Father John Misty has spent the last few weeks promoting the release of his third studio album, Pure Comedy, out April 7. He's done an impressive job getting the word out too, showing up on SNL, garnering headlines with bold statements, and so far not entirely consuming his own tail. On Friday, he cranked up the headline generator during an interview with Pitchfork. It started like this:Tremendous. From there, Tillman staggered through what he saw as commercial pop music's evils. He said that he only worked on those pop songs because he wanted "to know how the sausage was made just out of fucking morbid curiosity," and that "there is nothing not wildly audience-tested and calculated about this fucking music." He ended up here:
You helped write Beyoncé's "Hold Up" and a couple of songs on Lady Gaga's latest album. Do you still like pop music?
The more important question is: What does the word "like" mean?
Advertisement
Just to prove that he can do all of this stuff, but, you know, it's all just so commercial and superficial, Misty released three new songs this morning. "Generic Pop Song #3," "Generic Pop Song #9," and "Generic Pop Song #16" are actually pretty funny as party pieces. He's picked up Top 40 lyrics, jumbled them around, and come up with contrived pop tracks that run from corn syrupy Imagine Dragons "whoahs" to superficial morning-after Jesus-in-Ibiza shite. If you read through those quotes from the Pitchfork interview, nodded, laughed wryly, and then muttered something half-clever to yourself about Tillman's persona, then you'll love them.When you lionize pop music, you lionize the very thing that feminism purports to be against, which is a culture of exploitation and overcharging. Which is what cracks me the fuck up when you read these ridiculous puff pieces about how wonderful major-labor pop music is, and the whole fucking industry is run like you actually buy into the idea that that woman that's onstage, wearing next to nothing, is powerful. Because that is like being a child.
Follow Noisey on Twitter.