Flyover Rock: Now a Real Thing?

In response to Marc Hogan's succinct, insightful blog post about Ann Powers' LA Times piece on what she's calling "Flyover Rock" (defined loosely as the rock music that's voraciously consumed by middle-America: Nickelback, Daughtry, David Cook, Puddle of Mudd, etc.), Idolator's Mike Barthel asks the question, "Is it ultimately more condescending to dismiss Nickelback because they don't sound like the music you like, or to try to appreciate them because that's what 'real people' listen to?"

My answer, in a nutshell, is that neither is particularly condescending. I dismiss Nickelback because I don't like them. Because their songs are informed most obviously by the first wave of post-grunge bands that I also didn't like, albeit for very different, admittedly more personal reasons. And because the production of their records is unpleasant to my ears, over-compressed and far too polished, or, to use a slightly outdated, or at least frowned-upon, term, radio-ready. And because I find the earnest, hyper-emotional delivery of high school-grade poetry to be laughable. 

On the other hand, I also don't really see anything wrong with trying your best to see in this music what so many others see. There's a difference, though, between understanding how others feel and why they feel it, and forcing yourself to feel the same way. 

Here's a snippet from the Idolator post:

Powers writes: "Since the days when former art-school kids the Rolling Stones declared themselves exiled on Main Street, populism has served as a normalizing counterpoint to rock's freaky bohemian tendencies." And that was great when freaky bohemian bands were selling lots of records and getting lots of attention. As Howes [co-writer of hits for Puddle of Mudd, Daughtry, Cook, et al] points out, however, "The people in Middle America seem to still buy records. The other folks -- consumers of what we might as well call "blue-state rock" to be consistent -- don't so much. If all we care about is continuing to hear music that sounds like it's trying to be freaky and bohemian, that's fine. But if we care about music as a cultural force, it's a problem.

Only, again, I don't think it's a problem at all. Just because some music critics don't have any interest in listening to David Cook during their free time, it doesn't mean they're incapable of recognizing and speaking critically about the impact his music has had on the culture as a whole. Now, if they're not willing to engage in that dialogue, then it's a problem. 

So going back to Hogan's initial point (that the glorification of dumbed-down middle-American ideals is about to come to an end in the world of politics, but not in music critic circles) as it relates, in my mind, to the role of the critic, there's nothing wrong with Powers wanting to write this piece -- it's just that it would have been a lot better if she'd considered the possibility that the tunnel-visioned people she was covering were as misguided as the tunnel-visioned media elite she was so willing to let them attack.