1 of 52: Best Music Writing of 2005

"No, there's nothin' you can send me, my own true love, There's nothin' I wish to be ownin'." - Bob Dylan, Boots of Spanish Leather

Best Music Writing 2005, edited by JT LeRoy (2005, Da Capo). In LeRoy's forward he talks about how he devours the writing of the old school music critics, dictionary and encyclopedia nearby, not only wanting to feel more connected to the music he loves but to be enveloped in it - to understand the language and the context and the layers of musical criticism. Camille Paglia and Ingrid Sischy's discussion of rock n' roll style and iconography from Elvis forward had me reaching for dictionary as well. Paglia uses a term like slatternly and then references Robert Mapplethorpe's photograph of Patti Smith like she's a walking rock wikipedia.  Settle down there, big brains, let me catch up.

I didn't need my dictionary (or need to run back to the computer to search out albums and tracks and history)  as  much as I went from article to article, all published in 2004, but I was constantly flipping back through time in my itunes catalog. Not for the music of 2004, mind, but further back. I played through London Calling and other parts of The Clash library while I reminisced with Sasha Frere Jones and Michael Corcoran about 1979 and the crossroads of popular music that year (and that album in particular) was. I ventured through dusty and anemic areas of my music library while reading about Bob Dylan and Ray Charles. I lamented not having a single Buddy Holly track (or Nirvana for that matter but, shhhhh, don't tell anybody).

Kalefa Sanneh's  The Rap against Rockism, however, is the one piece I found still immediately relavent to our current moment in music in 2006. Especially in light of the discussion of this year's most popular music over at Lynne's spot. The question to ponder is this - Why is an artist like Sufjan Stevens getting all the music critic love while Mariah Carey put out the year's most popular (and listenable and contemporary and, generally, critically well received) album and is nowhere to be found? It is essentially the same question that Sanneh asks

"...when did we all agree that Nirvana's neo-punk was more respectable than Carey's neo-disco?"

Or to ask it a different way, twenty years from now will you be begging your oldies DJ to whip out his retro video ipod and put on some Clap Your Hands Say Yeah or will you be grabbing your homeboys and homegirls and trying to line dance to Shake It Off or We Belong Together because those were your jams?

Don't front. Somebody is buying up all that fuckin' Laffy Taffy and My Humps on iTunes.

That said, while Sanneh calls the rockist elitism to task, the collection is woefully lacking in anything relaven to say about the important music of 2004. For these talented writers, it really is all about the long gone days of folk, punk, Nirvana and white guy rock.

But for the skill in their prose, the collection is recommended. The rockism snobbery is just being put on notice.

Comments

[Michelle]

1) I don't dig anything associated with JT Leroy. The "myth" or whatever associated with that character just leaves a bad taste in my mouth and biases me against anything related to him/her/them (meaning whoever JT Leroy actually is).

2) I bought both the Mariah album and the Sufjan Stevens album so unlike most discussions about popular music these days I actually have an opinion based on actually listening to the records. I enjoyed the highest points of Mariah's record better than the highest points of Sufjan's record but overall I enjoyed Sufjan's record much more. Does that make sense? Basically I liked 2 or 3 singles from Mariah's record a ton but I was "meh" about the rest of the record.

I think Mariah's post disco stuff was seminal and important in the early 90s but she started losing relevance to me personally when she started incorporating more and more hip hop and more and more rappers into her tracks. When I'm listening to a Mariah record I'm listening for two things the first is her incredible voice and range the second is good pop production. If I want more hip hop or rap then I'm buying the Kanye record. Again, that's just me. So I loved the however many minutes of "It's Like That" when it was just Mariah and a good beat but when the rapper comes in I'm hitting forward on the iPod.

I remember you mentioning something about this before about how some artists (particularly in country) release an album in their own genre and then release another for the general "pop" category. I frown upon this practice in country music because I like country and think that people should take it or leave an album on its own merits not because it was able to be molded into more of a pop record. But I'm a hypocrite because in these instances I'd love to see the same thing come into play. I'd love to have a Mariah record of ballads, dance and pop tracks that are just Mariah and good pop production.

Now whether any of this has merit as to why critical year end lists prefer Sufjan to Mariah I don't know. But I do think you're right that you're going to want the oldies dj to play "We Belong Together" instead of "Chicago" but I think it's more likely that you'll be listening to Illinoise as a whole record instead of The Emancipation of Mimi. Because I think that pop records that get radio and MTV play are judged on the singles and not much else. Whereas a record that's not showing up on your radio or MTV is judged more as a whole work is probably subconsciously weighted a bit more. So critics give it more attention and listeners keep the whole album as a playlist instead of just the singles into the general iTunes/iPod shuffle.

[Jason T.]

I think my biggest concern with music writing/criticism in today's musical landscape is that it no longer reflects back to the listening public what they think is good. It's like the lofty land of literary criticism that wants to poopoo popular novels.

The rise of pop music criticism in the 50s and on through the 80s (even into the early 90s) generally sounded like what people were listening to. Elvis, The Beatles, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, on through the Michael Jackson, Prince, Madonna days of the 80s and then the Nirvana of the 90s all were probably included on most critical "best of" lists at the same time that they were also the biggest acts in the world.

That seems to be no longer the case. We've moved into a critical world where everyone writing about music sounds like pitchfork media or your cool old uncle who loves music "but back when music was good".

If Mariah Carey and 50 Cent are the biggest artists in the world this year, music criticism needs to acknowledge that and try to explain why in a context that both "serious" listeners and "average" listeners can get with.

I'm not saying that every time a Spice Girls group comes along that they need to be #1 with a bullet for pop critics that know better but acknowledgment would be nice.

While everyone is busy talking about the new pornographers album and Sufjan and other albums that nobody owns or is likely to own 10 years from now, more people should be considering why Kelly Clarkson may be the rock goddess of the next decade, how soul divas like MC and MJB have survived the "death of r&b", and why a band that everyone seemingly hates - the black eyed peas - has become America's party band.

[Michelle]

That's really an excellent summation. Much better than my "I really like Mariah's really radio friendly singles and I wish she'd remake her first five hits over and over."

[Lynne d Johnson]

This is a great post JT. I noticed that this year's Best Music Writing was much different than it had been last year or the year before. I found that it only chose writers or journalistic outlets that were ... well. Let's just say that no free forms got in like Popmatters or Pitchfork.

This point you bring up is excellent though. Rock is dead. It has been dead for some time. The Rock that exists today is nothing like the Rock of 30 years ago. I think rock criticism can not let go of that. That hip-hop has become the dominant music of the last 10 or 20 years or so...leaves many lamenting for the days when Pearl Jam or Nirvana ruled, or better yet when Steppenwolf or Cream ruled.

Sometimes I just want to be so obvious and to the point that it's about race, or personal interests...but is it something else?