The following is a long winded rant. Unlike normal discussions, Long Winded Rants are sprawling and multi-faceted complaints over general trends. I leave them completely unedited format. 

This week, Ariana Grande released Problem, which is probably one of the best pop songs that’ll be released this year, in addition to being one of the best songs of the year. Various blogs posting about this new track (Including “Indie” centric sites like Stereogum and Pitchfork) have been proclaimed its greatness and, due to the nature of the song, it’s brought up a discussion topic I absolutely loathe: Poptimism.

The notion of a song- one that rides a sax loops as carelessly as Macklemore’s Thrift Shop and is sung by some girl from a Nickelodeon TV Show- being praised can rile up both Indie Rock purists and people that think too hard about how music is covered in journalism. Pitchfork naming such a shamelessly poppy song has come up in conversations with readers and friends constantly this past week, particularly friends upset about other songs that have been seemingly ignored ( Now, that’s not to say that these people are ignorant and stuck in the past, because they’re not…necessarily). People have been hung up on former Indie Sites praising the hell out of songs that live on sugary hooks and big obnoxious beats. And the disappointment is pretty understandable. I began to discuss how much I liked this infectiously funky and sugary song with a fellow music fan, and it lead to a 10 minute discussion on the death of guitar rock, and a subtle criticism of me simply because I happened to really like an “Inconsequential, Gum-On-Your-Shoe” pop song. The 00s was a decade that was overflowing with fantastic, guitar-driven rock music (Arcade Fire, The Walkmen, The Strokes, The White Stripes, the list could sprawl forever), and the sudden lack of guitar ridden acts (or the movement s away from guitar by some of the groups listed before) can feel like the world is shaking.

Is Rock in a bit of a slump? Yes and no. In this internet age, you can find good (or at least decent) Rock music basically anywhere. The days of Modest Mouse and Death Cab for Cutie dominating all musical discussion is buried somewhere in the past. However, proclamations of “Rock is Dead” just because a teen star that can sing (and doesn’t normally wield a magical guitar) released a song that a lot of people like. Sure, everyone’s end-of-year lists last year were dominated by acts like Disclosure and Kanye West, but that doesn’t mean that rock is no longer important (I’ll get to the power of lists in a little bit).

Every genre changes and morphs over time, and it’s incredibly hard to truly and sincerely compare music of differing genres. A type of music never goes away; it may recede and transform into something new, but it never really goes away. That’s what’s magical about music and art in general: it’s malleable and can change as we do as people over time. As much as the “Death of Disco” was declared by the media and obnoxious radio hosts, it never really went away. It went underground and became popular in the 80s in queer culture, and it has come back in various forms (See: Disco Punk from groups like The Rapture and LCD Soundsystem; Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories). If Disco never really died, then Rock is never going to die either.

While this fear of a Rock recession has at least some reason to it, this anger thrown at pop acts receiving praise is, frankly, stupid. I’m not one to argue that we live in any sort of “Monogenre” period of music, because that’s not really true. Most music still has at least one distinct, defining genre (Or at least it’s a clear mixture of multiple genres). Hip-Hop is still Hip-Hop, Rock is still Rock, Punk is still Punk, Pop is still Pop. They might melt into each other a bit, but that shouldn’t be a problem. The fact that bands are wanting to mix more and more ideas and sounds should be exciting, and it has been (Experiments in the mainstream that got endlessly praised (this site included) last year, from Kanye West deciding to go for a more industrial sound to Daft Punk nearly pulling a Losing My Edge, push this sentiment further).

The fact that the music press and music fans have changed over time is A) Natural and B) a bit of an exaggeration. Just look at Rolling Stone. Declaring an album like Wrecking Ball as being the best album of the year back in 2012 was laughably ignorant. Sure, maybe their writers may actually be a bunch of middle aged men angrily shaking their fists and middle schoolers running around their lawns. But in reality, it’s more likely that they were just working against this fear of pop music running so rampant recently. Just because people enjoy pop music doesn’t mean they’re actively working against the status quo, they just like music, and recently released good music just happens to be pop. To bring it to a personal level, Samlovesmusic is not an “Indie” music site, and I’ve never claimed it to be. I just cover music that I enjoy (or that I feel should be discussed).

It also is clear that pop hasn’t truly been rising against rock. For the most part (Save some bleak years in the late 00s), there was always SOMETHING pretty good on the radio. Crazy in Love and Hey Ya! Were huge in 2003, and earlier than that there was plenty of at least tolerable pop music. Part of the problem is that there’s too much of a focus to judge all music on the same terms. Sure, year end lists endlessly promote this thought process (Just scroll through any top 10 last year, including my own). Trying to judge something like Grande’s Problem against another track that gained traction this week, Big K.R.I.T.’s fiery and explosive Mt. Olympus, is a hopelessly futile effort. Problem is being praised because it’s a damn fine example of a sugar-coated and infectious pop song, and Mt. Olympus is being praised because it’s a damn fine example of a lyrically forward Hip-Hop song. Lists that lump these songs together aren’t really trying to pit them against each other. Lists are made (mostly) to discuss the best tracks of a certain epoch, and to put as much of a concentration of good music in one place as possible.

Sure, some pop sucks, but some of it has always sucked. We have Flo Rida and Jason Derulo today just as the early 90s had MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice. Plus, the fact that some writers have been endlessly covering pop music simply because people really liked Beyoncé is a bit annoying (Over analysis of an uninspired One Direction is just a waste of everyone’s time). But fearing genres and desperately claiming that a genre that was once the biggest in the world is dead is just egocentric at best. If you fear that great bands aren’t being covered because people like Ariana Grande are gaining traction among music critics, you’re not some kind of holy watchdog over the crumbling morality of music journalism. In fact, it’s probably better if you just don’t worry about journalists and listen to (and promote) whatever you want. You don’t have to claim that you like the song; in fact, if you don’t like it, please be honest and proclaim it from the highest mountain top. Just don’t accuse other people who do like it of being some kind of anti-rock demon working desperately to end the reign of guitar driven Rock & Roll. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go get my grind on to that nasty sax loop, wonder how a woman as small as Ariana Grande can have such a big voice, and quietly complain about how amazing the song would be with a rapper that isn’t Iggy Azalea.