or good taste, though.
My favorite remark about criticism remains: “Sir, I am sitting in the smallest room in my house. I have your review before me. In a moment it will be behind me.”
Apologies in advance, this may be a lengthy reply. To begin I must ask: what do you actually qualify as 'good music'?
You never clearly define it. You gesture at complexity, challenge, deliberateness and "higher order" stimulation, and name a few artists approvingly (Burial, Nicolas Jaar, Shabazz Palaces, James Blake), but you never articulate a positive theory of what good music is. You are much better at saying what is bad than what is good. This makes your argument vulnerable: if you cannot define what you are championing, you kinda sound like a snob with a vague sense of superiority.
Your claim that pop makes people's brains "languid and stupid" is a strong claim that requires strong evidence, and you do not provide it. beyond one neurological study you yourself admit you needed a friend to help you interpret. Most people who listen to Taylor Swift also read books, watch complex films and engage with challenging ideas. I know you agree that humans are capable of enjoying a Big Mac on Tuesday and a home-cooked meal on Wednesday without one destroying their capacity for the other. However, you assume a zero-sum relationship between pop consumption and deeper cultural engagement that you never prove.
On instant gratification specifically: not all immediate pleasure is destructive. Exercise gives instant gratification. So does a beautiful sunset. So does hearing a song that perfectly captures how you feel. The question is whether the gratification crowds out other forms of engagement, and you provide no strong evidence that it does. And every form of art is "engineered" to produce emotional responses. A symphony builds tension and releases it. A horror film manipulates your adrenaline. A novel structures its plot to keep you turning pages. The idea that deliberate craft aimed at producing pleasure is inherently exploitative only applies to pop music if you have already decided that pop's pleasures are illegitimate.
Before I go on, I imagine that the poptimist’s favourite move is to retreat into the fortress of the 'High-Quality Exception.' They will point to Taylor Swift’s Folklore or Beyoncé’s Lemonade as if these albums represent the median of the genre. For the sake of it, they may argue 'Folklore is a genuinely reflective, musically restrained album that has more in common with the indie folk you presumably respect than with the radio pop you condemn. beyonce's Lemonade is a complex work about Black womanhood, infidelity, and generational trauma, recognised by musicologists and cultural scholars as a significant artistic achievement.' Which i think is all true. But also, Rihanna's Anti was a deliberate departure from pop formula and i do think it is "deep" (e.g. Higher, Love on The Brain ???). Sabrina Carpenter's lyrics about girlhood, crushes and dealing with terrible men resonate with millions of young women because they articulate real experiences with precision and emotional honesty. You treat these artists as interchangeable pop products without actually analysing their work, which is ironic, because you are accusing poptimists of not engaging seriously with music. If you are gonna criticise pop, you lowkey chose the worst people to use.
Regardless, you pre-empt the objection that good pop albums disprove your thesis by arguing that individual exceptions do not undermine a structural critique, comparing it to the claim that you cannot disprove "capitalism exploits workers" by pointing to a happy employee. But the capitalism analogy actually undermines your position. The claim that capitalism exploits workers is supported by systematic evidence, wage data, wealth distribution, labour conditions, across the entire system. The claim that pop music is junk food for your brain is supported by your personal taste preferences and one neurological study you needed help reading. The structural critique of capitalism works because the evidence is structural. Your structural critique of pop fails because the evidence is anecdotal and subjective.
If you want to make a structural argument, you need structural evidence. What percentage of pop music lacks artistic merit? By what measure? How do you define "artistic merit" in a way that is not simply your preferences elevated to universal principle? You never provide any of this. You provide Pitchfork quotes you find absurd, a few artists you personally dislikes, and an appeal to Adorno, a theorist who also dismissed jazz as culturally worthless, a position now universally recognised as embarrassingly wrong.
The capitalism analogy cuts the other way too. The correct response to "capitalism exploits workers" is not "therefore all products of capitalism are bad." Capitalism produced the novel, the film, the recorded album, the electric guitar, and the internet you use to publish your essay. Structural critique of the system does not require blanket dismissal of everything the system produces. You can acknowledge that the pop music industry is shaped by commercial incentives and still recognise that individual works produced within it have genuine artistic value. You refuse to hold both of these positions simultaneously and that is intellectually lazy. If individual examples cannot disprove a structural argument, then your own individual examples cannot prove one either. If Folklore being good does not disprove "pop is bad," then "Rude Boy" being shallow does not prove it. You apply the evidentiary standard selectively: ‘your examples count, mine do not.’
I understand that "mathematically engineered" pop makes it inherently less "authentic" or "artistic" than indie music. However, this ignores that standardisation is a hallmark of almost every great musical era. The "Brill Building" in the 1960s produced some of the most enduring music in history using a factory-like assembly line. Motown Records operated on a "Quality Control" system where songs were scrutinised and refined by committee to ensure maximum impact. If we condemn modern pop for being "standardised," we must also condemn the Beatles’ early hits, the Motown catalogue, and even the "Standard" era of Jazz, where musicians all played the same 32-bar structures. Artistic merit is not found in the rejection of formulas, but in what an artist does within them. To claim that a song is "bad" simply because it follows a proven structure is to confuse "novelty" with "quality."
