The Backstreet Boys is good for you

English professor Josh Clover tells us what you reveal about yourself when you turn up your nose on pop culture:

“It’s more of a political decision than a choice of taste … a class bias against things that can be real expressions of human existence.”

One experience he remembers is a Backstreet Boys concert he reviewed in 1998. Walking through the audience while the boy band played, he watched as some people in the crowd wept with emotion.

“What the fuck am I to say? They weren’t having a real experience compared to my mom having an experience about The Beatles,” Clover said. “I wanted to find a way to honor that.”

That experience may partly have lead to his decision to leave the very glam world of music criticism. All in all, what Clover is telling us is that the dismissal of pop culture is largely an issue of class. Nevermind the debate about pop being ephemeral. Pop is about now, and how we use it to make it transcend boundaries of culture, class and even time.

This is for that girl way way back who turned up her nose on us who found simple joy in singing along to the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears.