MORE TWO-DIRECTIONAL POP MUSIC WHINING

Chicago Sun-Times music critic Jim DeRogatis published a bunch of letters from the public today, some praising him for his reviews and others finding fault. One letter in particular stood out to me:

My name is [deleted] and I completely disagree with most of your music reviews. I don’t know what it is with you, actually. It’s like all of the biggest names in music, all of the people who are everywhere, you can’t stand.

You seem to be against the whole pop and group explosion of the late ’90s. You’ve trashed people like B2K, Jessica Simpson, ‘N Sync, Destiny’s Child, iMX, Jay-Z, Nas, Britney Spears and many, many more. Each of the people you trashed are good in their own way, even if you can’t see it. Yeah, OK, B2K, iMX, Janet Jackson and Britney Spears all lip-sync, but who doesn’t in this business? I’ve seen talented performers like Destiny’s Child, Ginuwine and Usher all lip-sync. And anyway, I’d like to see you try to stay on pitch while going through all of that extensive choreography. That’s why they lip-sync — they don’t do it because they can’t sing. Because they all can … I think. I don’t know about B2K, because you only hear one of the group members anyway. But all the others are good singers.

You’ve trashed Jessica Simpson on more than one occasion. OK, so she can’t tell tuna from chicken and buffalo wings from buffalo and plastic bags from jellyfish. But the girl has one of the best voices in the industry. When she was at the Super Bowl, you said it was a good thing they didn’t let her sing. But she actually would have spiced up the halftime show.

First off, one of these days you’re actually going to hear “one of the best voices in the industry,” and it’s going to pin you to the wall, because you’re not ready for it. As some political commentator put it, “If you think Ronald Reagan is a fascist, what are you going to do when the real fascists show up?”

Who doesn’t lip-sync in this business? Dang near everybody who wants to be taken seriously as a musician, that’s who. Good music makes you want to dance; it doesn’t make you want to see somebody else dancing.

Listen: music critics know when somebody is around to make a contribution to the art, when somebody is trying the hardest they can to make an impact, and when somebody is just on a star trip. There are plenty of talented singers and rappers who slum on the pop charts to get the easy money. It’s a perfectly understandable turn of events. But you can’t expect anyone who’s deeply, passionately committed to music for its own sake to get behind anyone who’s obviously just cashing in.

Again, the function of a critic is not to confirm what the public already believes. Critics are like prophets; their purpose is to point to what’s not so good in current times and inspire others to reach higher. And, like the prophets, they don’t do what they do because they hate you; they complain because it’s not too late to save you from a future of listening to the Steve Miller Band over and over again.

Critical opinions are not intended to be universal, and only fools take them as such. Rather, a good critic is like a color commentator on a football broadcast: he or she can tell you why a particular play did or did not work. Why can they tell you this? Because they know what they know about the game. It’s still only their opinion. But it’s an informed opinion, because it’s their job to think about this stuff.

You wanna be a Jessica Simpson fan? Then be one. If Lester Bangs were still alive, he’d tell you the same thing. But if being a fan, to you, means that the whole world must agree with your opinion, then, as the Beatles said, “you can count me out.” The whole world’s not an Internet message board.

You’re free to accept or reject anyone’s opinion of your favorite singers, bands, artists, authors, actors, whatever. But who is more likely to know the most about good art and bad art: the person who consumes it all (bothgood and bad), or the person who just dabbles in stuff to which they’re already predisposed? Personally, I gave up on the “Metallica rules!” line of thought years ago, once I realized that most people who had, y’know, actually listened to something else recently tended to think otherwise.