2006 Pop Conference Bios/AbstractsBrian RafteryBrian Raftery has written cover stores for
Spin and
Blender and contributed to
The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Esquire and
Radar. Prior to that, he worked as an editor at GQ magazine, where he wrote covers, features and music reviews, and as a correspondent for
Entertainment Weekly.
Panel(s):CringeworthySaturday, April 29, 2006, 2:00 - 3:45
Abstract:"
Take a Look at Me Now: Phil Collins and the Great Generational Divide"
A few years ago, I wrote an "investigative sidebar" for GQ, asking if Phil Collins' "Against All Odds" was the greatest song of all time. Even though the piece included an interview with John Tesh—and a statement from Collins himself, faxed from a hotel on the French Riviera—it wasn't intended as an easy joke: "Odds" may be no "Yesterday," but it is one of most beloved songs of the last two decades, whether you like it or not.
And, if you're a music writer over the age of forty, I'm guessing you don't like it. In fact, just about every older critic I've met absolutely loathes Collins, pegging him as sappy, too-eager-to-please shlock merchant. But to those of us who were coming of age in Collins' Miller Lite-shilling heyday, he's become either a not-so-guilty pleasure or a non-threatening hit machine.
For my presentation, I'd like to use the shifting opinions regarding Collins' work to examine how one generation's punching bag becomes another generation's innocuous elder statesmen. I don't want to re-evaulate his entire career (though I'm prepared to defend it, even "Illegal Alien"), but I do want to raise questions that I believe will dominate the next few decades of music criticism: How much does time and nostalgia alter the context in which an artist is judged? Can long-held critical beliefs change over time? And will the justifiably hated artists of today (the Black Eyed Peas, Limp Bizkit) be canonized by future music writers?
