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the editor of the NME reacts to the news PJ Harvey has become the first artist to win the Mercury Prize twice

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head scratch

Odd Future … is apparently what rebellion sounds like in 2011: dead-eyed, mob-like and opportunistic. There’s certainly no one else currently trying to articulate anything more meaningful in pop culture. Time was when rock stars, and not just the Clash, used to have lots to say about lots of very big, important things. Or so I’m told. The truth is that in my eight years as a music journalist, I’ve never found one.

So now no one says anything at all. And then we all wake up and wonder where the art of genuine protest has gone.

(Krissi Murison, editor of NME, writing in The Guardian, 14 August 2011)

See also:
Where has the art of genuine protest gone? asks a ‘concerned’ music industry insider
Of course, it doesn’t count when women or blacks do it. A collection of 20 present-day political pop songs

P.S. In case anyone thinks I’m picking on a clueless editor of a national UK music publication quite unfairly, Lucy Cage has just linked me to this corker of a Tweet, from the ‘Culture’ Editor of Channel 4 News, Matthew Cain.

PJ Harvey wins Mercury for obscure album no-one liked or bought – how predictable! What’s wrong with music connecting with lots of people?

Nice to know the UK’s cultural future is safe in the hands of people like Matthew. Incidentally Matthew, no one is two words, not one.

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