This is POP!

June 19, 2004

I just knocked off another music book for the hell of it. This is Pop! is a compilation of essays done for the Experience Music Project in Seattle. Like most compilations, it’s a little hit or miss, and I think the overall tone of the book is a bit too academic to be really considered entertaining. That said, there’s still quite a bit of insight to be had in these pages, and the better pieces gave me tons to think about.

Some of the better topics covered in the book included:

• Authenticity, Gender and Personal Voice, a wide-ranging piece about female authorship that segues into academia and even a little ancient Greek (Sarah Dougher)
• Compressing Pop, an article about the evils of mixing for the radio (Douglas Wolk)
• The Carly Simon Principle: Sincerity and Pop Greatness, which was probably my favorite essay in the whole book, about how songs gain status through an illusion of authenticity (Chuck Klosterman)
• Discophilia in the Age of Digital Reproduction, about record collecting via piracy (Julian Dibbell)
• The Persistence of Hair, all about hair metal in the new millenium and why the hell it’s still here (John Darnielle)
• More Rock, Less Talk about the fleeting perfection of live performance (Carrie Brownstein)

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