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The 250 Greatest Songs of the 21st Century So Far

W. David Marx @wdavidmarx.bsky.social · 1d

Lefsetz called this "clickbait" but fascinating that so many of the very top songs date from The Long 20th Century (2000-2004) rather than from recent years:

www.rollingstone.com/music/music-...

The 250 greatest songs of the 21st century so far -- from all over the musical map and every corner of the globe

www.rollingstone.com

‘One Battle After Another’: A Second Opinion With Van Lathan - The Ringer

W. David Marx @wdavidmarx.bsky.social · 3d

Good discussion of this here: ‘One Battle After Another’: A Second Opinion With Van Lathan - The Ringer share.google/zQOODtbSagpB...

On a very special bonus episode of the podcast, Van Lathan joins the show and gets the chance to share his perspective on the box office debate for ‘One Battle After Another,’ share his overall though...

share.google

W. David Marx @wdavidmarx.bsky.social · 3d

Coolness eventually trickled down to the very people it was created to devalue

dying well @thebestrevenge.info · 3d

Who is this cool to

the corgi from cowboy bebop @realqrampage.fightins.online · 3d

LMAO LOOK AT THIS PHOTOGRAPH
EVERY TIME I DO IT MAKES ME LAUGH

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W. David Marx @wdavidmarx.bsky.social · 3d

(Impeccable comic timing that this happened right after the anti-anti-poptimists took a victory lap that they settled the poptimism debate once and for all with "Poptimism has never been a pro-pop ideology.")

W. David Marx @wdavidmarx.bsky.social · 3d

The New Yorker: The editorial policy that Taylor Swift is incapable of making a bad album

New York Times: Album gets perfectly positive review from Jon Caramanica

Normal people: Yeah, this sucks

www.theguardian.com/film/2025/se...

W. David Marx @wdavidmarx.bsky.social · 3d

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W. David Marx @wdavidmarx.bsky.social · 4d

Actual music criticism in 2025: "Swift is masterly when it comes to making money."

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W. David Marx @wdavidmarx.bsky.social · 5d

Jezebels, race kink and Cardi B: in One Battle After Another, Black women are still stereotypes

With its hyper-sexualised Black female revolutionary and fetishised depiction of interracial relationships, Paul Thomas Anderson’s much-lauded latest raises questions about how white male directors de...

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by W. David Marx

Dave Moore @otherdavemoore.com · 6d

Thought this was pretty shaky when I wrote it (at peak Eras tour/TIME profile) but so far it's....less shaky

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W. David Marx @wdavidmarx.bsky.social · 6d

Carl Wilson's pleasant definition of poptimism: "Taylor Swift has the potential to be rewarding and is worthy of serious critical attention."

Actual music criticism in 2025: "Taylor Swift might not be *capable* of making a bad record"

The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 6d

Taylor Swift might not be capable of making a bad record, but “The Life of a Showgirl” is at least a little bit cringe. In today’s daily newsletter, our writers discuss their initial reactions to the new album.

Taylor Swift Sounds Stuck

From the daily newsletter: our writers react to “The Life of a Showgirl.”

www.newyorker.com

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W. David Marx @wdavidmarx.bsky.social · 7d

I know there's a lot of political news, but it'd be nice to get some hard answers on why Obama chose Charli's "365" over "360" on last year's playlist

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W. David Marx @wdavidmarx.bsky.social · 7d

21st century culture in one paragraph:

W. David Marx @wdavidmarx.bsky.social · 7d

Also the nepobaby angle!

W. David Marx @wdavidmarx.bsky.social · 8d

Hey, the "hamster nests" made my book as a signature work of post-9/11 downtown NYC.

W. David Marx @wdavidmarx.bsky.social · 8d

I don't know what it's called when something is beyond art but this is that thing

W. David Marx @wdavidmarx.bsky.social · 8d

Oh wow I'm just noticing now that it says HOLY SHIT if read upside down. Art is WILD

W. David Marx @wdavidmarx.bsky.social · 8d

Dan Colen's "Holy Shit (2004–06)" truly embodies the Kantian ideal of art in its inherent mysteriousness: How could the artist have even come up with such an incredible idea, let alone executed it? It's a total inimitable enigma.

gregorg @greg.org · 8d

love this for him (peter brant)

Artologica aka Michele Banks @artologica.net · 8d

🤔

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W. David Marx @wdavidmarx.bsky.social · 10d

Also: Boiler Room tells the story from the perspective of labor—an employee anxious about the corruption of higher authorities.

The Wolf of Wall Street invites the viewer to wear the shoes of a successful founder-entrepreneur whose dreams the authorities keep trying to squash

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W. David Marx @wdavidmarx.bsky.social · 10d

A clear value shift in films about Jordan Belfort's fraudulent brokerage Stratton Oakmont:

Boiler Room (2000): the moral dilemma of ripping people off

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013): the jubilation of ripping people off, because it's more noble to have been rich once than to have stayed poor

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W. David Marx @wdavidmarx.bsky.social · 11d

Whatever side you're on in this debate, there is always the possibility of creating a new kind of criticism that squares the circle, that shuns the biases of the past while still optimizing critics' power as the discoverers and explainers of exciting new art. That's where our optimism should go.

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W. David Marx @wdavidmarx.bsky.social · 11d

There is a very real and successful value system that centered criticism around explicating deep artistic intention within cynical commercial output, and if we want to separate this from early 2000s "poptimism," fine, but we need a word for it, because it's an actual thing with consequences

W. David Marx @wdavidmarx.bsky.social · 11d

The only way, apparently, to make the argument that anti-poptimism is fully a straw-man argument is to straw man anti-poptimist arguments and wave away all the detrimental pro-pop arguments as "off-brand poptimism."

Wilsonian-style poptimism has not been the debate for about 20 years now

W. David Marx @wdavidmarx.bsky.social · 11d

I've written much about reclaiming pro-innovation criticism from an explicitly non-snob perspective, yet Wilson cherry-picks one line from my newsletter to lambast me for heralding the death of all "pop-culture criticism" when literally in the next sentence, I'm praising The Rehearsal and 100 Gecs.

W. David Marx @wdavidmarx.bsky.social · 11d

Wilson also admits that "a subgroup of critics...specifically valorized pop qualities including showmanship, artifice, production, image, brightness, humor, and catchiness" but they also don't count, apparently. This is just "their taste" not poptimism, so they're also stricken from the record.