Why is pop music the only art form that still inspires such arrantly stupid discussion? The debates that surround authenticity have no relationship to popular music as it’s been practiced for more than a century. Artists write material, alone or with assistance, revise it, and then present a final work created with the help of professionals who are trained for specific and relevant production tasks. This makes popular music similar to film, television, visual art, books, dance, and related areas like food and fashion. And yet no movie review begins, “Meryl Streep, despite not being a Prime Minister, is reasonably convincing in ‘The Iron Lady.’

Lana Del Rey’s Image on “Born to Die” : The New Yorker

(via judyxberman)

SFJ is on the money, per usj. Andthe other question to ask:  why are female artists the only ones who inspire such “discussion”, or “authenticity” “discussions” where sexism is masked as discernment? I am literally counting the hours until the long thing I wrote about her/this for SPIN comes out. Spoiler alert: I did the homework no one else was interested in doing. Ze End.

(via tinyluckygenius)

Much love to Jessica, one of our favorite thinkers, but I think it’s perfectly okay to insist on authenticity in music, insofar as a privileging of authenticity remains one of the few ways that actual class-based critiques of corporate hegemony and consumerism become admissible in pop discourse.  We look for authentic stuff, because we want to get behind people who are on the right team.  We want the broccoli that’s labeled “organic and local” not to be pesticide covered and shipped in from Chile. That’s okay, even as our notions of authenticity might be confused, conflicted, sometimes contradictory.

It’s true that sexism plays a role, in how we talk about it though. I’d love to see Owl City, for example endure the kind of scrutiny that Ms Del Rey has, and I wish Ms Del Rey’s critics didn’t stoop to misogyny.  Still that doesn’t mean that pointing out that fake, manufactured, phony stuff is fake, manufactured, phony necessarily has any element of sexism.

(We have nothing to say about Lana Del Rey, except that it sucks that she stole people’s super 8 footage and passed it off as her own work.  Listened to 30 seconds and got very bored, moved on.)

(via tinyluckygenius)