Tom Ewing’s overview of pop in the oughts is crucial reading for any Idolator reader, not the least because without his influence in the earliest part of the decade this site (and probably a good chunk of the Pitchfork list!) would look pretty different. (Tom was one of the guiding lights behind the bulletin board I Love Music, where I and a lot of other writers cut their musical-rhetorical chops.) It’s a dense piece full of lots of meaty material on how the “pop” ideal has shape-shifted since the Britney-n-Justin glory days that ushered in the millennium; I’ve excerpted a bit about the curious nature of pop qua pop in the current moment (which is something that I think about a lot) after the jump. More ยป