You frame "decades of market research" as sinister, but all it really means is that songwriters have gotten better at understanding what resonates with people. Baroque composers understood counterpoint. Blues musicians understood the 12-bar structure. Motown producers understood arrangement. Knowing what works emotionally and using that knowledge is not manipulation, it is craft. Strip away the pejorative framing and "pop music is engineered to be pleasurable" is just another way of saying "pop songwriters are good at their jobs."
Yes, I do think repetitive, mathematically engineered music is arguably still a skill. Lyricless music that makes people dance has been valued for centuries, from waltzes to samba to techno. Your position would have to condemn most dance music across all cultures. Even simple lyrics are impressive. Taking even the most basic representation of lust, heartbreak, desire or self-doubt and distilling it into three and a half minutes of relatability that is also sonically catchy is not easy. "Espresso" by Sabrina Carpenter does that. The simplicity of pop is often the product of rigorous craft, not laziness. On another angle away from deliberate engineering, Dolly Parton wrote "Jolene" by experimenting with her sound, gradually incorporating pop elements into her music. It was only written in a few minutes. It has four chords and a simple lyric. It's a great song. I'm not suggesting that you disagree, because as i said i don't actually know what you consider 'good'. I am simply adding many different examples for breadth.
On the "Death of Taste" and the Algorithmised Landscape
You describe the "death of taste" and the surrender of cultural curation to the algorithm as an unprecedented crisis. But the winner-take-all dynamic existed long before algorithms. In the 90s, a handful of major labels controlled distribution, and getting shelf space at a record store required their backing. The top artists consumed the vast majority of sales then too. The difference now is that the barrier to entry is almost zero. An artist who would have been completely shut out in 1995 can now at least exist, build a small audience and sustain a creative practice.
The attention inequality is real, but it is not new, and it was not caused by poptimism. It is caused by the fundamental mathematics of cultural markets, a small number of artists will always capture a disproportionate share of attention regardless of the critical ideology in play. The label-critic-venue pipeline was itself deeply flawed and exclusionary. It decided who got heard and who did not and those decisions were shaped by the same class, race, and gender biases you yourself acknowledge existed in rockism. The system that gave us critics championing Burial also gave us decades of women, queer artists and artists of colour being ignored or tokenised.
On TikTok, Access, and the "Degradation" of Art
You use Molchat Doma as an example of how TikTok degrades art by placing it in a meme context. But as you admit yourself, 300 million streams later, that example directly undermines your own claim that "the masses" need special education to access complex art. They found it themselves, through the very pop infrastructure you condemn. Does it really matter if someone discovers Molchat Doma through a meme, if they then go on to listen to the full album? The gateway matters less than where it leads. And the data shows that the gateway does lead further. When songs go viral on TikTok, full streaming numbers on Spotify and Apple Music spike massively. Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams" re-entered the Billboard charts decades after release because of a TikTok video. Mitski's streaming numbers surged after TikTok exposure and her subsequent tours sold out. Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" became the most-streamed song in the world after Stranger Things, and millions of people then went and listened to the full Hounds of Love album. The 15-second clip functions as a trailer, not a replacement. You assume the worst-case engagement pattern, person hears clip, never investigates further, and ignore the common one: person hears clip, gets curious, listens to the full song, explores the catalogue.
I actually think a lot of people simply need to get off tiktok. You heavily focused on the professional critical landscape and online discourse. But most people's relationship with music does not run through Pitchfork or TikTok. People still go to concerts, still discover music through friends, still sit with albums, still form deep personal attachments to songs. The "death of taste" may be a phenomenon within music journalism and online culture, but it is not clear that it reflects how most humans actually experience music in their daily lives. The fact that five people write the "Global Top 50" does not mean the world’s taste has narrowed; it means that the "Top 50" is no longer the only metric of cultural relevance. Your focus on the Billboard charts as proof of "brain rot" is an outdated perspective that ignores the millions of vibrant, niche subcultures thriving in the digital age.
'Poptimist Elitism'
I agree that your Pitchfork examples are genuinely damning. Describing DJ Khaled's "I'm on One" as "a masterpiece of subtle confidence…" is absurd and you are right to call it out. But the problem with that excerpt is not that a critic used sophisticated language about a pop song. All criticism, of any genre, uses specialist language. A review of a jazz album in DownBeat or a classical performance in Gramophone is equally dense. The question is whether the language serves the music or obscures it, and sometimes dense critical language genuinely illuminates something you would not have noticed, even in a pop song. The Pitchfork excerpt is bad not because it is complex but because it is wrong. It does not map onto any real quality in the music. That is a failure of that specific critic, not of the entire project of taking pop seriously.
