{"id":1791762,"date":"2023-01-01T05:04:10","date_gmt":"2023-01-01T10:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1791762"},"modified":"2023-01-01T05:04:22","modified_gmt":"2023-01-01T10:04:22","slug":"listen-without-prejudice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/listen-without-prejudice\/","title":{"rendered":"Listen Without Prejudice"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">6<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Flisten-without-prejudice%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1791762&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47-->\n<p>Pop music has always been plagued insecurity. A four-minute song\u2014even one with the biggest of hooks\u2014doesn\u2019t feel like an artistic achievement on par with a great novel or an epic film. Pop acts often feel inferior and go to extreme lengths to prove their worth (I&#8217;m sure U2 did that once). <a href=\"https:\/\/www.u2.com\/lyrics\/614\">attempted<\/a> The portmanteau was coined &#8220;refujesus&#8221;).<\/p>\n<p>Pop critics often have a deeper level of anxiety than the rest. You can scroll through any &#8220;Best Albums of the Year&#8221; list and chances are you\u2019ll never have heard of 80 percent of the acts. However, the odds are that you&#8217;ll hear about an obscure metal\/folk band from a former Soviet Bloc member. The subtext is clear enough: If it\u2019s popular it can\u2019t be good, and if it\u2019s good it can\u2019t be popular.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s why <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Number-Ones-Twenty-Chart-Topping-History-ebook\/dp\/B09TZY72DF\/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2ZZ2GGK5TVYXU&#038;keywords=the+number+ones+tom+breihan&#038;qid=1669872062&#038;sprefix=the+number+one%2Caps%2C84&#038;sr=8-1\">The Number Ones<\/a>The new volume, authored by Tom Breihan, Senior Editor of Stereogum&#8217;s music blog, is such an energizing tonic. Breihan realizes that the most important thing about pop music is in its name. He understands it too.<\/p>\n<p>In 2018, Breihan began writing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.stereogum.com\/category\/the-number-ones\/\">a weekly column<\/a> reviewing every song that\u2019s hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 since the chart\u2019s inception in 1958. It\u2019s a dizzying journey across genres and one that he approaches free of the typical critic\u2019s pretension. This is one of the few music writers who can still come off hip while telling readers that they probably don\u2019t give disco enough credit.<\/p>\n<p>The Number Ones features 20 of these essays, spanning from Chubby Checker\u2019s 1960 chart-topper &#8220;The Twist&#8221; to BTS\u2019s 2020 hit &#8220;Dynamite.&#8221; The organizing theme of the collection is that the songs chosen for inclusion represent inflection points in the history of pop, and, with only a few exceptions, it\u2019s a persuasive thesis. The chapter on Fleetwood Mac\u2019s &#8220;Dreams&#8221; has more to do with the world-conquering success of the band\u2019s Rumours album than the song itself. This section is on &#8220;When Doves Cry&#8221; is largely an excuse to talk about how cool Prince was, an indulgence that can be forgiven only because it gives us Breihan\u2019s characterization of The Purple One as an &#8220;unknowable f**k-sphinx&#8221; (Give him the Pulitzer now).<\/p>\n<p>The Number Ones succeeds in large measure because it takes its subject matter more seriously than pop\u2019s detractors but less seriously than its monomaniacal fanboys. Breihan avoids, for instance, the pathology that ascribes huge cultural values.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pop music has always been plagued by insecurity. A four-minute song\u2014even one with the biggest of hooks\u2014doesn\u2019t feel like an artistic achievement on par with a great novel or an epic film. The resulting inferiority complex often leads pop acts to go to ridiculous lengths to be taken seriously (let none of us forget that U2 once attempted to coin the portmanteau &#8220;refujesus&#8221;).<br \/>\nThe post Listen Without Prejudice appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1651,"featured_media":1791765,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[544],"tags":[4092,4577,12725],"class_list":["post-1791762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-free-beacon","tag-beacon","tag-listen","tag-prejudice"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1791762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1651"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1791762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1791762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1791765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1791762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1791762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1791762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}