MSNBC entertainment correspondent Tony Sclafani has proven himself to be hacktastic in the past, so it’s not surprising that his latest salvo for the cable channel’s Web operation, which tries to make the case that “young Democrat presidents” result in pop music going bad, is full of by-the-numbers rock snobbery and cherry-picked examples that elevate the solo work of Don Henley and declare that the work of Max Martin is neither brilliant nor innovative. (Few pieces of music, after all, can match the never-seen-before genius of “The End Of The Innocence.”) But I wonder if Sclafani himself realized that he was kind of full of crap midway through writing the piece—because beyond a brief mention of a Guardian rundown of artists who wrote anti-Bush songs and some head-shaking about Lady GaGa’s “Just Dance” hitting No. 1 coinciding with Barack Obama’s inauguration (complete with misuse of the term “begs the question”), he tries to make his shaky thesis stick using a bunch of dubious examples that are straight out of a moldy issue of Rolling Stone, thus eliding any mention of “meaningful music” that actually charted between 2001 and 2009. MORE »
Search Results
Someone Figured Out A Way To Make The “Women In Rock” Concept Even More Offensive
I’ve been trying to muster up a response to this bit of Tony Sclafani-penned nonsense written under the delusion that, since this year’s Best New Artist category in the Grammys is made up of female-fronted bands from tip to toe, it’s time to trot out the old “Women In Rock Rock!” trope that has brought so much lazy “trend” journalism to the world in recent years. My objections have, of course, been laid out in this space: the whole idea of creating women as Others in music only serves to further cement the old patriarchal ways, if someone like Feist whose persona possesses a lot of traditionally feminine traits succeeds is it really “progress,” etc., etc. But every time I try to read the damn thing, I can’t get past its first line, which should probably be in some Hall Of Fame for bad lede-writing because of its blend of bubbleheadeness, press-release-ready bland hyperbole, and, uh, schoolyard taunts: MORE »