The most valid concern in your article is that if we treat every pop song as a "masterpiece," the word loses its meaning. A critic can (and should) say that a DJ Khaled track is "bad" because it is derivative, lazily produced, or emotionally hollow, while simultaneously arguing that a Taylor Swift or Beyoncé track is "good" because it displays lyrical precision and innovative production. Poptimism doesn't mean "everything is good"; it means "every genre is capable of producing greatness." By judging pop on its own terms, we actually create a stricter standard for quality, not a looser one.
The Diversity Narrative Was False - I know I’ve done this so out of order but you argue, via deBoer, that the poptimist critical movement was driven predominantly by white men performing cultural allyship rather than genuinely amplifying marginalised voices. If the fans, the cultural consumers, the people who actually engage with this music are overwhelmingly women and POCs, then does it matter that the critics who validated it were white men? The fans did not need Pitchfork's permission to love Taylor Swift. You could argue that the fans drove the culture and the critics simply followed which actually supports your economic argument more than the "white male anxiety" argument. The critics were not leading a revolution; they were chasing the audience that already existed because that is where the clicks were.
Fuck that was a lot. Funny enough I'd never even heard the term 'poptimist' before reading this.
The devolution that you eloquently describe is largely the result of the cultural move from literary to oral. A population that does not read is ill-equipped to handle anything with nuance, subtlety, and complexity of thought. Another element to consider is the total triumph of the corporate culture. More than ever, major corporations dictate people's tastes, when one would think, given the abundance of options on the internet, it would be the opposite.
There are many things I disagreed with in this piece - and also some things I agreed with, credit where it's due - but I would like to mention only one, about language and commensurability.
The current wave of anti-poptimist backlash kind off falls flat, for me, because the vast majority of the arguments proceed from the premise that the old rockist terms are universal and correct, and the problem is that poptimism, even in its most sophisticated articulation, simply retreated from those terms, rather than attempt to examine and redefine them.
A clear expression of this is in your analogy about fast food - which I see why you'd deploy: fast food is entirely commensurate with the hegemonic definition of "bad". The problem with this, of course, is that - to continue with the fast food analogy - poptimism, in its most sophisticated - I would argue, actual - articulation, did not attempt to make the claim that burgers are best; rather, it made an attempt to ponder the question, "for whom, and in what way, are burgers good?"
I am ready to concede the excesses of vulgar, "Goop on ya grinch"-style poptimism, but I think you - and pretty much everyone else I've read who have argued from your position - proceed from an essential misunderstanding of the poptimist project, in a way that actually makes it impossible to adress that project, because any accusations you would mount toward it, turn on assumptions that that same project attempts to question - seemingly, without awareness of that fact.
I apologize if the tone here seemed needlessly harsh. You can extract any excess venom and pass it on to Freddie de Boer: that guy is a dumbass.
I don't think your tone was harsh, although you and Freddie evidently need couples counselling.
I should say, and maybe I should have made this clearer, but I DO recognize that the role of poptimism wasn't to simply say "pop is best, rock sucks," I just don't think that at least the majority of what we call pop should be treated as an equal form of expression, in the way that a Big Mac shouldn't be treated as a etc etc. Poptimist critics make lists like the aforementioned Pitchfork one where, yeah, a "Goop on Ya Grinch" analog like "I'm On One" is treated as if it belongs in the same conversation of merit as something by Shabazz Palaces or Tim Hecker, and it's just absurd, and imo devalues what it gets compared to by extension.
"For whom and in what way are burgers good?" IS a question I answer in the post, it's just that my answer is "anyone who lacks the resources for the alternative and has been conditioned to crave it," tied into my broader position on material deprivation, consumerism, neoliberalism, and so forth.
gave this a reluctant like as someone who likes pop (and other music! obligatory I'm-still-smart disclaimer)-- I'm very eager to read let's talk about love now. reading this piece felt like going back in time, I feel like it's so rare to see people calling schlock what it is nowadays that it's both shocking and a bit refreshing. I think I have the same relationship with this essay as you have with todd in the shadows' videos (which I also watch), I don't agree with everything but it made me think. love love loved the bit about the medieval cathedrals and the need for more accessibility and education instead of settling for slop
Very thorough and well-written piece. I've also felt in the past that poptimism often reinforces elitism rather than opposing it as many of its proponents claim, but I arrived at this observation from a rather different (and probably more superficial) angle than yours. Namely, that now, since poptimism is clearly the status quo for the elite, taste-making social stratum, liking a certain array of trendy pop music is just as much of a status signifier as liking indie rock and IDM was 20 years ago, and if you deviate too far from this taste profile (in any direction), you will be an outsider and outcast.
Moreover, it's usually only a certain type of pop music that "poptimist" critics and tastemakers champion, as many of the same people will often denigrate other types of widely popular music that is marketed to a less "cool" cultural stratum, such as corporate indie rock or country-rap. Just think of how many self-styled "poptimists" will also sneer at "stomp and holler" music, or use "coworker music" as a pejorative. Granted, those styles typically do suck, but still.
On another note, being a music nerd, I can't help but get pedantic and contend that there's plenty of stuff out there within the broader "pop" umbrella that really is more challenging. Another commenter mentioned "art pop," but even within the mainstream, there are varying degrees of artistic ambition. And even within the stuff that's just intended to be disposable, vapid fun, there are some songs/artists that succeed at that aim way more than others.
And as far as vapid rock music that gives the genre a bad name, you can do a whole lot worse than Bad Company, as trudging through the archives of rock radio over the last 25 or so years will make clear...
Great piece. I didn't understand the long quote about the ferment of music, maybe because I listen to too much Rihanna and my critical processes are dulled. Better get back to CF Bach.
I initially had a lengthy section about Sanneh's watershed article, "The Rap Against Rockism," the moment most point to as representative of the decisive turn against rockism, which I critiqued in-depth and then compared to his frankly almost wistful recent piece "How Music Criticism Lost Its Edge," but I really don't think I could afford to go on any more tangents.
Attentive readers will notice a confusing pattern emerge in the work where it seems as though the definitions of terms, or the contexts they are in, springboard around a lot. For instance, I rail against championing easily-digestible pop as being as valuable as something more difficult or complex, and then I later argue that cultural items are not necessarily so difficult as the way they are presented, which would imply that so-called "difficult" work is, in fact, as "easily-digestible" as anything else (the Molchat Doma example exemllifying this in the inverse, where a pop context turns something "difficult" into pop). I noticed this impression on my last read through last night but didn't want to awkwardly shoe-horn anything more into what was already more than a bit messy, so I am going to attempt to clarify some of that here instead.
First: I think it is NOT AS difficult to begin the contemplation of a work as the discourse surrounding it often makes it seem. The challenges of reading something like Ulysses for instance are not insurmountable. Second: I think that something like TikTok takes something like Molchat Doma and places it in a pop context, a meme context, whatever, and it IS through this process nevertheless degraded (like various motifs from works of classical music taken out of context in pop culture, or images of the Mona Lisa or the Sistine Chapel or whatever), but it does at least expose (as those other examples do) the base ability of most people to appreciate the beauty of these cultural items, even in their degraded context.
Excellent article. I see a similar situation with fiction, although I couldn’t speak to it as fluently as you have with the state of commercial music.
It is absoluuuutely happening with fiction, which I briefly allude to in a line taking aim at "upmarket fiction" swamping out the literary landscape, but we also see it with growing acceptance of the "romantasy" genre and such. There's a bookstore down the street from me, beautiful spot really that even has a gorgeous front patio, but they only sell that sort of schlock. It's not a good sign.
Two things:
First, love the emphasis on redistribution of cultural capital in socialist states. Dead on.
Second, the Food Network did poptimism for food via Guy Fieri, and now I can see the results: Gordon Ramsey giving tasting notes in a triscuit commercial (real). It’s hard to capture why and how it made me as mad as it did.
Christ, not a bad point, I think I've underestimated how badly this has already impacted food culture. And who can forget that there are now "world class chefs" who contribute limited-time specials to some fast food joints, etc. The whole of our culture is taking a hit from poptimist runoff.
I have kind is a Frankenstein relationship with the whole vibe, really celebrated it while it was happening but now have a “what hath g-d wrought” feeling
This was an incredible read, and I have so many thoughts swimming that I won’t even bother to try to capture all of them.
I hate to be a "we’re in a sea of anti-intellectualism" guy, but I certainly think that a number of factors (toxic stan culture, a recognition of the inherent racism and sexism in “rockism") have lead to a generation of critics that are forced to find something a "there” in pop music when there isn’t actually anything there.
This is music that is made to be disposable, and while some have taken the form and made a real art from it — Robyn (and to an extent Beyoncé) as a musician and Madonna and Gaga (especially Gaga) as performance artists — the idea that we have to take the likes of Tate McRae and Sabrina Carpenter, etc seriously as artists is insane.
I think what we’ve experienced is an over correction but as such, the state of criticism has painted itself into such a corner (and the aforementioned stans are so terrifying) that we’ve been stuck having to take objectively useless art as subjectively worth analysis.
(Also, I love me some Celine, but because she is such a talented vocalist that she is able to make her corny ass music truly emotionally cathartic! And that’s fine, but let’s just say that)
Absolutely agree. And I think there definitely IS a strong strain of anti-intellectualism, often ironically posed under the suggestion than "women" in particular won't get it (people complaining about, say, "men" liking something like Ulysses, a book plenty of women I know love, but the resultant effect on culture is that books like that wind up shelved in favour of some sort of YA shit).
And a a Quebecker rag we could never knock Céline, but I would definitely look askew at someone trying to take her work too seriously.
Well hey, no one's knocking Queb-era Celine around here.
This is a brilliantly well-articulated piece. I appreciate your engagements with Bourdieu and Adorno to challenge this distillation of the capitalist culture industry as though it were a countercultural force of some kind.
I would be curious to hear your thoughts on “art pop,” as a genre and descriptor. Of course, this is a broad and even nebulous concept, representing quite a wide range of relationships to mass consumption, record labels, and art movements. Perhaps this is why I’m so interested in it. I recently saw an online debate about whether Björk’s Vespertine should be considered “art pop,” as there is a sort of engagement with (or transformation of) the structures of pop music in a way that is far more creatively significant and challenging than the work of a classic pop artist like Carpenter or Swift. Still, compared to even Björk’s own more experimental work, there is more of an acknowledgment of popular music as a form.
Furthermore, I may just be less “tapped in” with poptimism as a discourse but I rarely see poptimists heralding more experimental or less commercially appealing works, even if they structurally or narratively are more recognizable to pop listeners than more “out there” works of experimentation.
This is very long but I would be curious to hear your thoughts if you have any!
I think it's probably the case that a lot of poptimists—not all, but I imagine a not insignificant amount—don't really engage with much experimental/less commercially-appealing work. It ties I think into what Austerlitz was saying about the influence of click culture. This month you could write that piece about the new Sunburned Hand of the Man, or you could write about the new Cardi B. One of those pieces is going to drive more engagement, and engagement is now ranked on a piece-by-piece basis rather than a collected print issue, and so you're going to do more stuff on Cardi B, and eventually you get to a point where you don't really have the time to promote something like Sunburned, you won't dedicate as many resources to writing about it, and you certainly won't be promoting it as heavily. As a result of this process I imagine a lot of music journalists just... aren't really listening to stuff outside of mainstream pop stuff anymore, outside of maybe commercially-viable indie stuff like boygenius or something, because there's just no incentive.
I think that "art pop" does engage more, and I think its deconstructive properties provide some nourishment because it often invites us to question our preconceptions and the role of pop music and pop culture, and the music itself is generally more challenging and thoughtful and incorporates some dissonant qualities that provoke a different kind of engagement. Some hyperpop too; 100 gecs legitimately blew my mind when I first heard it, although much of its own aesthetics are now being subsumed into pop music more broadly I think and being stripped of their radical potential, like what happened with pop art as I described above. Once it gets hollowed out and becomes just more consumer banality through the process of cultural production it does lose something, again this returns us to Adorno and how art gets crushed into pulp to feed out as commodities for consumption. Some stuff just gets branded with the "art pop" label as a branding exercise—Lana Del Rey gets the label sometimes and I really don't see the "art" in much of it, but maybe that's just me.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply! I agree that click culture plays a significant role in this sort of engagement. You see this, I think, when mainstream pop and “alt” groups rub up against more challenging experimental works, even when they are broadly aesthetically recognizable. There’s this element of shock when a music critic like Fantano or any number of Pitchfork writers overlook aesthetically profound and challenging works of musical art but rave about “controversial” pop artists like Cardi B or Sexy Red being unrecognized geniuses.
You bring up a good point about “art pop” being a branding tactic as well — I find it interesting how similar Taylor Swift and LDR’s music is but how different they — and their audiences — tend to be perceived in music discourse.
Thanks again!
However long ago, NPR posted their list for best albums of that year, almost none of which were mainstream pop releases, and the response on social media was disappointing, to the say at the least, as most commenters were clearly anticipated a battle of their ‘faves’ and not "random stuff no one has ever heard of.” But I like to believe that at least a few readers took note and listened to music they never would have discovered on the Billboard Top 100.
The idea that poptimism is anti-sexist is sexist af
It's the same when people say that trashing bookslop like romantasy is sexist. It just shows how a lot of people associate women with bad taste, whether they realize it or not.
Excellent article. I think the status aspect of it is the tricky part. Because no matter how much you say “it doesn’t matter if you have good taste in music,” there is status associated with having good taste. And people really hate the idea of status hierarchies where they aren’t on top. Okay, that seems like human nature. But I think there’s something particularly American about the next step, which is actively tearing down (or attempting to tear down) “unnecessary” hierarchies. Fairness and equality are essential principles but there are some ugly sides to them, too. Second, and I don’t know why this is true, but at some point people lost the ability to say “okay, some people get status from this thing, but I don’t really and that’s fine.” Almost nobody is comfortable saying: “You know what, music isn’t really my thing and I haven’t developed my musical taste, I pretty much just like pop.” (I am actually comfortable saying this which is why I know it’s weird, because people always react like it’s weird). But really, part of being an adult is recognizing there are some games you aren’t going to win (and for a lot of people, these are games they aren’t even playing!) and that’s okay. I don’t know why this is so hard for people. But a lot of poptimism comes from “how dare you have higher status at this thing than I even though I haven’t put the effort in.” It’s okay to like pop music, have a personal relationship to and find meaning in it! That doesn’t mean you have a greater understanding of music or good taste, though.
Bad Company slander noted…Great piece.
My favorite remark about criticism remains: “Sir, I am sitting in the smallest room in my house. I have your review before me. In a moment it will be behind me.”
Apologies in advance, this may be a lengthy reply. To begin I must ask: what do you actually qualify as 'good music'?
You never clearly define it. You gesture at complexity, challenge, deliberateness and "higher order" stimulation, and name a few artists approvingly (Burial, Nicolas Jaar, Shabazz Palaces, James Blake), but you never articulate a positive theory of what good music is. You are much better at saying what is bad than what is good. This makes your argument vulnerable: if you cannot define what you are championing, you kinda sound like a snob with a vague sense of superiority.
