On change and pop music

I understand the reactionary mind, a least a little bit, every time I look at a Pitchfork list of the best songs or albums of the year.  Everything about those lists-- the artists, their stupid names, their stupid album covers, the stupid way the music is written about, the stupid pat conclusions-- seems designed to piss me off: to make me long for a "good old day" when Lana Del Rey was not someone you were supposed to respect.  The guitar days!

Of course it's very easy to make fun of that time now-- the backward age of white guys forming "bands" and playing "rock and roll."  But come on.  You put on the Melvins' "Houdini" and you get awesome, creative, abrasive but consistently fascinating music.  You put on Solange's "When I Get Home" and you get... Mumbling.  Half-formed melodies.  A total lack of dynamics. 

And I fucking loved "A Seat at the Table"!

I think it's a mistake to completely align modern movements toward social justice with modern popular music.  Modern movements toward social justice aren't calculatedly constructed to appeal to teenagers.  They're real, and good-intentioned, and hoping to remedy actual problems.  A great deal of modern popular music soundtracks these movements, and in many ways could be said to resemble these movements, what with the emphasis on the voices of women, people of color, the queer community, marginalized groups, whatever.

I think the resemblance is superficial.  A social justice movement is successful to the extent that it isn't propping up the powers that be.  But man, what modern music isn't propping up the powers that be?  It's just all such bullshit.

And it sounds bad!

Musical reactionary, social revolutionary.  That's me, sitting at home.