Rockist

The basic thesis of the book is that generations of British rockists attended art school and that this explains the distinction and domination of Britpop.

Rockists would maintain that their music has progressed since 1956, but there is so little musical difference between rock and pop that many of the artists would be impossible to place in one camp or the other.

The rockism debate began in earnest in the early 1980's, but over the past few years it has heated up, and today, in certain impassioned circles, there is simply nothing worse than a rockist.

If the idea of rockism confused you, and you lazily thought Pink Floyd were automatically better than Gang of Four, and that good music had stopped with punk, you were a rockist and you were wrong.

Reframe that argument for dance music specifically, and things get weird. Techno and house end up in the “rockist” category — despite their origins in queer culture and radical Blackness — because of their relative emphasis on tradition, craft and underground legitimacy.