Your claim that pop makes people's brains "languid and stupid" is a strong claim that requires strong evidence, and you do not provide it. beyond one neurological study you yourself admit you needed a friend to help you interpret. Most people who listen to Taylor Swift also read books, watch complex films and engage with challenging ideas. I know you agree that humans are capable of enjoying a Big Mac on Tuesday and a home-cooked meal on Wednesday without one destroying their capacity for the other. However, you assume a zero-sum relationship between pop consumption and deeper cultural engagement that you never prove.
On instant gratification specifically: not all immediate pleasure is destructive. Exercise gives instant gratification. So does a beautiful sunset. So does hearing a song that perfectly captures how you feel. The question is whether the gratification crowds out other forms of engagement, and you provide no strong evidence that it does. And every form of art is "engineered" to produce emotional responses. A symphony builds tension and releases it. A horror film manipulates your adrenaline. A novel structures its plot to keep you turning pages. The idea that deliberate craft aimed at producing pleasure is inherently exploitative only applies to pop music if you have already decided that pop's pleasures are illegitimate.
Before I go on, I imagine that the poptimist’s favourite move is to retreat into the fortress of the 'High-Quality Exception.' They will point to Taylor Swift’s Folklore or Beyoncé’s Lemonade as if these albums represent the median of the genre. For the sake of it, they may argue 'Folklore is a genuinely reflective, musically restrained album that has more in common with the indie folk you presumably respect than with the radio pop you condemn. beyonce's Lemonade is a complex work about Black womanhood, infidelity, and generational trauma, recognised by musicologists and cultural scholars as a significant artistic achievement.' Which i think is all true. But also, Rihanna's Anti was a deliberate departure from pop formula and i do think it is "deep" (e.g. Higher, Love on The Brain ???). Sabrina Carpenter's lyrics about girlhood, crushes and dealing with terrible men resonate with millions of young women because they articulate real experiences with precision and emotional honesty. You treat these artists as interchangeable pop products without actually analysing their work, which is ironic, because you are accusing poptimists of not engaging seriously with music. If you are gonna criticise pop, you lowkey chose the worst people to use.
Regardless, you pre-empt the objection that good pop albums disprove your thesis by arguing that individual exceptions do not undermine a structural critique, comparing it to the claim that you cannot disprove "capitalism exploits workers" by pointing to a happy employee. But the capitalism analogy actually undermines your position. The claim that capitalism exploits workers is supported by systematic evidence, wage data, wealth distribution, labour conditions, across the entire system. The claim that pop music is junk food for your brain is supported by your personal taste preferences and one neurological study you needed help reading. The structural critique of capitalism works because the evidence is structural. Your structural critique of pop fails because the evidence is anecdotal and subjective.
If you want to make a structural argument, you need structural evidence. What percentage of pop music lacks artistic merit? By what measure? How do you define "artistic merit" in a way that is not simply your preferences elevated to universal principle? You never provide any of this. You provide Pitchfork quotes you find absurd, a few artists you personally dislikes, and an appeal to Adorno, a theorist who also dismissed jazz as culturally worthless, a position now universally recognised as embarrassingly wrong.
The capitalism analogy cuts the other way too. The correct response to "capitalism exploits workers" is not "therefore all products of capitalism are bad." Capitalism produced the novel, the film, the recorded album, the electric guitar, and the internet you use to publish your essay. Structural critique of the system does not require blanket dismissal of everything the system produces. You can acknowledge that the pop music industry is shaped by commercial incentives and still recognise that individual works produced within it have genuine artistic value. You refuse to hold both of these positions simultaneously and that is intellectually lazy. If individual examples cannot disprove a structural argument, then your own individual examples cannot prove one either. If Folklore being good does not disprove "pop is bad," then "Rude Boy" being shallow does not prove it. You apply the evidentiary standard selectively: ‘your examples count, mine do not.’
I understand that "mathematically engineered" pop makes it inherently less "authentic" or "artistic" than indie music. However, this ignores that standardisation is a hallmark of almost every great musical era. The "Brill Building" in the 1960s produced some of the most enduring music in history using a factory-like assembly line. Motown Records operated on a "Quality Control" system where songs were scrutinised and refined by committee to ensure maximum impact. If we condemn modern pop for being "standardised," we must also condemn the Beatles’ early hits, the Motown catalogue, and even the "Standard" era of Jazz, where musicians all played the same 32-bar structures. Artistic merit is not found in the rejection of formulas, but in what an artist does within them. To claim that a song is "bad" simply because it follows a proven structure is to confuse "novelty" with "quality."
You frame "decades of market research" as sinister, but all it really means is that songwriters have gotten better at understanding what resonates with people. Baroque composers understood counterpoint. Blues musicians understood the 12-bar structure. Motown producers understood arrangement. Knowing what works emotionally and using that knowledge is not manipulation, it is craft. Strip away the pejorative framing and "pop music is engineered to be pleasurable" is just another way of saying "pop songwriters are good at their jobs."
