What happens when our fan voice conflicts with our critical voice? After last year’s “Poptimism” moment, we began pondering the extinction of “guilty pleasures” in an age when (it is argued) charts are the most reliable barometer of critical consensus. What we are left with, perhaps, are guilty displeasures. Questions followed. Has taste become irrelevant, or, rather, is it being contested by younger social-media-schooled critics who refuse to be intimidated by it? Are we snobs if we prefer the raw-throated classicism of Chris Stapleton over the hip-hop-influenced beer busts of Florida-Georgia Line? Should we question the experiments on To Pimp a Butterfly because they don’t tear up the club? This is what happens when the voices out there become the voices in our head. In this panel we confess to how a critically championed artist or song has left us cold and unconvinced, then ponder the shame.
