The beauty in them is subversive. It doesn’t belong. It’s been smuggled in under the radar of suburban teenage taste and purchasing power. That’s why pop music is the art for our time: It’s an art of crap. And not in a self-conscious sense, not like a sculpture made of garbage and shown at the Whitney, which is only a way of saying that “low” materials can be made to serve the demands of “high” art. No, pop music really is crap. It’s about transcending through crap. It’s about standing there with your stupid guitar, and your stupid words, and your stupid band, and not being stupid.
John Jeremiah Sullivan on Chris Bell, Big Star’s “Other Genius” :: Oxford American - The Southern Magazine of Good Writing
