Friday music for haters

Y'know it's easy to dis contemporary pop music. Yes, there's a deluge of mediocrity, with vortices of crap and only isolated islands of originality. But if your default stance is turning your nose up, you're guaranteed to miss what's happening now.

Personally, I've been guilty. I didn't appreciate a lot of good music at the time it was happening. Maybe it was just arrested development, but I think there's a part of us college types that instinctively wants to be different from the unwashed masses. In the early nineties, say, I missed a lot of excellent music that was under my nose - e.g. Nirvana, A Tribe Called Quest, Beastie Boys - that it took me years later to appreciate. Outside of music there's the same psychology - I was sure Harry Potter was crap before I read, because why else would masses of people like it? Sure not because they're wondrously addictive fantasy stories?

Popular music and perhaps pop art in general has two basic qualities: it has to be accessible and it has to adapt quickly. The young drive it, each new generation or sub-generation wanting to distinguish itself from its ancestors. So it does take effort to keep up with the styles, to not miss the content because of an unfamiliar form. But being ephemeral and catchy is not antithetical to great art. Tell me that "I heard it through the grapevine" is not a powerful song? What about "Hey Ya"? (OK, maybe not as powerful but still great).

There are plenty of musical genres that are important, have amazing musicians, and will reward a listener with open ears. "Pop" music is just one (or many) of them. So here's an amazing band, maybe not quite pop because they've never made it very big, murdering it on this TV clip: