Here’s something I’m afraid to say out loud. I like Feist. I know I’m not supposed to like Feist. I’m not even sure how I know that, but I do. Her voice is too pretty, edgeless, located only in the most harmonically pleasing registers. Saying you like Feist is like not having an opinion, the greatest offense in certain Internetty precincts of our contemporary culture. You might as well say you like chocolate or potato chips. It says nothing about you. It’s not curated. It doesn’t say what we most want our music to say about us: I used to read Pitchfork.com until it got lame. You can’t like Feist, in other words, because it’s middlebrow. And loving the middlebrow is an unforgivable crime against taste. Loving something terrible makes you interesting—in some ways the lowbrow is actually higher-brow than highbrow. Watching The Real Housewives of Atlanta or being into shitty peasant sandals from Vietnam or low-res porn—that you can sing from the rooftops. But if you like Feist, it’s like you might as well tell people you’re having a wonderful sexual affair with your mother. Because you know who likes the middlebrow? The unacceptable. Boring people. The easily manipulated. But fuck it. I was in Le Pain Quotidien the other day (middlebrowest chain in New York!), and some Feist came on, and my mood brightened a little bit. Because you know what? I like potato chips. I like chocolate. And if Feist isn’t middlebrow enough for you, I will offend your fashionable sensibilities by saying that I, from time to time, enjoy hearing songs by Sting. I’ve never admitted that, even to myself. But (as long as it’s not from Ten Summoner’s Tales) I would gladly sit listening to Sting while I consume a three-pound fajita burrito at Chipotle wearing a J.Crew suit and reading Jonathan Franzen with Friday Night Lights on in the background. These are all things that make me happy to consume. And they are all middlebrow.
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(Via GQ)
Middlebrow: The Taste That Dare Not Speak Its Name Men's Lives: GQ.com: