Hyperbole, overstatement and out-and-out bullshit define much of what’s written about the most mindless of today’s popular culture, but for years, we thought we could count on the folks at Rolling Stone to operate a few feet above that worst sort of fanzine drivel. No more, apparently.
Rob Sheffield, writing there in January but regurgitated today via Pocket, states — with an apparently straight face and pen — that Britney Spears’ 1999 debut album qualifies as “avant garde” in its daring and groundbreaking approach to music. Say what? Sheffield seems particularly enamored that Spears actually covers other people’s songs, a practice seemingly unknown to him, given his incessant drooling over her versions of old pop warhorses like “The Beat Goes On” and “Satisfaction” as if they’d never been illuminated in the way Spears apparently does.
We’ll grant Sheffield that Spears was among the first Disney kid-stars to make the move to pop music. Well, she’s among the first hundred or so, and only if “among the first” includes going back to, oh, 1955. We’ll presume Annette Funicello wasn’t available for an interview. Nor were Spears’ cast mates Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera. Sheffield, without really citing anything at all beyond the material itself, characterizes Spears’ debut as something akin to a pivotal moment in music history.
Regardless of Sheffield’s obvious chemical dependency issues and Spears place in the Mickey Mouse timeline, we kinda preferred a time when using an “avant garde” descriptor was reserved for those who actually created something new and brilliant. Stravinsky comes to mind, since it’s kind of hard to imagine people rioting over Spears work as they did when “Rite of Spring” premiered in 1913. Well, OK, it’s not that hard to imagine being incited to violence over Britney’s stuff, but we digress.
Pop music and the avant garde, of course, seldom operate together. It’s not what pop artists do best, and it’s grossly unfair to hold them to the same standards as serious artists like Bartok. Or Charlie Parker. Or Jimi Hendrix. Oops, we did it again. We just drifted back into pop music, didn’t we? Well, we think pop music can be uber-satisfying and yes, occasionally, even rise to the level of “art.” But please, Mr. Sheffield, don’t insult yourself, your profession or us by using the word “avant garde” again in a sentence about the pap you cover. Ever. Please.