Talk:Rockism and poptimism

Original research
I've removed the following passage because it qualifies as original research as an unsourced rebuttal: "A counter to the claim that rockism is sexist, racist, and/or homophobic is that some of the most acclaimed rock artists were female, black, or homosexual such as Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Freddie Mercury." --Muchness 21:07, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

While I myself don't have much sympathy with the various attitudes labeled here as "rockist," I think the general tone of the article is a bit condescending.

Also, it raises two specific specific features of rockism that have no necessary connection: 1)the notion that music should have a particular sound or instrumentation, and 2) the emphasis on authenticity and contempt for commercial, or mass, art. It is not uncommon to find such an "elitist" character in electronic music, for example, and avant-garde artists generally do not limit themselves to technology of any particular era.--WadeMcR 07:48, 8 February 2006 (UTC)


 * The rockist critique connects these two features. We might question the validity of the critique, but as editors it's our job only to report the debate as it was played out in the music press and blogosphere. If you feel that some aspect of the issue and debate has been misrepresented, or that the article's tone is biased, by all means edit the article to fix the problems (but please be wary of introducing original research). --Muchness 09:38, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

I think you'll find isolated corners in the blogosphere which proclaim themselves to be rockist ; they are few and far between but they certainly exist. Also, as hip-hop has become noticeably less African-American with time - one could make a valid argument for hip-hop and rap being no more "black genres" than rock was in 1964 or so - racial connotations of rockism seem to be rather shallow.


 * I found a source for this rebuttal in the New York Times, and am posting it. 24.199.113.215 16:23, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

That the rebuttal has been removed is a sign to me that this article has a POV. So is the fact that the criticism section is, as the person below me so astutely points out about a larger context, people fighting straw men.

Also troubling is that the article acts as though loaded definitions of authenticity, and a classicism that arrests innovation are specific only to rock. I listen to quite a lot of music, and associate other folks who do, and you had best believe that this sort of thinking exists in say classical music, and hip hop to an overwhelming degree.

Hence, some friends and I will be aiming to rewrite this in a less tendentious form. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.162.30.204 (talk) 19:16, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Stereotypical Term
I'll admit that my comparison of "rockist" to "pro-abortion" is a little over the top, but I wanted to get my point across thatto my knowledge the term is entirely a straw-man created by music critics. If someone finds info showing that the term originater from music critics who advcated it, then change what I wrote and source that information. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 130.215.230.131 (talk • contribs).


 * The analogy you're making between "rockist" and "pro-abortion" is an unsourced synthesis of ideas to build a case, and therefore constitutes original research. What this article really needs is some references to show how the term was originally introduced and used in the press. The straw man argument is addressed in the critiques section. --Muchness 22:53, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

what this article needs
is a significant amount of research into how the word has been used in its history, however brief that is. i'm confident that it was defined differently by british critics writing about punk and post-punk, than it is today. always, always historicize.

and i fail to see why the new york times quote- about the diversity of a "canon"- keeps being removed. i may re-add it with citations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.65.224.92 (talk) 07:38, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

This Page Should Be Deleted
The term is a straw man created and used by very, very few people. It has no set meaning, it is not accepted in the industry as a critical term, and this page serves no purpose other than to perpetuate the negative stereotype/straw man that this term set out to create despite it being ridiculously not-notable and biased. Keeping this would be like giving "puppy blender" an article, as several conservative bloggers use it to describe specific liberals, or giving "double hitler" an article because, according to Google, that term has been used more than 2,000 times. I've seen significantly more notable pages deleted due to lack of notability. This article is a waste of space. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.49.4.226 (talk) 21:06, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Check out the very popular music web site www.rateyourmusic.com where discussion threads about rockism are far from uncommon. Anyone who is a 'serious music fan' (if that doesn't sound too rockist!) is familiar with the term and the debates centred around it. Vauxhall1964 (talk) 22:52, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Sure enough it's a straw man, but if the term didn't exist someone would invent it anyway. Some friends of mine used to tout the Spice Girls, Chicks on Speed and Rihanna as the real heroes liberating us from the Rockist Behemoth.83.254.151.33 (talk) 02:49, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Dissent in Support
I don't agree that the term "rockism" is useless although at this point it may be a little outdated. All you'd need to do is read a selection of reviews by Robert Christgau, the self-proclaimed (and highly published) "dean of American rock critics" to get a sense of how a proprietary, exceedingly narrow, highly biased view of what rock music should and shouldn't be can poison any pretensions of having a broad critical resume. My rap against him has nothing to do with the sociocultural issues that are concerning this talk page; my rap against him is entirely aesthetic: that he compares all rock to the forms that became "classic rock" and judges it according to that singular yardstick. He doesn't get progrock, jazz rock or anything qualifying as avant garde and enjoys snickering mean-spiritedly at these forms. But the first rule of good criticism is to judge a work on its own terms and not according to what you, the critic, think it should be.

