Best Of 2010 - The preamble

[davy]

Blech.

Popmatters's year-end list turned out to be wholly uninspiring. Damn. There went my back-up plan. I guess 2010 really was what I've been thinking it was.

[Antero]

It was a great year for rap!

[Anne the Man]

Yeah and I think that that autostraddle article is basically the worst written thing on the internet, and I already responded to it at length here: http://unbornwhiskey.tumblr.com/post/382818592/tiger-beatdown-tales-of-vindication-taylor-swift

Sorry to keep bringing it back to this, but just wanted to say I actually agree with you about the simplistic viewings of Beyonce and Gaga. Independent Woman only discusses financial independence, which is pretty damn classist.

[Black Amnesia of Heaven]

It was a great year for rap!

And jazz! And it was an okay year for metal!

[clare]

I think the Agalloch is really good. Part of me worries that it's metal for people who don't like metal, but then I remember that's me! and I go back to enjoying it.

Haha, exactly.

These comments alone make me think I oughta check it out!

[narlus]

i am out of step w/ my fellow writers @ Prefixmag.com

http://www.prefixmag.com/features/post/best-albums-2010-staff-lists/46581/

[Antero]

It was a great year for rap!

And jazz! And it was an okay year for metal!

What happened in jazz?  I got no connects in the jazz world.

[Andrew_TSKS]

Clearly I am out of step with the consensus on this board because I feel like it was a pretty great year for music in general. Even though I'm totally suffering from new-release fatigue, I still fucking love at least 30 records that came out this year.

[davy]

I love 6, maybe 7. Last year, I loved 25.

[Benmont Tench]

I don't love my top albums this year as much I did last year, but I think overall 2010 may have been slightly better.

[davy]

I love 6, maybe 7. Last year, I loved 25.

It's tempting to speculate that this has more to do with me than with what new music is being released, but overall I've been a much happier person this year than I was last year, and that seems counterintuitive. But maybe it isn't. I needed more out of my music in 2009; I was more dependent on it, perhaps a bit more focused.

[reebty]

I think 2010 will be one of those years that'll look very different in twelve months' time because I just know there's a bunch of worthwhile stuff that has passed me by. There are albums in my current top 10 whose listen count is in single figures.

[dieblucasdie]

Re:  Taylor Swift and feminism.
"Anti-feminist" is probably not the word I'd use, since it implies some sort of converstaion with feminist values, and I don't think that's a conversation Swift is interested in having.  I *would* use something like "anti-girl," since she"s pretty clearly invested in having a conversation about what it means to be a girl, the ways girls ought to act, and, especially, the way girls should interact with the opposite sex. 

Now, of course, the way in which she's anti-girl is pretty casual and par-for-the-course in our culture (ie blaming the other girl while idealizing the boy in "You Belong With Me"), I think the only reason it bothers people like me or Anne more than usual in Swift's case is the way she's marketed to girls as A) "One of you," *especially* in the romance department, and B) as an ultra-positive, wholesome (read: heteronormative, white) alternative to the rest of the female artists in the pop landscape.

[Greg Nog]

blaming the other girl while idealizing the boy in "You Belong With Me"

For the part that's all "she doesn't get your humor like I do", all I can picture is the boy telling like, three to four extremely racist jokes right in a row, then getting all mad that short-skirt is quietly offended by them.

[Andrew_TSKS]

It's not so much just the blaming as the minimizing of the other girl as if, because of short skirts and cheer captaining, her feelings cease to matter. Her heart deserves breaking because she's not as much of a "kindred spirit" with boy as the sainted Taylor is. The song never even contemplates how she might feel.

It's like the opposite of Robyn's "Call Your Girlfriend."

[Antero]

It's like the opposite of Robyn's "Call Your Girlfriend."

Huh.  This song is totally awesome, aside from the eurodisco trappings.

[dieblucasdie]

I mean, yeah, it's not like it's wise, or even possible, to demand ideological purity from the cultural products one enjoys--y'all want to bump some Taylor Swift, be my guest.  But I do think it's important to call out bullshit where bullshit exists, or, at bare minimum, not make strained justifications for liking the things you like (I'm not sure when, for example, we started giving songwriters points for writing a line that "approaches feminism."). That way lies Big Hollywood.

[Black Amnesia of Heaven]

I mean, yeah, it's not like it's wise, or even possible, to demand ideological purity from the cultural products But I do think it's important to call out bullshit where bullshit exists, or, at bare minimum, not make strained justifications for liking the things you like (I'm not sure when, for example, we started giving songwriters points for writing a line that "approaches feminism.").

Was I handing out points? That's the interpretation I retrieve from her work. That's it, dude.

[Black Amnesia of Heaven]

she"s pretty clearly invested in having a conversation about what it means to be a girl, the ways girls ought to act, and, especially, the way girls should interact with the opposite sex. 

The first: yes. The other two: I don't think "ought" or "should" even enter her songs.

EDIT: Okay, they do enter her songs but mostly when the boys have been dicks. "I should've known," "You should've known," etc.

[Black Amnesia of Heaven]

It's not so much just the blaming as the minimizing of the other girl as if, because of short skirts and cheer captaining, her feelings cease to matter. Her heart deserves breaking because she's not as much of a "kindred spirit" with boy as the sainted Taylor is. The song never even contemplates how she might feel.

I mean, yeah, the lyrical material of "You Belong with Me" is super unfortunate, I ain't denying that.

HEY HEY YOU YOU
I DON'T LIKE YOUR GIRLFRIEND

[Antero]

I don't know if we can separate the performance of a position from some sort of imperative towards it.  er, that is to say, the basic presentation of that sort of narrative has a normalizing effect.  A pop song that says, "I am a young girl, I am crying over a boy" asserts a connection between the two - crying over a boy is part of what it means to be a young girl - and, as such, implies a "should" by demarcating the category.

Obviously you can have songs that define a categorization and push against it, but I don't think that applies to Taylor Swift.

[Babar]

Much like Body Count's "Cop Killer" implies men should murder police officers.

[Antero]

I mean, if you said that the content of that song is "I am a black man, I hate the police" and that the imperative was that you should hate the police as well, I'd say that's a fairly accurate statement.

[dieblucasdie]

I mean, yeah, it's not like it's wise, or even possible, to demand ideological purity from the cultural products But I do think it's important to call out bullshit where bullshit exists, or, at bare minimum, not make strained justifications for liking the things you like (I'm not sure when, for example, we started giving songwriters points for writing a line that "approaches feminism.").

Was I handing out points? That's the interpretation I retrieve from her work. That's it, dude.

If you'll recall, this whole discussion started because you referred to the characterization of Swift's songs as "anti-feminist" as "lazy thinking" (or some such formulation involving "lazy," sorry, it's not easy to pull up the exact quote on my phone), not exactly the best way to start a totally neutral deadpan close-reading of Taylor Swift lyrics, were such an endeavor remotely advisable.

[dieblucasdie]

Also, to your second point, much of her music *is* pretty clearly prescriptive.  When you're explicitly trying to present a direct-from-the-source account of girlhood the way Swift is, while still keeping what's acceptable so narrow, it's *necessarily* prescriptive.