Popjustice tells it like it is
I love Popjustice, especially when it publishes posts like this one. On the monstrosity that is “Samanda”:
The thing is, this is not a pop single and the two women fronting it are not pop singers. This is not a pop career. This is an example of a fairly shrewd management team building a fleetingly lucrative brand around two people, using pop music - and the pop charts - to raise profileand increase the money they can make from public appearances, endorsements and various other non-musical ventures. It’s a way of getting Samanda in the papers, on the pop TV channels, on the radio: it’s maintaining profile (and therefore earning potential) without having to pay for any advertisements.
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Comments
I dunno, is that rockist? They’re not moaning about it being packaged; they’re moaning that the package doesn’t include a shiny pop nugget…
“They’re not moaning about it being packaged; they’re moaning that the package doesn’t include a shiny pop nugget…”
Rockism operates a high culture/low culture split - discriminating in favour of ‘proper’ music made by ‘proper bands’, and against mindless chart nonsense. As you know, I’m no fan of rockism. But I don’t like Popism either. Popism is a kind of anti-intellectualism masquerading as postmodernism. Rather than accepting pop as something which can be criticised on the same level as ’serious’ rock, it brings everything down to the lowest common denominator - rather than everything being equally worthy, everything is equally shit. How good music is becomes about it’s ‘popness’ or whatever - an essentialist value judgement.
Once you start claiming “this isn’t proper music”, you’ve exposed yourself as a rockist - just one with a different standard of what makes legitimate music.
Odd that a rampantly popist site like Popjustice should take such a rockist view of this, and post essentialist nonsense like “this is not a pop single”. It is - just a rubbish one. You could argue that Samanda’s single is the inevitable result of the prevailing popist mood of recent popular culture.