Opinion: What’s wrong with pop? Challenging rockism

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Rock is not the only authentic genre. That may be an obvious statement, but it’s a surprisingly polarizing.

Consider how we talk about music and artists. Do they write their own songs? How many people besides the artist had a hand in it? How much post-production was involved? Chances are that you feel the fewer outsiders there are, the more “real” the music is. It’s the anti-establishment, inherently “talented” and raw that are the legitimate musicians. You know, the rock stars.

There’s a bias toward rock music, and it even has a cheeky name: rockism. Pitchfork sums it up neatly: “A rockist is a person who’s comfortable with the way rock works, values the stuff rock values, and gets all hostile or dismissive toward all the wonderful music in the world that happens to work some other way.” Rock music is the straight, white guy of the music industry. It represents what is considered the status quo for “good” music.

It’s time to reconsider how music gets critiqued. Under a rockist lense, mainstream – pop – music is seen as cheap, disposable and inauthentic. That view is wrong, but it’s interesting to think about where it comes from.

When listeners first hear a song, chances are their immediate reaction isn’t to wonder who wrote it. If it is, then they’re probably coming from the sort of musical knowledge that excuses them from this conversation. For the everyday audience, what they notice is if they like it. That doesn’t come from knowing how many producers were involved. It comes from knowing what you like.

It’s that instant emotional connection that makes pop music thrive. It doesn’t matter who wrote a song when it can make you cry in a grocery store, like Adele’s “Someone Like You” (co-written and co-produced by Dan Wilson), or scream along, like the Charlotte Aitchison, Patrick Berger and Linus Eklöw track “I Love It,” performed by Stockholm duo Icona Pop.

The idea that writing your own music makes you more credible raises questions about bands that do. Is it more authentic if one member writes, or if every member has input? Do more fingers in the pie take away from or add to the experience? The working relationship between band members is one that is respected under rockism, but belittled in other genres. It’s demeaning to say that Wilson’s work with Adele, which he described as a partnership, means less to music because it’s his job to write songs.

The real argument against pop seems to be its supposed vapidity. Sometimes it is vapid, but so are lots of songs in lots of genres. What pop is consistently, is accessible. Those teams of writers and producers work hard to create songs that audiences will like. Those tracks can be catchy escapism or the perfect companion for wallowing. They can be familiar or innovative, relaxing or invigorating. There is nothing wrong with liking a song because it makes you feel good.

“Guilty pleasure” is a phrase that should be banned; the shame associated with liking pop is reflective of that rockist attitude, which fosters a disbelief that someone might genuinely like a song that was made to be liked.

What it really comes down to is that questions of pop’s authenticity don’t make a pop fan’s enjoyment less real.