Marc Hogan responds:

I used to say I averaged 2.5 packages a day, but it’s been 3, 4, or 5 a day for the past couple of weeks. And that’s on top of the music I’ve already been assigned that nobody sent me. And on top of all the music I’m going to listen to in online-only form, whether individual tracks/videos (for blogging) or albums (often for awareness even if I’m not going to review them). And on top of the music that’s been sent to me or that I’ve bought online that I’m actually expecting and looking forward to hearing. I still try my best to check out music sent to me, especially when it comes directly from a musician, but these are steep odds with a painfully high initial investment.

As the music industry's demise becomes less of a source of worry and more of an inevitability to be embraced, we can step back and consider the way the system of pop music left itself open to this sort of thing. In every sector of the entertainment industry, "tastemakers" (as Hyatt refers to them) get hundreds of submissions every week. But, as far as I know, the tastemakers in question aren't critics. They're the people at publishing houses and movie studios who get paid to do just that—or don't. The gatekeepers in those industries are stronger, and so instead of a music critic feeling like she needs to pay attention to the output of a shut-in from Duluth while at the same time rendering verdicts on major releases and genre standouts as well as her own personal favorites, studios and publishing houses employ (or, uh, given college credit to) an assistant who occasionally goes through the slush pile; the ones that don't even get a hearing aren't sources of guilt, but simply the natural byproducts of the business.

It seems crazy for a critic to have a "reader," sure. But if they're the ones who are expected to narrow the field to just the standouts, then it might be a good idea, provided you can train a 20-year-old to recognize your taste. Hyatt's post represents a kind of confirmation of the anti-DIY argument that breaking down the barriers brings only chaos. Sure, a home-recorded band can conceivably break through to a national audience. But it hasn't really happened very much, and as long as critics have to wade through 799 hours of haystack to get to the needle, it won't. Theoretically, if every critic in America randomly selects one random release from their pile and listens to it, then everything will get heard. But based on what Hyatt is saying, that doesn't seem to be happening.

Pop music, as a system, was a weird beast. It used to have the same sort of unapproachable, big-budget image as the movies. But gradually, the barriers to entry fell, though some still remained. The result was that many people could make somewhat technically proficient art, but unlike writing, which anyone can do, it also required a certain amount of capital investment that seems like it should be recognized somehow. But because it's supposed to be art, not entrepreneurship, the notion of failure is verboten. A band that doesn't break through after years of trying didn't have a bad product—they got a bad rap. Music's spirit of rebellion etc. meant that failure was success, in a way, and you always have to recognize differences—even if the difference is in quality.

The ugly man behind the curtain in music publicity... [Music Think Tank]

As I mention in a comment on Suderman's blog post, that difference between movies and music goes beyond the number of releases. Ever week, some movies that are released that are trying to reach as broad an audience as possible, and so these all get reviewed. But very few albums are released that aim at anything broader than their obvious audience, whether that demographic likes metal or rap or indie or teenpop or parent-pop or tweenpop. So when you review an album, it seems odd to place it in any context other than its target audience. Yes, Cradle of Filth would be annoying to most David Archuleta fans, and vice versa. But it's hard to say that this makes either one objectively bad. The indie audience and the critics that spring from it have become so catholic in their tastes that they can see the good in almost anything that's not bad on a very basic technical level. (And even that's not an absolute barrier, given that critical darling Times New Viking sound like they're recorded by pointing a digital dictaphone at a twenty-year-old boombox).

An example: I hate the Arcade Fire. If you asked me my opinion of them, I would say that they're a very bad band doing horrible things that make me want to punch puppies. But were I to write a review of an Arcade Fire album—which is unlikely in the first place, since my hatred isn't so active as to make me bother engaging with them—I would probably not write that. The fact is, I know too many other critics whose tastes otherwise match mine and who I greatly respect that really like the Arcade Fire. Moreover, my tastes are so catholic that I know exactly why I hate the Arcade Fire: I hate them because I hate U2; I hate them because they're meaningful-core. And at that point my opinion on them becomes no different than it would of a bluegrass band. I'm not too fond of bluegrass either, but I wouldn't feel at all qualified to write a negative review of a bluegrass band just because I didn't like the genre. Since I don't like bluegrass and/or bands that sound like U2, I don't know enough about them to have an informed opinion, and since the audience for my review would be people that are highly informed, it seems awfully presumptuous of me to offer a lesser-informed opinion as the definitive one. My hypothetical Arcade Fire review, then, would consist of a lot of description, context, and the reactions of others, with a brief mention of the fact that I didn't like it. But then, their albums aren't even that bad; they just annoy me. They are one of the bands I hate most right now, but I would be hard-pressed to actually pan their album.

