Slate's Bizbox
music box: Pop, jazz, and classical.

When Critics Meet PopWhy are some writers so afraid of Justin Timberlake?

By Sasha Frere-Jones
Posted Friday, Aug. 22, 2003, at 3:09 PM ET

Popped by criticsThe first single from Justin Timberlake's triple-platinum solo album, Justified, came out nine months ago and was a dance-club standard by Christmas. Built on acoustic guitar and drums with blood ties to George Michael's "Faith," "Like I Love You" is a tensile come-on sung in Michael Jackson's old falsetto. Timberlake wants his girl to smile and to "be limber." At first, it sounds like their first stop will not be Dairy Queen. But is he thinking what we're thinking? When the chorus claims "Ain't nobody love you like I love you," it's unclear if we're talking about Justin's date, the drummer, or Michael Jackson. If you've seen Timberlake dancing in the video, you'll guess one of the latter two. At the end of the song, Justin is telling us to dance and the girl is gone. The Neptunes, who produced the track, pace the elements perfectly, creating an erotic daisy chain that pulls us toward each new sound. When the next thing arrives, you want it, bad. "Like I Love You" doesn't recall a Michael Jackson song so much as the feeling of dancing to a Michael Jackson song in front of the mirror.

The second single—produced by Timbaland, the only man challenging the Neptunes for critical and commercial consensus—was "Cry Me a River," a complete 180 from "Like I Love You" 's jackrabbit lust. "Cry" is puppy love directed by Douglas Sirk, a CinemaScope ballad full of generous detail and disjunctive leaps and Timberlake's second consecutive hit. The song got an obvious boost from gossip columnists reading it as Justin's kiss-off to his ex, Britney Spears, but less obvious was the response from New Yorker music critic Alex Ross: "In the past year, rock critics found themselves in the faintly embarrassing position of having to hail Justin Timberlake's Justified as one of the better records of the year." The embarrassment must be Ross', as the critics didn't exhibit much. Rolling Stone gave the album four stars, and Village Voice critic Robert Christgau gave it an A-. The daily newspaper reviews were uniformly positive. But The New Yorker has a track record of approaching pop music with one hand holding its nose, so calling Timberlake an embarrassment is simply par for the course. Eustace Tilley has never been down with the kids. In fact, there is a historical trend for critics to discount hugely popular artists who sell to kids, especially girls. Sometimes, critics, borrowing a little fantasy back from the kids, like to pretend that these artists don't really exist.

Ross likes "Cry Me a River," praising its multiple layers and name-checking Duke Ellington, but the whole thing makes him uncomfortable: "In any case," he writes, "the songs on Justified aren't really Timberlake's. A dozen names appear in the credits, and it's anyone's guess how much of a song like 'Cry Me a River,' the album's best track, actually came from Timberlake's pen, if he owns one." There's probably more evidence George Bush doesn't own a pen, but Ross is making a funny. We salute that. But still, the crack is pure ideology. The Beatles, whom he praises, were a big collaborative pileup, so why would Ross object to Timberlake collaborating with Timbaland? There are just three writing credits on "Cry Me a River," one more than most Beatle songs: Timberlake, Timbaland, and keyboardist Scott Storch. Storch isn't a singer, and Timbaland usually relies on partners for pop songwriting. The most likely source, then, for "River"'s gorgeous harmonies is Timberlake himself. Throw on his previous work and you can hear it. The nimble rhythms and long vocal phrases Timberlake wrote for three of 'N Sync's best songs—"Pop," "Girlfriend," and "Gone"—are very different from the fierce, clipped vocals Timbaland favors on Missy Elliott's Under Construction. What "Cry" sounds exactly like is half Timberlake, half Timbaland. Timberlake tells us as much in the press kit: "As soon as Timbaland made that beat, I started humming this crazy melody. I really wanted one section of the song to follow that staccato rhythm, but wanted the other parts to feel like something new."