Yes, I do think repetitive, mathematically engineered music is arguably still a skill. Lyricless music that makes people dance has been valued for centuries, from waltzes to samba to techno. Your position would have to condemn most dance music across all cultures. Even simple lyrics are impressive. Taking even the most basic representation of lust, heartbreak, desire or self-doubt and distilling it into three and a half minutes of relatability that is also sonically catchy is not easy. "Espresso" by Sabrina Carpenter does that. The simplicity of pop is often the product of rigorous craft, not laziness. On another angle away from deliberate engineering, Dolly Parton wrote "Jolene" by experimenting with her sound, gradually incorporating pop elements into her music. It was only written in a few minutes. It has four chords and a simple lyric. It's a great song. I'm not suggesting that you disagree, because as i said i don't actually know what you consider 'good'. I am simply adding many different examples for breadth.
On the "Death of Taste" and the Algorithmised Landscape
You describe the "death of taste" and the surrender of cultural curation to the algorithm as an unprecedented crisis. But the winner-take-all dynamic existed long before algorithms. In the 90s, a handful of major labels controlled distribution, and getting shelf space at a record store required their backing. The top artists consumed the vast majority of sales then too. The difference now is that the barrier to entry is almost zero. An artist who would have been completely shut out in 1995 can now at least exist, build a small audience and sustain a creative practice.
The attention inequality is real, but it is not new, and it was not caused by poptimism. It is caused by the fundamental mathematics of cultural markets, a small number of artists will always capture a disproportionate share of attention regardless of the critical ideology in play. The label-critic-venue pipeline was itself deeply flawed and exclusionary. It decided who got heard and who did not and those decisions were shaped by the same class, race, and gender biases you yourself acknowledge existed in rockism. The system that gave us critics championing Burial also gave us decades of women, queer artists and artists of colour being ignored or tokenised.
On TikTok, Access, and the "Degradation" of Art
You use Molchat Doma as an example of how TikTok degrades art by placing it in a meme context. But as you admit yourself, 300 million streams later, that example directly undermines your own claim that "the masses" need special education to access complex art. They found it themselves, through the very pop infrastructure you condemn. Does it really matter if someone discovers Molchat Doma through a meme, if they then go on to listen to the full album? The gateway matters less than where it leads. And the data shows that the gateway does lead further. When songs go viral on TikTok, full streaming numbers on Spotify and Apple Music spike massively. Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams" re-entered the Billboard charts decades after release because of a TikTok video. Mitski's streaming numbers surged after TikTok exposure and her subsequent tours sold out. Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" became the most-streamed song in the world after Stranger Things, and millions of people then went and listened to the full Hounds of Love album. The 15-second clip functions as a trailer, not a replacement. You assume the worst-case engagement pattern, person hears clip, never investigates further, and ignore the common one: person hears clip, gets curious, listens to the full song, explores the catalogue.
I actually think a lot of people simply need to get off tiktok. You heavily focused on the professional critical landscape and online discourse. But most people's relationship with music does not run through Pitchfork or TikTok. People still go to concerts, still discover music through friends, still sit with albums, still form deep personal attachments to songs. The "death of taste" may be a phenomenon within music journalism and online culture, but it is not clear that it reflects how most humans actually experience music in their daily lives. The fact that five people write the "Global Top 50" does not mean the world’s taste has narrowed; it means that the "Top 50" is no longer the only metric of cultural relevance. Your focus on the Billboard charts as proof of "brain rot" is an outdated perspective that ignores the millions of vibrant, niche subcultures thriving in the digital age.
'Poptimist Elitism'
I agree that your Pitchfork examples are genuinely damning. Describing DJ Khaled's "I'm on One" as "a masterpiece of subtle confidence…" is absurd and you are right to call it out. But the problem with that excerpt is not that a critic used sophisticated language about a pop song. All criticism, of any genre, uses specialist language. A review of a jazz album in DownBeat or a classical performance in Gramophone is equally dense. The question is whether the language serves the music or obscures it, and sometimes dense critical language genuinely illuminates something you would not have noticed, even in a pop song. The Pitchfork excerpt is bad not because it is complex but because it is wrong. It does not map onto any real quality in the music. That is a failure of that specific critic, not of the entire project of taking pop seriously.
The most valid concern in your article is that if we treat every pop song as a "masterpiece," the word loses its meaning. A critic can (and should) say that a DJ Khaled track is "bad" because it is derivative, lazily produced, or emotionally hollow, while simultaneously arguing that a Taylor Swift or Beyoncé track is "good" because it displays lyrical precision and innovative production. Poptimism doesn't mean "everything is good"; it means "every genre is capable of producing greatness." By judging pop on its own terms, we actually create a stricter standard for quality, not a looser one.