Maybe this isn't a problem other people face, but the general phenomenon is widespread. We all know someone who likes the things we hate, and who seems like a smart person. Similarly, most things we like are probably hated by someone else who's a reasonable and decent person. At that point, what is there to argue about? As facile as it may seem, vigorous criticism seems to require that critics divide things up into virtuous and evil, and that other critics disagree with that. Indeed, the phenomenon Hogan describes comes out of just such a critical conflagration:

Saw a post on a hip-hop blog the other day of Drake’s Lykke Li remix, and the blogger (Shake on 2dopeboyz, I think?) was sort of sheepishly saying that a lot of his readers would think it was totally lame but the people with more adventurous tastes would like it. That’s like what people used to say in the comment sections of blogs a few years ago when p4k would rate, like, Clipse or T.I. or Lil Wayne, sure, but I think the average person who shares the broad aesthetic generally defined as “indie” nowadays has a more open mind, more varied tastes. I mean, look at, like, John Darnielle, someone who probably wouldn’t ever describe himself as “indie” but is certainly something of a contemporary standard-bearer— loves metal and R. Kelly. …Whom Bonnie Prince Billy covers.

This didn't just happen, as far as I know. It came out of a deliberate critical effort to get the indie audience and music critics as a whole to accept the legitimacy of non-rock genres, and as Hogan says, this mostly succeeded. These were the infamous popism/rockism debates, and it seems like critics think of them with some embarrassment these days. Fair enough, I guess: they did get a bit ideological and purist and then imploded, scattering everyone to their niche corners. But they produced a whole lot of good new writing and critics and forced people to take sides. We like to think of such things as irrational and overblown, of course, but that seems like we might be taking ourselves too seriously. What's really to be lost from going too far in public? A certain degree of cool, perhaps, but not if it's executed with enough style.

Since I lack such style, though, let me not go too far. I am by no means arguing that indie's acceptance of these other genres isn't a very good thing. It's really nice now not to have to clear my throat for a paragraph before discussing Britney, or for rap critics not to have to field (as many) complaints that betray a basic unfamiliarity with the conventions of the genre. And I'm glad that indie is opening itself up to new influences, or at least admitting its uncool influences rather that stowing them away in some dark corner, waiting for the oral history twenty years after the debut comes out to reveal your secret Bob Seger infatuation. But I wonder if a genre that by dint of its name lacks a connection to a specific sound isn't losing something in the process.

What is "indie"? What does it stand for? What does it mean? It's nice that critics, who tend to come out of an indie or punk mindset, have been able to take things outside those areas seriously. But you can make a good argument that indie was defined for a long time by its opposition to pop, by its lack of tolerance for things outside what it considered acceptable. Certainly that set of options was constantly shifting, subject to the ebb and flow of style and consensus. But there was, at least, a set. If all restraints really are loosed from indie, as Hogan seems to be saying, then what holds it together anymore, other than a shared affection for Sonic Youth? If eclecticism becomes the rubric, what happens to older indie values like experimentation, difficulty, thoughtfulness, or cleverness? These seem like unimpeachable virtues, but as we know from accepting pop, they're just one option among many. Still, they play their part in the system, and if they wash out with the tide, the system will be worse off as a result. Is this the kind of thing that could be rescued with one of those embarrassing, irrational, uncool critical conflagrations? Maybe, but it's hard to see what it would emerge around. As long as the music fails to provide us with anything solid to grab onto, there's are sides to take. Other than, you know, for or against goddamn BoingBoing.

In Praise of Negative Reviews [The Confabulum]

That's a pretty evergreen question for critics, so let's see if we can't dance around it a bit. Ex-ska punker and current Hinder/Daughtry/et al songwriter Brian Howes complains that "the media are looking for the next cool thing, whereas Middle Americans just want good music that makes 'em feel good." But this is a little disingenuous. There have always been rock bands dismissed by critics that proved immensely popular with the public both on and between the coasts: Kiss, Led Zeppelin (Howes' argument is one that runs through Zep bio Hammer of the Gods), and even metal itself all fall into this pattern. What's new here is the other side of the equation. Powers writes: "Since the days when former art-school kids the Rolling Stones declared themselves exiled on Main Street, populism has served as a normalizing counterpoint to rock's freaky bohemian tendencies." And that was great when freaky bohemian bands were selling lots of records and getting lots of attention. As Howes points out, however, "The people in Middle America seem to still buy records." The other folks—consumers of what we might as well call "blue-state rock" to be consistent—don't so much. If all we care about is continuing to hear music that sounds like it's trying to be freaky and bohemian, that's fine. But if we care about music as a cultural force, it's a problem.

