Tag: Mark Judge

Does rock and roll have philosophical ties to ancient truths?

On By Time LordIn Progarchy1 Comment

Mark Judge reflects on rock and roll:

But then, what is rock and roll? I would argue that we don’t know, and that not knowing is part of what gives the art form its mysticism and power.

Ironically, there is now an entire rock and roll industry that is very insistent that we know what rock and roll is. From the Chuck Berry to the Beatles, punk to hip-hop, rock is about rebelling against societal norms. But what about artists like Adele, U2, Coldplay, and Lykke Li, who seem to not only want to break new sonic ground but reexamine and even reinforce ancient truths about love, death, human nature, and God? Are they iconoclasts? Or are they rediscovering the truth of things, a truth that is not contradicted by the religious establishments that pop music is supposedly meant to dismantle?

Rock critics don’t like to think about those questions, because it may mean questioning their own dogma.

Mark Judge on Camilla Paglia and Rock’s Poetry

On By bradbirzerIn progressive rock musicLeave a comment
Cultural critic Mark Judge.
Cultural critic Mark Judge.

American cultural critic, Mark Judge, has a great piece on the poetry of current rock and pop music.  In particular, Judge is considering the arguments of another famous critic, Camilla Paglia, the bete noire of feminism in academia.  Enjoy.

It’s not that today’s female pop stars are not feminists. It’s that, like today’s young male pop stars, they’re illiterate. Songwriters are supposed to be poets. But we now have at least one generation of digital-revolution songwriters who know nothing about symbolism, metaphor, word play, and writing about unexpected and diverse topics.

That’s the point that Camille Paglia missed–or at least did not emphasize enough in a very popular recent post in the Hollywood Reporter. Paglia announced that “Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and Hollywood are Ruining Woman.” Paglia, who is not known for subtlety, wrote that when she sees today’s young female pop stars it’s like feminism never happened: “we’ve somehow been thrown back to the demure girly-girl days of the white-bread 1950s. It feels positively nightmarish to survivors like me of that rigidly conformist and man-pleasing era, when girls had to be simple, peppy, cheerful and modest.”

To keep reading (and you should!), go here: http://acculturated.com/has-rock-and-roll-lost-its-poetry/