I agree that being an aesthetic reactionary isn't exclusively the province of rock critics. I wouldn't know how to change the article, because the term's cited criticism seems to have more to do with identity politics than balanced music criticism.

Snardbafulator (talk) 03:01, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

excerpt repeated
Well, the ridiculous criticism of Kelefa Sanneh, was repetiaa in the article, just did a correction. Wisehelp (talk) 05:51, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Proposed merge
I'm not in favor of merging poptimism into this article (as you suggested there). That would, among other things, minimize the relative importance of poptimism, giving undue weight to rockism. I think that would go against WP:NPOV. Lwarrenwiki (talk) 13:15, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm having trouble understanding why "anti-rockism" (poptimism) should be separated from "rockism". Both articles are fairly short, and it doesn't make sense why they're split when there is so much overlap in the concept.
 * Wikipedia is not a dictionary; there does not need to be a separate entry for every concept. For example, "flammable" and "non-flammable" can both be explained in an article on flammability. (WP:OVERLAP)
 * I don't know which name should be retained: poptimism or rockism. Maybe "poptimism". Based on what I've read, the term "rockist" wasn't widely used until the 2000s, by which time "poptimism" took over as the "prevailing school of thought".--Ilovetopaint (talk) 13:30, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Comment after expanding the article a great deal, I'm more convinced that a dedicated Poptimism article is unnecessary. Most of the discourse on poptimism directly relates to rockism.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 11:48, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Almost incomprehensible
This article is almost incomprehensible.

I understand where it's coming from because I was around in the late 60s when people were trying to make "progressive rock" etc. into something on the level of Classical music. There was at that time a certain contempt for "teenybopper music" and the like, probably because people were serious about creating a new canon away from the commercialism of pop.

But this article is all over the place. It is a compilation of inhouse quotations from a subculture that does not feel it needs to explain itself to outsiders. It features people talking to each other within a high-context culture, without any context. And where exactly does Christgau's "Yes, There Is a Rock-Critic Establishment (But Is That Bad for Rock?)" fit into all this?

The article could do with some judicious editing. Some of the quotes could be explained better or removed. The only one who could understand what it is about is someone who already knows what it is about.

13:29, 7 April 2018 (UTC) 150.129.140.239 (talk)


 * I'm not sure how the article could be incomprehensible. Everything looks spelled out to me. Do you mean to say that the terms "rockism" and "poptimism" are ill-defined? If so, then nothing can be done about that. They are ill-defined. --Ilovetopaint (talk) 17:29, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
 * The only confusing part is the Background section. The rest of the article looks pretty clear to me. It establishes that "rockism" is when music critics consider rock to be the best form of music, often implying that they are behind the times and unfair towards Top 40 pop stars. And that "poptimism" is a movement that has sought to counter this. The ideology behind of poptimism is that today's Top 40 pop should be treated as being as good as the popular music of previous decades; which one you prefer is just a matter of taste. That's the theory. Some critics argue it was a full-circle revolution, while others argue it has shielded current pop stars from criticism.
 * On the other hand, the Background section is portraying the debate in a different light. It's linking and perhaps confusing "rockism" vs. "poptimism" with the divide between critics who value experimentation and art vs. those who believe they should represent the interests of the masses.
 * The divide between favouring "artistry" vs. "mass appeal" does exist in music criticism. Indeed, similar divides exist in almost any form of art criticism. It's a worthy topic of debate, and in some ways in related, but I don't think it's the same thing as "rockism" vs. "poptimism". This article implies that "rockism" is about favouring Oasis over Britney Spears, rather than favouring King Crimson over Oasis. Anywikiuser (talk) 14:38, 1 May 2018 (UTC)


 * I think I see what the problem is - I'm just not sure how to fix it. There needs to be a short summary of what rock criticism was in the '60s-'70s and where the ideas of "rock-as-art", "rock-versus-pop", and "rock-as-authentic" originated. None of the sources discussing "rockism" and "poptimism" ever get into this, so it's hard to figure out how exactly it relates to rock/poptimism.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 15:18, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I've joined you in editing the paragraphs slightly. Basically, I think it should say: firstly, rock split from pop. Pop always commercial. Rock became a more complex phenomenon; it is commercial to some extent but there are also anti-commercial values in it, such as the idea that artists should write their own songs. It is debatable to whether these 'rock values' are about acquiring the values of 'high culture' or creating something new. It seems that rockism came about because the rockists had different tastes ("I hate the sound of programmed drums!") but also different values ("They don't write their own songs!"). Anywikiuser (talk) 16:13, 1 May 2018 (UTC)


 * You introduced some WP:INTEGRITY issues with those edits - some of those statements don't have a citation, and I think you sourced some claims to the wrong references.--Ilovetopaint (talk) 19:02, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Portmanteau
I feel like the fact that poptimism is a portmanteau of pop and optimism belongs in the etymology section. However, I could only find one reliable source (Tiny Mix Tapes) that says this, and even then it doesn't mention the word optimism. I added this but feel free to do whatever. --Somarain (talk) 22:28, 9 March 2022 (UTC)