Ross' attack on Timberlake's legitimacy is simply another appearance of the long-standing critical bias toward a certain kind of musician and a received take on how they make records. Take Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Sleater-Kinney, or Jack White, artists who use tools deemed "basic"—guitar, bass, drums. You can hear what each person is doing, physically, with their hands and voices. So the critic assumes a link straight from the artists to the putative listener, and praises the work using that metric. If a producer is listed, his role is brushed off as merely engineering and arranging, since producers usually don't get songwriting credit.

But other genres—dance pop, hip-hop, R & B—depend on different modes of production that don't hinge on single auteurs and often lean, happily, on technological innovations. Hip-hop threw a big wrench into the singer-songwriter paradigm by using bits of other people's records and introducing a layer of digital technology—samplers, keyboards—between the listener and artist. These strategies complicate the status of the individual author for everyone, but the biggest garlic for all vampire critics is the audience these genres depend on: kids, often girls. Few critics complain about the Jackson 5's "I Want You Back," but for every Motown encomium, there are a hundred complaints about the virus of "synthetic teen pop" and "bubblegum." Pop critics call it "rockism," and the (very) short version of the attack goes like this: Pop music isn't made by people, but by bands of hired guns on assembly lines, working to rationalized standards established by technocratic committees maximizing shareholder investment. The emphasis of pop songs is on transitory physical pleasures, instead of the eternal truths that rock protects. Pop is also consumed by lots of women and kids, and what do they know?

Listen to Ross slag the kids and implicate the girls in this efficient dig: "Timberlake, for those who have let their subscription to Teen People lapse, is the blond, curly-haired twenty-two-year-old lead singer of 'N Sync." Sure, Teen People uses cheesecake shots of Justin to keep subscriptions up, but most New Yorker readers probably know Timberlake from his one Vibe and two Rolling Stone covers in the past year. They may even like his music. You can't sell 3 million records to kids alone, especially when they're downloading what they like anyway.

This strike against Timberlake recalls a trope from the '80s: There's this singer, Madonna, who has her name on these great pop records. Many teenagers enjoy these records. She gets songwriting credit and sometimes production credit for these records. Since we've read so much about how demanding she is, we should logically attribute the greatness of these records to … someone else. Think the idea is dead? Nope—check Jennifer Egan's Madonna piece in the December 2002 issue of GQ. As part of a 20-year retrospective of the singer's career, Egan examines received truths about Madonna: "Madonna is narcissistic," "Madonna is inauthentic." Most of these analyses allow Egan to have her cake and eat it, too, confirming tired objections to Madonna's sea-changing work while saying she's OK, maybe. Unpacking idea No. 1, "Madonna has no talent," Egan allows that "it seems unlikely that a woman with fifteen American top-five hits to her credit—more than Elvis Presley or the Beatles—has no talent other than self-promotion," but goes on to suggest just that. If anyone was thinking rockism was just something rock critics like to hit each over the head with, Egan (not a rock critic) follows with the genuine article. Rock groups like the Who and Pink Floyd "produced raw, spontaneous music that sounded completely different live than on your turntable." Madonna, standing in for the Cowardly New World, does "hyper-choreographed" dance moves and makes music "filtered though a sieve of vocal coaches and songwriting teams." Here's the kicker: "While the exact nature of Madonna's songwriting contributions have never been clear, no one disputes that she's in complete control of every aspect of her career."

There's a real argument to be had about whether or not it matters who made a song, but let's accept for now that the number of people involved in making a pop record matters because this idea about the Individual Artist won't go away. Fine. Thing is, if you read the credits on records, the number of people involved in making big, shiny pop records is about the same as the number of people involved in making the records of high-cred bands like Radiohead or Wilco. The much-maligned Matrix, producers of Liz Phair and Avril Lavigne, are a three-person team. Add the artist and a stray lyricist or keyboard player, and that makes five credits. That's as many people as you've got on an Oasis or Radiohead album, not counting the producer.

Do we know exactly what Thom Yorke contributes to Radiohead songs, other than singing? Do we know what Jeff Tweedy does, exactly, in Wilco? When Pink Floyd takes a year to make a record, is that "spontaneous"? Wasn't Bob Fosse hyperchoreographed? It feels a bit tortured to avoid the most obvious explanation for Madonna and Justin's records: that Madonna's and Justin have a lot to do with their music, and how they make it up and get it done is no more important than it is for any other artists with their names on the marquee. (Quick—think of a single solo disc by a famous rock producer … that's any good. We'll wait.*) Why punish Madonna for not being Pete Townshend? Why punish Justin Timberlake for not being Scriabin?

