People are gonna start thinking I’ve got it in for Kelefa Sanneh, but I don’t.
If you Google “Kelefa Sanneh critic”, this website is third on the list. I’ve written about Sanneh a few times over the last year or so, to the point where one might suggest that perhaps I’m a tad obsessed. The answer to that would be “No”. I don’t know him, never talked to him, never even met him. I think I saw a picture of him once. So for all I know, he’s a hell of a guy in real life. Unfortunately, all I have to go on is his writing on music in the New York Times, which puts him in my bailiwick. And it seems as if every time he writes about anything other than pop or hip hop, he ends up with foot either in mouth or treading on his own dick. (This may be true of his hip hop/pop writing as well. I don’t really know (or care) enough about either to comment.) Sanneh writes some very glib things. He’s smart, but he has bouts of what I can only describe as intellectual laziness. I’m kinda surprised that his editors don’t catch him out, but maybe I have mistaken ideas about what an editor at the New York Times actually does.
Today, he continues his fascination with the music issue of The Believer. This is twice now that he’s lamented the absence of pop on the CD accompanying it. “… it's so puzzling to find, for the second year, that The Believer's music issue contains almost nothing outside the alt-rock world… the relentless focus on alternative rock is not only strange but also slightly depressing. What fun is it to explore a musical world that seems so small?”
We can approach this two ways. Approach number one says that the editorial board, in selecting artists for the CD, attempted to reflect the tastes of their target demographic; approach number two says that they instead were trying to reflect the tastes of the editorial board themselves. Actually, we could throw in a third approach: they’re trying to influence the tastes of their readers, which would fall somewhere between one and two. Does this sound logical so far?
Now, I don’t read The Believer myself. I think I’ve probably thumbed through and issue or two at the newsstand, but never felt compelled to buy it. So there may be some part of the equation I’m missing, in which case I hope one of you all will point it out for me. However, everything I’ve heard and read about the magazine would lead me to believe that it is both made by and read by people who, by and large, listen to indie/“alt” rock. Again, I may be way off base there. Let’s assume, though, that I’m correct. If that were indeed the case, approaches one, two AND three would best be served by putting out… a CD full of indie rock.
Sanneh may see that as a small world. Is it, though? Indie/ “alt” rock covers a lot of different flavors – neo-folk, neo post punk, noise rock, alt country, etc – from the unbearable cuteness of Smoosh to the raging psychedelia of Comets On Fire. There are clusters of the population who are only interested in that sort of thing. I believe the sociological term for them is “subcultures”. Are they wrong, or just different from the mainstream? And don't they desrve magazines that cater to their tastes?
Let’s turn “What fun is it to explore a musical world that seems so small?” on its head for a moment. Let’s say the Believer CD contained nothing but pop – couldn’t we just as easily say the same thing about that disc? No single CD is going to be everything to everybody. In that case, the people selecting the tracks have to make choices. Those choices are bound to disappoint someone.
Before I wrap up here, I’d like to take a look at this paragraph, because I think it really speaks to the root of Sanneh’s complaint:
“Compared with the ostentatious sincerity of The Believer's music issue, a site like (The Shins Will Change Your Life) probably seems like an exercise in bad faith, a place where writers are pilloried for daring to be enthusiastic. But while Shins provides plenty of cheap laughs, it also hints at the prejudices that usually go unexamined in music writing, assumptions about what smart or genuine or good or life-saving music should sound like, and about who should be making it. Sure, indie-rock fans and musicians have plenty of reasons to be glad that The Believer throws such an entertaining party every year. But they - and others - might also pause to wonder who's not invited, and why.”
(Emphasis added.)
Which brings us back to that tired, worn-out contention that those who don’t share Sanneh’s taste just might be racists. He’ll never come right out and say it, of course, but he’ll imply it until the cows come home. It’s not an impossibility, but to make it your prime assumption is just bullshit. If I say that my life was saved by rock & roll, does that negate the possibility of yours being saved by crunk? I won’t go so far as to say that The Shins will change your life, but I do think that they’re smart, genuine and good. If you can extrapolate racism out of that, then you’re doing some pretty fucked up mental gymnastics. And frankly, you deserve to be laughed as just as hard as anything on The Shins Will Change Your Life.