SA: Know Your Product

Original video located here. Accessed 2nd August 2024

Song title: Know Your Product

Artist: Saints

Year: 1978

Why I like this song:

This song may roar like no other (moreso in the decades since) but it also encapsulates my suspicions towards trends in modern music.

Earlier this week, YouTube music critic Todd in the Shadows posted a video assessing the Kendrick Lamar hit Not like Us. I can't say that I'm a fan of the song but it is the middle section (starting 13:00) that is of interest to me.

So: Poptimism, A reaction against Rockism and it's gatekeeping. Where those who once weren't taken seriously as artists now had a new sense of credibility. 
I however challenge that narrative.

I was a teenager in the nineties - an era known as the apex of alternative rock. So what does that mean to me? Well it showed me that there was a world beyond what was being played on the pop radio at the time. A world that had slipped under the radar of pop radio and now looked far more appealing. So whilst the pop radio looked vapid, dull and cheesy, the brave new world of alternative rock looked fun, real, varied and with far more teeth. 
And in the wake of Nirvana's success, alternative rock, once overlooked by the mainstream, had a new found sense of credibility. 

But as is often the case, the pendulum can always swing back. 

And that's what Poptimism is for me: Pop music coming roaring back to life. Pop is a dominate force again. Song that did successful on the charts only to be dismissed as nonsense is now reassessed as classics. And the underground is now being forced back to where they were.
But to me it's not so much a reaction of the success of alternative rock but regaining the ground lost. Its the sound of a schoolyard bully punching back at the nerds who dared stand up for themselves. Does some higher up in the music industry actually resent the revolution Nirvana (however unwittingly) brought about?

Disagree?
Very well then: Tell me, without looking it up, who was the highest ranking Australian artist on the ARIA singles End of Year chart in 1991.
I'll give you a hint: It wasn't Daryl Braithwaite.