Rockism and poptimism

Early rock criticism , pictured in 2005, became one of the first professional rock and pop critics. He later criticised Rolling Stone for promoting the "boring rock-as-idealism myth". Until the late 1960s, "pop" was synonymous with "rock" or "rock and roll". From the 1960s to the 1970s, music magazines such as Rolling Stone and Creem laid the foundation for popular music criticism in an attempt to make popular music worthy of study. creating a division that gave generic significance to both terms. "Rock" became associated with a style that was usually heavier and centered on the electric guitar. Besides general differences in style, the two words became associated with differing values. Many early rock reporters believed that rock embodied a particular set of values, such as rebelliousness, innovation, seriousness and sociopolitical intent. Not all critics supported the integration of high culture values into rock music, or the importance of personal expression. Some believed that such values were merely impositions of the cultural establishment. Nonetheless, a widespread belief among music critics in the 1960s and 1970s was that truly artistic music was made by singer-songwriters using traditional rock instruments on long-playing albums, and that pop was on a lower aesthetic plane, a "guilty pleasure". New pop Following the rise of punk rock in the late 1970s, the new wave and post-punk genres emerged informed by a desire for experimentation, creativity and forward movement. Paul Morley, whose writing in the British music magazine NME championed the post-punk movement in late 1970s, is credited as an influential voice in the development of new pop following the dissipation of post-punk, advocating "overground brightness" over underground sensibilities. According to Pitchforks Jess Harvel: "If new pop had an architect, it was Paul Morley." ==Definitions and etymology==

Rockism "Rockism" was coined in 1981 when the English rock musician Pete Wylie announced his Race Against Rockism campaign, an inversion of Rock Against Racism. The term was immediately repurposed as a polemical label to identify and critique a cluster of beliefs and assumptions in music criticism. During the 1990s, rockism was defined as demanding a perception of authenticity in pop music despite whatever artifice is needed. He accused rockists of sexism, racism and homophobia. Poptimism Poptimism (also called popism), is a mode of discourse which holds that pop music deserves the same respect as rock music and is as authentic and as worthy of professional critique and interest. In the essay, Sanneh asks music listeners to "stop pretending that serious rock songs will last forever, as if anything could, and that shiny pop songs are inherently disposable, as if that were necessarily a bad thing. Van Morrison's Into the Music was released the same year as the Sugarhill Gang's 'Rapper's Delight'; which do you hear more often?" The online music publication Pitchfork, which initially focused on indie and alternative music, expanded to cover mainstream acts such as Taylor Swift and began to publish fewer critical reviews. By 2015, Washington Post writer Chris Richards wrote that, after a decade of "righteously vanquishing [rockism's] nagging falsehood", poptimism had become "the prevailing ideology for today's most influential music critics. Few would drop this word in conversation at a house party or a nightclub, but in music-journo circles, the idea of poptimism itself is holy writ." In 2025, Sanneh wrote that poptimism "bled into a broader belief that it was bad manners to criticize any cultural product that people liked, whether it be a pop song or a superhero movie or a romance novel". ==Criticism of poptimism==

Overlap with rockism (left), a longtime critic of rockism, argued that many of poptimism's traits were indistinguishable from rockism. In 2006, Morley derided the seriousness of contemporary music writers: "Many of the self-proclaimed American anti-rockists—or popists, or poptimists, or pop pricks—actually write with a kind of fussy, self-important rockist sheen. And for all their studious over-analysis, any definition of rockism is the same today as it's always been." Writing for The Quietus in 2017, Michael Hann, the music editor for The Guardian, argued that "the poptimists are just as proscriptive as the rockists". He listed the following as poptimist "sacred cows, which are beyond challenge": • "The solo release by the member of a manufactured group is no longer the sad addendum to the imperial years; it is a profound statement of artistic integrity." • "The surprise release by the big-name act is in itself, a revolutionary act." • "To not care about Taylor Swift or Beyoncé or Lady Gaga or Zayn Malik is in itself questionable. It reveals not your taste in music, but your prejudices. In the worst-case scenario, you may be revealing your unconscious racism and sexism. At best, you're trolling." • "Commercial success, in and of itself, should be taken as at least one of the markers of quality. After all, 50m Elvis fans can't be wrong." • "Just as 'authenticity' is worthless as a symbol of a music's worth, so contrivance and cynicism might be elevated and celebrated, as evidence of the maker's awareness of the game they are playing." New York Times Magazines Saul Austerlitz called poptimism a product of click-driven internet journalism that aspired to the lowest common denominator while being hostile to fans of genres and bands associated with rockism. He criticised it for allowing pop music fans to avoid expanding their taste and contrasted the types of music lauded by poptimists with the literature and film praised by book and film critics. "Should gainfully employed adults whose job is to listen to music thoughtfully really agree so regularly with the taste of 13-year-olds?" Loss agreed with Austerlitz's text: "When [he] wrote that 'music criticism's former priority—telling consumers what to purchase—has been rendered null and void for most fans. In its stead, I believe, many critics have become cheerleaders for pop stars,' I imagined an editor and a record label exec swooping down on him saying, 'Don't tell them that!' We like to believe criticism is devoid of crass commercialism, but Austerlitz gives away that it never was in the first place." == Notes ==