Howes doesn't actually name a band in his critique of the media's focus on the "next big thing," because who would he name right now? (TV on the Radio? Vampire Weekend?) Kiss v. Pink Floyd seems like a real red state/blue state kind of taste division since the sides were relatively equal in numbers. But blue-state rock is a third party right now, and it suffers from the same problem all third parties do: the media won't cover it, and no one wants to get too invested in it because it doesn't seem viable. Lots of new bands feature the kind of biographical or thematic hooks that the non-music press could grab onto, but it's very hard to justify covering bands that are selling so few records.

Though the rhetoric of rock is that it's something that exists at the margins of society, it's always drawn a lot of its power from its importance. And playing music that only a few thousand people seem to care about doesn't, by extension, seem important. Third parties may come up with some great proposals, but without the votes—read here as album sales—there's no chance that they'll have any influence on the collective enterprise at hand. As long as Hinder's selling and your particular indie fave isn't, more people outside the music-writing bubble will think "rock" sounds like Hinder.

'Flyover rock' rocks the heartland [LA Times]

First, Powers' "Pop music critics embrace the mainstream," which ran on Sunday alongside Scott Timberg's feature on the American arts' continuing high-low collapse. Powers, as ever, has the overview:

This atmosphere of openness is mostly fantastic, but characteristically, pop critics have found a way to turn it confrontational. Prefer Ray LaMontagne to Toby Keith? You're an NPR-listening square! Irritated by T-Pain? You're a Luddite! Sick of Fergie? You're sexist! And just as many critics take the opposite stance, with equal righteous vigor.

In the past, our debates were sort of like sumo-style tummy bashes — a young Turk would stand up to the old guard and good-naturedly push his opponent out of the ring. Now, it's more like the scrum in rugby. Everybody pushes against everybody else, and we move forward in a huge blob of vehement opinion and mutual judgment.

Powers' talk about covering American Idol prompted Wade Tatangelo of Tampa's Creative Loafing to point out the monetary aspects of such coverage:

Ann Powers wrote a fine essay . . . But she failed to mention that a potential reason daily music critics like the St. Petersburg Times' Sean Daly are covering cheap reality TV like American Idol (Powers does, too, but more likely by choice, see below) is because they are no longer in a position to tell populist/desperate editors "no." Arts critics are being laid off at even a faster clip than reporters. In fact, there's not a single music critic job opening at a daily newspaper in the entire nation. I know critics rank right alongside lawyers in the receiving of sympathy department, but it's grim folks.

Carl Wilson of the Toronto Globe and Mail and the blog Zoilus weighed in on both Powers' piece and Tatangelo's reply:

There's something to [Tatangelo's point] - I remarked in my book that unlike, say, an academic specialist, a working critic has to address a broad audience, and one who wrote only about the ultra-weird and never about the popular eventually would be out of a job. In the book I add "(rightly)", but it's debatable.

Certainly I know people who've been required professionally to review shows they wouldn't have volunteered to watch. Tatangelo says that a couple of years ago he quit a job rather than cover Idol—and that he's not sure he would feel emboldened to make a similar move today.

But wait, imagine a film critic who proudly resigns his job rather than write about a popular movie or genre of movies—say, movies based on comic books. Would we think that guy was a hero, or kind of an asshole? Wouldn't we point to great film critics who have written favorably or unfavorably about blockbuster popcorn flicks and found insightful aesthetic and social analyses there? If you're being told what to say by your editors, that is cause to make a stand; if you're being asked to cover a major phenomenon in your field, that's the job, bucko. Granted, in the more flush past of newspapering, you'd probably have been able to slough off lower-status assignments to the junior critic, and today there usually is no junior critic. And nothing against Tatangelo making life choices that make him happier. But there's a boon to critics being pushed out of their aesthetic habits to observe what's happening out in what remains of the mainstream - it gives us the function of conducting that cross-conversation about common cultural objects that those lamenters of the semi-mythical, semi-extinct monoculture say they miss.

