constellations #12: damn fine cup of coffee
Hi again.
If there is one thing that Taylor Swift’s “New Romantics,” sexism in the Spotify algorithm, old-timey radio amateur hours, the looming sound of death on J Dilla’s Donuts, and every angle on “Old Town Road” all have in common, it’s that I learned about all of them at Pop Conference.
Pop Conference is an annual event usually held in Seattle that brings together scholars, critics, musicians, fans, etc. for some top-notch popular music discourse. Having never been to a real academic conference before*, I attended in 2018 and 2019 and found it wonderful — inviting and fun and challenging and so smart; an opportunity to be in the same room as some of the most brilliant people thinking about popular music and maybe even see them do karaoke.
I went in 2018 because the theme for Pop Conference was gender and critic Maria Sherman tweeted her fervent wish “be on an all female/NB panel of music brains at pop con 2018 discussing masculinity,” and so I got in touch and ended up presenting alongside Maria and the brilliant Jenny Gathright. I talked about straight male pop stars and feminine masculinity. I also kept a running list of patterns I noticed, such as:
Mentions of Judith Butler: 6 plus a photo
Self-conscious admissions of straight cis maleness at a conference about gender: 3
People who pronounced “Coachella” with four syllables: 2
Mentions of a “lesbian crime escapade”: 1
Times I cried: 4
As you can imagine I felt like I was among my people.
The next year the theme was “death” and I wrote a paper on a selection of riot grrrl-era songs about getting revenge on men who commit acts of sexual violence. I wrote down words and phrases I liked from other people’s presentations, including:
“the twilight of my heterosexuality”
“a flight of unbridled douchebaggery”
also just a note to self to look up a video of Nina Simone singing “Ne Me Quitte Pas”
These trips really made me fall for the Pacific Northwest — the trees and the drizzle and the fact that the water rushes up against actual mountains. Last year a couple friends and I skipped a few conference sessions to take a Twin Peaks pilgrimage, renting a car just for the day and driving to North Bend to visit the waterfall from the opening credits and the diner where the Double R scenes were shot. It was marvelous, driving out of the city over a bridge over the lake through forests to this sweet little town. And when we got there we ate cherry pie and drank coffee that was listed as “damn fine cup of coffee” on the menu, which felt like the perfect amount of corniness, and listened to Bikini Kill (and, later, Nine Inch Nails) and tried to visit a psychic but she was closed. By this point I had already done my presentation so I was able to think about anything else; I think it’s sometimes hard to cherish a moment as it unfolds but I tried in North Bend.
2020’s conference was slated to happen in April, but, of course, that didn’t happen; instead, it moved online, happening over the past three weeks in September. The theme this year was “youth” and I presented about notions of domesticity and long-term partnership in contemporary queer pop. I didn’t keep any particular lists this year, probably because of the scattershot nature of my attendance, but here are some cool things I learned about (and the people who presented them):
1970s pop auteurs’ embrace of the ~inner child~, presented by the great Ann Powers
An extremely deep dive into Florida Georgia Line’s “Cruise” by Jewly Hight
An analysis of songs of gay virginity loss by Alfred Soto
An entire panel about emo that was so good, touching on Princess Nokia, emo’s forever youthfulness, and misogynoir in emo scenes
An ode to the CD-R by my friend and yours, Daoud Tyler-Ameen
An entire roundtable about Lana Del Rey (!!!)
A dissection of the pop star maturity curve by Brittany Spanos
A look into third-wave emo’s relationship with ’00s purity culture by Maria Sherman
An introduction to sophisti-pop courtesy of my pal Mina Tavakoli
And honestly this just scratches the surface!! Many of the talks at this year’s conference (though, blessedly, not mine) were uploaded to the Museum of Pop Culture’s YouTube channel if this seems like something you’d be interested in. In any case, I hope you learn something niche and delightful this week.
xo,
M
*This isn’t entirely true, I did attend like one day of the American Anthropological Association conference in 2014; I knew one (1) person there and was overwhelmed.