The NY Times' Jon Pareles does not like that people enjoy safe pop music. The critic who made The Cast Against Coldplay ("the most insufferable band of the decade") recapped the music of 2005 by tearing into its music and the people who bought it. Last year, he wrote in Pop Comfort Over Ambition, the public put comfort over ambition.

"Yet through the years, the most memorable blockbusters have aspired to something beyond popularity. They set out to inspire, to startle, to define an era or to defy it. For the likes of Nirvana, the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Eminem, Alicia Keys, Metallica or Bruce Springsteen, catchiness has been a means rather than an end."

There is one undying truth to music criticism. Critics forget just how mediocre best-selling albums have been each and every year. They write about the music of the past as if was better, more authentic and untouched by the ugly hand of business. As they do this, they ignore the tens of thousands of forgotton albums that comprise the ash heap of music history.

On the other side of the coin, some of the legitimately great music of any year takes a few decades of hindsight to enjoy critical favor. Madonna is far more respected now than she was in her heyday. She released her debut album in 1983, but the hometown girl didn't make that year's Village Voice Top 40. Like A Virgin, released in 1984, didn't make that year's that year's poll either. Metallica's first two albums, Kill 'Em All and Ride the Lightning, were released in 1983 and 1984, respecively, and were instant metal classics. Neither made either poll.

Every year there's a glaring gap between what is popular and what is critically accepted. Here's some perspective: In 1985 the Village Voice's Robert Christgau voted Franco & Rochereau's Omona Wapi the top album of the year, and the Voice's vote went to the Talking Heads' Little Creatures. The American public, on the other hand, kept the "Miami Vice" soundtrack at the top of the album chart for 11 weeks and Phil Collins' No Jacket Required for seven weeks.

Given the last two, it's ironic that Pareles described the industry's perfect 2005 album as one that "will also do double duty as a commercial or a TV-show soundtrack: something noticeable but not too demanding." (Collins' "Tonight Tonight Tonight" happened to be featured in a Michelob beer commercial, by the way. It was the ubiquitous song of 1987. )

But the consumer-critic disconnent wasn't born in the '80s. In the '70s, an era that is today romantisized as an era of the more genuine pop star, the top albums were no more daring or epochal that today's favorites. More after the jump.

Continue reading "The Case Against Pop Comfort" »