The Diversity Narrative Was False - I know I’ve done this so out of order but you argue, via deBoer, that the poptimist critical movement was driven predominantly by white men performing cultural allyship rather than genuinely amplifying marginalised voices. If the fans, the cultural consumers, the people who actually engage with this music are overwhelmingly women and POCs, then does it matter that the critics who validated it were white men? The fans did not need Pitchfork's permission to love Taylor Swift. You could argue that the fans drove the culture and the critics simply followed which actually supports your economic argument more than the "white male anxiety" argument. The critics were not leading a revolution; they were chasing the audience that already existed because that is where the clicks were.
Fuck that was a lot. Funny enough I'd never even heard the term 'poptimist' before reading this.
The devolution that you eloquently describe is largely the result of the cultural move from literary to oral. A population that does not read is ill-equipped to handle anything with nuance, subtlety, and complexity of thought. Another element to consider is the total triumph of the corporate culture. More than ever, major corporations dictate people's tastes, when one would think, given the abundance of options on the internet, it would be the opposite.
There are many things I disagreed with in this piece - and also some things I agreed with, credit where it's due - but I would like to mention only one, about language and commensurability.
The current wave of anti-poptimist backlash kind off falls flat, for me, because the vast majority of the arguments proceed from the premise that the old rockist terms are universal and correct, and the problem is that poptimism, even in its most sophisticated articulation, simply retreated from those terms, rather than attempt to examine and redefine them.
A clear expression of this is in your analogy about fast food - which I see why you'd deploy: fast food is entirely commensurate with the hegemonic definition of "bad". The problem with this, of course, is that - to continue with the fast food analogy - poptimism, in its most sophisticated - I would argue, actual - articulation, did not attempt to make the claim that burgers are best; rather, it made an attempt to ponder the question, "for whom, and in what way, are burgers good?"
I am ready to concede the excesses of vulgar, "Goop on ya grinch"-style poptimism, but I think you - and pretty much everyone else I've read who have argued from your position - proceed from an essential misunderstanding of the poptimist project, in a way that actually makes it impossible to adress that project, because any accusations you would mount toward it, turn on assumptions that that same project attempts to question - seemingly, without awareness of that fact.
I apologize if the tone here seemed needlessly harsh. You can extract any excess venom and pass it on to Freddie de Boer: that guy is a dumbass.
I don't think your tone was harsh, although you and Freddie evidently need couples counselling.
I should say, and maybe I should have made this clearer, but I DO recognize that the role of poptimism wasn't to simply say "pop is best, rock sucks," I just don't think that at least the majority of what we call pop should be treated as an equal form of expression, in the way that a Big Mac shouldn't be treated as a etc etc. Poptimist critics make lists like the aforementioned Pitchfork one where, yeah, a "Goop on Ya Grinch" analog like "I'm On One" is treated as if it belongs in the same conversation of merit as something by Shabazz Palaces or Tim Hecker, and it's just absurd, and imo devalues what it gets compared to by extension.
"For whom and in what way are burgers good?" IS a question I answer in the post, it's just that my answer is "anyone who lacks the resources for the alternative and has been conditioned to crave it," tied into my broader position on material deprivation, consumerism, neoliberalism, and so forth.
gave this a reluctant like as someone who likes pop (and other music! obligatory I'm-still-smart disclaimer)-- I'm very eager to read let's talk about love now. reading this piece felt like going back in time, I feel like it's so rare to see people calling schlock what it is nowadays that it's both shocking and a bit refreshing. I think I have the same relationship with this essay as you have with todd in the shadows' videos (which I also watch), I don't agree with everything but it made me think. love love loved the bit about the medieval cathedrals and the need for more accessibility and education instead of settling for slop
Very thorough and well-written piece. I've also felt in the past that poptimism often reinforces elitism rather than opposing it as many of its proponents claim, but I arrived at this observation from a rather different (and probably more superficial) angle than yours. Namely, that now, since poptimism is clearly the status quo for the elite, taste-making social stratum, liking a certain array of trendy pop music is just as much of a status signifier as liking indie rock and IDM was 20 years ago, and if you deviate too far from this taste profile (in any direction), you will be an outsider and outcast.
Moreover, it's usually only a certain type of pop music that "poptimist" critics and tastemakers champion, as many of the same people will often denigrate other types of widely popular music that is marketed to a less "cool" cultural stratum, such as corporate indie rock or country-rap. Just think of how many self-styled "poptimists" will also sneer at "stomp and holler" music, or use "coworker music" as a pejorative. Granted, those styles typically do suck, but still.
On another note, being a music nerd, I can't help but get pedantic and contend that there's plenty of stuff out there within the broader "pop" umbrella that really is more challenging. Another commenter mentioned "art pop," but even within the mainstream, there are varying degrees of artistic ambition. And even within the stuff that's just intended to be disposable, vapid fun, there are some songs/artists that succeed at that aim way more than others.
And as far as vapid rock music that gives the genre a bad name, you can do a whole lot worse than Bad Company, as trudging through the archives of rock radio over the last 25 or so years will make clear...
Great piece. I didn't understand the long quote about the ferment of music, maybe because I listen to too much Rihanna and my critical processes are dulled. Better get back to CF Bach.