There’s an old adage/cliché in art critique that only sad, dark, or otherwise bleak works can be considered ‘true art’. I’ve heard this many, many times, often in the context of someone defending bubblegum pop. This spin on the quote (which could be rendered as “Happy things are art too” or something a bit more prosaic like “Art can be found in the happiness of the day just as often as in the melancholy of the night” if you’re a snob) is the rallying call of poptimists everywhere, who maintain that the mass-produced product of artists like Britney Spears, Ke$ha, or Rihanna can be considered significant and worthy of analysis.
Let’s take a look at specific quote from that linked article,
“[Pop not being music is] an argument that seems to follow most pop music around these days. At the heart of it is the theory that all music needs to have been wrenched from the emotional core of a tortured soul, ideally recorded in a basement toilet and augmented only by the scratching of fingers on guitar strings and tears, ACTUAL TEARS. It forgets that music can be fun and instantaneous [….] It also hints at another old adage: that pop is for children who lap it up without giving it a second thought.”
This misses the point entirely. The kind of music Mr. Cragg is describing with such intense, English sarcasm would be considered art not because it’s sad, but because it’s authentic. That song (whatever it may sound like) would be worthy of analysis and critique because it’s the direct product of the musician himself, rather than the polled focus groups and crack production teams behind songs like “Toxic”.
This is to say nothing of the actual quality of the music. Personal preferences aside, I find it quite likely that “Toxic”, with its well-engineered and tightly controlled sound, would have an objectively higher level of songcraft than this hypothetical basement tape. Bubblegum pop isn’t dismissed because it’s cheerful, but because it’s completely empty of content.