Still, the most salient point of all may be from Marc Hogan's Tumblr, in which the freelancer (best known for his contributions to Pitchfork) spells it out even more plainly:

As anyone who knows anyone who has blogged about "American Idol" knows, you get more clicks blogging about "American Idol" than blogging about Steinski, Harvey Milk, or Fleet Foxes. So it's not as if the turning tide toward "poptimism" among critics who want to be paid for our work is entirely un-self-interested.

Pop music critics embrace the mainstream [LAT]
Debating Ann Powers, poptimism and American Idol [Creative Loafing Tampa]
Forced to Write About American Idol? Call Our Help Line Now [Zoilus]
"As anyone who's read . . . " [Offnotesnotes]

Wayne's drastic improvement from his Cash Money days, coupled with the South's moment in the sun, ensured that narrative-hungry writers would annoint someone sub-Mason-Dixon as the new king of hip-hop. With Scarface and Andre 3000 falling back and half of UGK locked up, Wayne seemed like the best bet. In a way, his rise seemed tailor-made for the zeitgeist of this jangled Internet age, his songs blessed with a sense of ephemera that jibes with the notion of constant content fit to be devoured and forgotten ten minutes later. There are as many Wayne songs as there are blogs, and like the blogosphere, the quality is wildly uneven. For every show-stopping moment like "Cannon" or "Upgrade U," there are ten tracks filled with repetitive simile-laden boasts that Wayne's champions would like to call free-associative genius, but really just prove that it is somehow possible to be both the hardest working man in hip-hop and incredibly lazy at the same time.

Given the chance to appear on Graduation and American Gangster, two rap albums from 2007 that were good enough to receive burn beyond the turn of the decade, Weezy whiffed—squandering the rare opportunity to broaden his fanbase beyond his key constituency of Southerners, 13-year olds, and white music critics with 180+ IQs, prestigious liberal arts degrees, and questionable taste in hip-hop. Wayne apologists scoffed that their hero had already had so many great moments that year, but his detractors sagely pointed out that anyone purporting to be the best rapper alive shouldn't suck this much on both of the year's big-ticket rap records.

That's perhaps the most frustrating thing about the Wayne question: only two opinions seem to exist, both of which are wrong. (Wayne is neither savior nor Satan. What he is a talented rapper with absolutely no concept of quality control.) The first swallows his hyperbole and concludes that he is the greatest rapper alive, a prolific, infallible genius who operates in a Bizarro galaxy heretofore reserved for such king weirdos as Mike Tyson, Cam'ron, and Kim Jung-Il. The other labels him complete garbage, a walking, talking, Baby-kissing plague on humanity responsible for SARS, Ebola, and the assassinations of both Kennedys.^** Ultimately, what this yields is bad criticism, with his admirers refusing to acknowledge his myriad atrocious moments and his "haters" never conceding an inch, with both teams waiting for the "classic" album that will either confirm his place in the pantheon or halt the critical love train.

The notion of needing to drop a classic album seems slightly antiquated, but in fact it isn't. While short stories, short films, and single MP3s obviously have their merits, no amount of postmodernist revision will ever alter the fact that the novel, the feature film, and the album will remain the standard-bearers of art. (Sorry.) Lil Wayne has not dropped a classic album, though if you lopped 20 minutes off Carter II, you could arguably state your case. Logically, Carter III would be make-or-break time, the chance for Wayne to either shut up the peanut gallery^*** or leave the heads of the hype machine with a whole lot of omelet on their face. Neither of these two things will probably happen.

While it remains to be seen what exactly would convert Wayne's naysayers, it is certain that no matter how bad Carter III is, some corners of the critical community will stop at nothing to convince you of its greatness. In particular, no two critics have been more strident in their homerism than Tom Breihan, of the Village Voice and Pitchfork and Marc Hogan, the main writer of Pitchfork's Forkcast. ReadBreihan's love letter to "Lollipop," a song that he himself manages to call

a blatant sellout-move capitulation to everything lame in today's pop-music world: gallingly obvious central lyrical sex-as-candy analogy, T-Pain-esque layered-up autotuned vocals, simplistic snap-music drum-pattern, hushed trancey synth-whooshes playing something that sounds suspiciously like the melody to Flo Rida's "Low," no rapping whatsoever and... screaming butt-rock guitar solos.

Forget the fact that "Lollipop" does have rapping, however terrible it may be; forget the fact that Breihan somehow manages to compare "Lollipop" to Earth Wind & Fire's "Let's Groove," a piece of spin that would make James Carville smile. The review concludes by telling us that we should "celebrate the fact that Lil Wayne has made his "Candy Shop" without compromising his inner weirdness."

