Are female fans who appreciate a pop hook here and there automatically considered lesser fans of music that defines itself as “real”? I am probably going to sound like a hippie here, but this sharp drawing of lines around fanbases does nobody any good at all; like what you like and don’t like what you don’t, but assigning motivations (that are pretty moralistic!) to the way peoples’ pleasure centers react to things is one of my least favorite aspects of music culture right now, some sort of OKCupid/Facebook I-like-this-thing matrix turned into a strangulation-torture device that only serves to inflame comment sections and, as you know if you clicked “play” on the above audio, make people yell at each other on the radio for an hour. (And what of the dudes who like “Starships”? Are they forced to relegate their real pleasure to the festering bin of “guilty pleasures”?)