The answer isn't immediately apparent. Justified certainly isn't perfect, but it's a good example of pop's wingspan and is defensible as such. Pop can admit formally thick work like "Cry" and funny, simple songs like "Right for Me," Timberlake beat-boxing himself awake under the boardwalk. Pop recognizes whatever method gets the job done. Classical may sneer at pop, but pop doesn't generally feel the same way. "Nice strings—can I borrow them?" Thanks to technology, pop can act out an aesthetic egalitarianism that is terrifying to people who want to maintain all kinds of moats around the blue ribbons.

The answer to the question "why punish these artists?" is the who: kids. In the very favorable reviews of Timberlake's summer tour, the phrase "teen pop grows up" still shows up. Ross isn't alone in wanting to chop the "teen" off of teen pop and go back to the golden age of chin-strokers eating up studio time and struggling with their muses. Pop may ultimately disarm so many critics because so many damn young people like it, it doesn't sound like the Beatles, and that's all OK. Or, to quote a very grouchy old German theorist acceptable to everyone (me, Ross, rockists and anti-rockists): "Particularly youngsters who invest popular music with their own feelings are not yet completely blunted to all its effects." That's Theodor W. Adorno, in a footnote to his 1941 essay "On Popular Music," which is a linchpin in many arguments against mass culture. Even Adorno knew somebody was missing from his own theory, and that's what the footnote is about. Were he alive, he would see that young pop fans have gone and had their own golden age without asking permission. And all of us—Timberlake, Timbaland, everyone else involved in Justified, Ross, and I—are dwarfed by the sea of meaning that these fans create when they dance with Justin in front of their own mirrors.

Correction, Aug. 28, 2003: This article originally implied that no famous producer had released a good solo disc. It should have specified that no famous rock producer had done so. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

Print This ArticlePRINTDiscuss this in The FrayDISCUSSEmail to a FriendE-MAIL
Share on FacebookPost to MySpace!Share with MixxDigg ThisShare with RedditShare with del.icio.usShare with FurlShare with Ma.gnolia.comShare with SphereShare with Stumble Upon
Sasha Frere-Jones is Slate's music critic and a writer and musician in New York.
Photograph of Justin Timberlake by PR Newswire Photo Service. Audio clips from: Justified © 2002 Zomba Recording Corp.;Under Construction © 2002 Elektra Entertainment Group Inc.; Celebrity © 2001 Zomba Recording Corp.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?
POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES

Remarks from the Fray:

The fact is, there ARE fundamental differences between pop music and, for lack of a better term, "serious" music. This article has been written before (the one I most remember was in the NYT's "Lives" section at the end of last year, where the author argued that it was unfair to rank The Ramones ahead of Ratt in the musical pantheon). What these anti-elitists don't understand is that what we're dealing with a situation in which two different goals, art and entertainment, are sharing the same medium, music. Comparing the Ramones to Ratt, or Radiohead to Justin Timberlake, is for the most part comparing apples to oranges. All you can compare is their technical facility at music-making, and I think that the author is quite correct that Justin Timberlake is every bit the equal of Jack White in that area. But they are using that ability in pursuit of different goals. A pop musician wants to entertain you, a "serious" musician wants to enlighten you. Comparing one to the other is like comparing the Dalai Lama to Tiger Woods. They are both leaders in their respective fields, but to say one is "better" than the other, or to make any sort of comparison between them, is meaningless.

Actually, I think the more interesting case study is artists who have worked in both genres. The Beatles are the classic example; they started out as pure entertainers, and ended up as pure artists (to a quite unhealthy extent). And Liz Phair, by all accounts, is making a valiant effort to move in the other direction. Anyone got any other good examples?

--OhioBoy

(To reply, click here)


… let's concede that popular music, including rock and pop, is always part of a circling heritage that uses and reuses whatever material it deems appropriate, and that the goal is to make music, but also to become rich and famous. To that extent hip-hop dubbing and worship of the bling-bling is the logical extreme extension of a probably inescapable process.

