Debating Pop

Debating Pop is a great way to hone your rhetorical skills. When you’re a teenager. After a certain age there’s something pitiful about this debate, but it seems that nobody gets more serious about it, like middle-aged Europeans. Being one of those I recently found myself at Milano’s Bar on Houston defending Neil Diamond against the very adament arguments of a novel-writing PEN Club member who’s ten years my senior and kept on praising the Smashing Pumpkins. What a sad sight we must’ve been, but it did rekindle the thrill of debating for the sake of debating. It also illustrated a fundamental generational difference - the earnest pathos of Rock against the frivolous nonchalance of Pop.

A good topic to continue an intergenerational discourse might be the current glorification of Kate Bush by the European Pop intelligentsia. I dutifully listened to her celebrated comeback album and found myself rather worried. Does any self-respecting disciple of Pop dare to even own this? Let's grant the target group of Waldorf-school-students, crystal healers and Hobbit-fanclubs it's own music, but isn't this a sign of the long-dreaded comeback of Progrock? Is Lester Bangs rotating in his grave right now? And where is Nick Hornby, when we need him?