In fact, there is nothing weird about "Lollipop," a song that feels more cynically calculating than almost anything released in 2008. It's lyrical content is a clumsy homework assignment from 50 Cent's School Of How To Write Songs For 14-Year-Old Girls With Tacky Sex Metaphors For Hooks. (In particular, "Shorty Want a Thug/Bottles in the Club/Shorty Need a Hug" makes Benzino look like Arthur Rimbaud.) Meanwhile, it completely style-jacks T-Pain, a guy who stole every one of his ideas from Roger Troutman, never mind Snoop Dogg's "Sensual Seduction." Hell, even the "Lollipop" video is corny, a glitzy, formulaic romp through Las Vegas that feels suspiciously like a cliched combo of the videos for 112's "Only You" and 2Pac's "How Do U Want It."

Incidentally, there is one defense for "Lollipop": It's a big, absolutely retarded pop song that you enjoy dancing to at clubs. This is its sole intent. As rap music, it's garbage; as pop, it's middle-of-the-road filler fit to be played until Labor Day and not a moment later. What it isn't is "sly, heady... melodrama," as Breihan puts it, or a "savvy pop move," as Hogan calls it. What Snoop did was a "savvy pop move," the sort of desperate sellout look that artists need to do when there's nothing left in the well; "the greatest rapper alive" shouldn't have to resort to singles you can Xerox (no Hillary Clinton).

If "Lollipop" is a shameless, poorly executed, but well-thought out play for the charts, "A Millie" is the opposite, a half-baked and sloppy street single with Wayne once again in mixtape mode, stringing together simile after simile for five and a half minutes of banal shit-talking. Of course, there are a few clever lyrical turns. "I don't owe you like two vowels" is as good as anything Lupe Fiasco has written, but like Weezy's entire discography, "A Millie" is maddeningly inconsistent. Its beat is a hiccuping, overly repetitive, minimalist mess that sounds like it could only have been selected by someone under the influence of too much drank and drugs. Meanwhile, Wayne attempts to mask his empty-calorie lyrics by relying on his now-familiar grab-bag of vocal tics, forcing syllables to stretch that shouldn't stretch, modulating his voice without purpose, everything strictly for schtick and effect. At one point, he even boasts that "none of this shit is written down," but that goes without saying. After all, any rapper who writes a lyric as lazy as "we pop 'em like Redenbacher" deserves his MC pass revoked. (Can we all admit that Jay and Big's claims that they never wrote down lyrics have caused more harm than any trivia tidbit in music history?)

But Hogan dismisses anyone with a gripe: "haters are already foaming at the mouth... the rest of us know better than to rush the flow." God forbid, anyone gets between Hogan and Wayne's uh..."flow." "A Millie" is just mediocre, a boiler mix-tape track that would be met with yawns were it released by Papoose, most frustrating than is the one-sided nature of its criticism, with its arrogant tone and nebulous taunts at "haters." Flip through the Pitchfork archives, and you'll be hard-pressed to find inasmuch as a negative word about Wayne, with the one universally loathed Wayne record, Like Father Like Son, weirdly never getting a review despite its single, "Stuntin' Like My Daddy," receiving a glowing, four-star review from Breihan.

Granted, Wayne's detractors are notoriously venomous and often misguided, but their anger partly stems from a critical vogue that refuses to praise anything that isn't crack rap and/or nakedly commercial. In the past six months, hip-hop has seen strong output from a new generation of rappers—Jay Electronica, Wale, The Knux, Pacific Division, Blu and Clean Guns—yet not one of these worthy artists has gotten their own post on the Forkcast or Status Ain't Hood, despite obviously needing the exposure a whole lot more than the platinum-plus "Young Money Millionaire." It remains to be seen whether Carter III will be the masterpiece capable of validating the slavish Wayne worship that has taken place over the past few years. But what is certain is that judging from the reviews of its first two singles, you'll be hearing the praises of its unmistakable brilliance.

Besides, no matter what, it can't be worse than Mike Jones or Paul Wall.

^* On another note, if "Loungin" is not the most quintessential mid-'90s rap video, than what is?
^** Though if one were to judge Wayne strictly off his appearance—which is not unlike that of a drank and pills-addled Whoopi Goldberg—SARS seems like a reasonable guess.
^***Likely filled with fans of Peanut Butter Wolf.