Critic's Corner
Car Seat Headrest, The Scholars Popular music seems to be continuously wavering between favoring longer, meandering songs (think Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin) to favoring 2-minute highly-structured poppy cuts (think ’50s and ’60s classics or pop stars like Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus). The former has always seemed a little counterintuitive to me, as somebody who grew up with Taylor Swift as a streaming standard. Pop, for my generation, has mostly been an easy-listing, hyper-engaging genre. But as my guitar teacher has noticed, the pop songs that his students are asking to learn have recently been getting longer and longer. The popularity of emotional ballads isn’t new, but the trend of longer pop songs definitely is. People always complain about my generation’s seven-second attention span, which may be true, but radio trends suggest otherwise. Car Seat Headrest isn’t necessarily popular radio music, but they’re not anything niche either. The lead singer might perform in a furry costume at …
