In the piece, Walker recalls listening to "American Top 40" as a kid, but when he returns to the countdown as an adult, he recognizes nothing. In July, Rob Walker complained in The New York Times Magazine that pop's meaningfulness has shriveled as consensus has splintered. This is a song that explicitly wants you to take a vacation from your problems, relax your critical muscles, dance together like it's no big deal: "Everybody just have a good time," "We gon' make you lose your mind" and a three-word mantra more crucial to its song's message than any other phrase in pop music this summer: "Hating is bad." It's simple economics: during the summer, your time is less valuable because there's so much more of it, so you're open to the idea of a piece of art (see also: beach reads, blockbuster movies) having no redeeming value. But 2011 yielded an unusually bountiful crop of think pieces about what pop means now: there was the one that worried that pop doesn't mean as much as it used to the one that said that it's impossible to know what pop even means the one that set out to determine what it takes to be popular there was that psychological study about narcissism made everybody scratch their heads a little bit the one that argued that narcissism in pop isn't such a bad thing there was a raft of responses to a book about our current obsession with all things "retro" and finally this week a piece by the author of said book that argues that our retro obsession neuters current music of the chance to make something great of itself.īut the dumb fun of a big hook and a silly dance trumps heavy thinking, and as quietly as a song anchored by a bleating siren can, "Party Rock Anthem" offered an antidote to nearly all of these anxieties. Summer is always a time to think about, and write about, pop music, not just to listen to it. The Record Songs Of The Summer: 'Pumped Up Kicks'
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