The question then becomes, does a pop/rock artist manage the ultimate creative act of taking that heritage and making something personally UNIQUE out of it, and do they do it for MORE than the cash. This is a difficult process, and often takes serious commitment and time to pull off. And there's the difference between Justin Timberlake/N'Sync and the Beatles, or Madonna and (let's say) Billie Holiday. The first element of each pair riff on previous material and turn out pop hooks that sell like hotcakes because they punch contemporary buttons. The second two moved beyond their original formulas to create things which their audiences immediately perceived as breathtakingly DIFFERENT, although clearly connected to the past. And of course poor Billie didn't even get to cash in.

So pop critics aren't "afraid" of Timberlake and Madonna or what they stand for. They just recognize the difference between artists trying to transcend their limitations and songsters trying to ride the charts as long as they can. The fact that 12 and 13-year-olds can't yet tell the difference isn't a knock on 12 and 13-year-olds, its just a recognition that they lack the experience to make the judgment, which shouldn't surprise anyone. Dance in front of the mirror all you want to, but eventually most people realize there's more to music than that.

--RichardAN

(To reply, click here)


When I learned William Orbit produced Madonna's Ray of Light, it settled in my own mind this fascinating debate. Prior to that moment, I had been astonished that Madonna was capable of such a brilliant song. I had never taken Madonna seriously before. My appreciation for Ray of Light came well before I learned of Orbit's involvement, which attests to the fact that I am no music snob.

Now, Orbit is an artist whose work I admire. Should this matter? You bet it does. I admire the creator more than performer. Madonna is a great performer; I would much rather pay $60 to see her that I would Orbit, or even Eno or Moby for that matter (I can't even imagine what an Eno performance would be like). No one remembers the great Shakespearean actors once they are dead, nor do they remember the great Wagnerian Opera singers; even though those performers may have enjoyed greater fame during their lives than the creators whose work they were performing. But Wagner and Shakespeare will live on for centuries or longer, while their performers fame is ephemeral. It matters much more to me (and, I suspect, artists) who creates than who performs. This does not detract one bit from the performer. It is just not fair to put them on a par with the creator…

--JDW1

(To reply, click here)


I love the Egan quote (who is a favorite writer of mine but apparently not much of a critic) about the Who producing "...raw, spontaneous music that sounded completely different live than on your turntable". That description is a template for what, I'd say, the majority of Americans think of when they think of 'good music'. Not-packaged. From-the-streets. Realness-keeping. Not-trendy. And the folks who like the other stuff? They're suckers. They don't know the difference between art by committee and true songwriting.

Blah blah blah. Liking art (still short for artifice, last I checked) out of some sense that it's authentic is bound to limit you to artists who are good at faking authenticity.

That said, is it really that surprising that there's snobbery towards musicians who have made their livings off of teenaged girls? Just because there's occasionally a Madonna or a Justin or a Michael doesn't mean that teenaged girls don't, as a group, have really terrible taste 99% of the time. This fact is self-evident. We've suffered through 7 years now of Spice Girls, Britney and countless Disney channel derivatives. By the 1,000,000 monkeys typing logic, we were due for a Justin Timberlake eventually.

--TheNewSnobbery

(To reply, click here)


I rather liked Ross's TNY review, and think SFJ missed the point (though he seldom does), but I'll limit myself to the dare: Quick, SFJ writes. Think of a single solo disk by a famous producer... that's any good. (Ellipses FJ's). Well, ok:

Brian Eno's 1st three records, the first two of which are near-masterpieces, and ten years ahead of their time. Eno produced U2 among other people, which makes him famous, among other things.

John Cale--he's uneven, granted, but at their best, his records are brilliant. Cale produced the Stooges, Patti Smith, and the Modern Lovers. Among others…

--Alex_Abramovich

(To reply, click here)

(8/24)

Washington Post
The Washington Post
OPINIONS
Over the Line
Harold Ford Jr. | I know what it's like to be smeared by your opponent.
: The Positive in Negative Ads
PLUS » Milbank: The President's Lullaby