Didn’t know Beyonce was married.
Now that I do, should I be impressed?
I’m a library dweller (university librarian) and I think someone who’s well informed about US and international news is probably aware that there’s some sort of singer named Beyonce who within the past few months performed at both Obama’s second inauguration and the Super Bowl and also made some sort of questionable trip to Cuba. I knew all that off the top of my head, and I personally don’t give a damn about Beyonce or her music. (Or football, for that matter.) These are things that were reported in major mainstream news sources, not just tabloids or music magazines.
Welcome to Earth, GovernmentMan. Will Smith would like a word with you.
And I think you’re being a bit harsh by the way. Music is super segmented now and someone who doesn’t care to listen to poppy R&B will not hear much about Beyonce if their genre of choice is, say, country. Or rock. Or metal. Or anything that’s not poppy R&B.
I see. I only called them library dwellers because I thought you were painting them as very scholarly, studious types who aren’t at all aware of the pop culture going down all around them. I see now, you weren’t painting them that way at all, hence your saying they don’t live under a rock. So, my mistake there. Now I am off to google Rosa Gumataotao Rios. Good day.
Hint: It’s the current U.S. Treasurer, so we “see” her name multiple times per day as it’s on every piece of paper currency. On the other hand, she doesn’t do a lot of public appearances or nationwide publicity spots, and as far as I’m aware, hasn’t ever done the Superbowl halftime show, a Presidential inauguration or a Pepsi commercial that’s shown fourteen times a day.
That’s why I specifically limited my comments to pop music (the music in the Hot 100, the music you hear when you turn on the Top 40 radio station, etc).
But I don’t think I fully understand what you’re saying. Are you just pointing out that there are probably more undiscovered rock bands out there than there are undiscovered rappers? Because just as there are a shit-ton of great bands out there playing the bar circuit, I assure you there are a shit-ton of fantastic rappers doing the same, as well as a shit-ton of hip-hop influenced DJs and electronic acts. The non-Top 40 tails of hip-hop and it’s offshoots are just as diverse musically as rock, if not more so, and pack just as many clubs and bars and make it onto just as many iPods as their not-quite-famous rock counterparts.
Quite frankly, I don’t believe you. Or maybe you don’t know your colleagues as well as you think
No. Has anyone suggested you should be?
People seem to take such a perverse pride in their ignorance sometimes. There really isn’t some sort of moral superiority because you don’t know pop culture. Not that I think anyone should take an interest, but you’d have to almost actively avoid news on Beyoncé or Prince to be that ignorant of pop culture.
This. This, this, this, this, this. Pop culture IS culture. It’s contemporary culture. It’s the sea that you swim through if you live in the USA. It’s not mandatory and it’s not some shocking sin if you mostly tune it out, but avoiding it isn’t really some kind of virtue. You’re not living a purified life if you don’t own a TV or radio or don’t read magazines or don’t listen to people talk about what happened last night on the Office. There aren’t any brownie points to be distributed.
Beethoven and Mozart and Brahms weren’t some sort of elevated cultural geniuses in their time. Their music WAS the pop culture of their day. They were the Elvises and Madonnas and Elton Johns of their time. Beethoven had some pieces that could be classified as “the Frank Zappa of his day”, really…the Grosse Fugue was as far ahead of the culture as Zappa’s works were when they came out.
Just because we tend to just consider OLD culture as “Culture” doesn’t mean that today’s culture (POP culture) isn’t a part of culture, period.
I don’t mean undiscovered bands. I mean professional bands with professionally released albums. Let’s call them “little known” instead. There are a lot of little known rappers, but there is a metric shit ton of little known rock acts out there. And their number on iTunes, Amazon, and, yes, your local record store, dwarfs that of rap.
That’s what I’m saying. Rap is the music of the “mainstream” in a way, but only because rock is 100x more fractured.
Sorry, I’m quite sure I know my colleagues much better than you do. In particular, based on other celebrities I have mentioned to them, I would be quite surprised if two of my best friends knew who Beyonce was. Maybe they know her name. I would be astonished if they knew who Jay-Z was. These people are simply not on their radar.
Just because you are aware of it doesn’t mean that others are. Not being able to imagine that some people don’t know who Beyonce is a kind of tunnel vision as well.
I’m glad you kind of pedaled back to Beyonce, because it was the claim that they wouldn’t know Prince that I found a bit incredible.
Jay Z, the asshole who inflicted “Hard Knock Life” on us when I was still in college.
Do you think this is common knowledge (I.E. most people would/should know this)?
Depends on how old the person is, and what their interest in celebrities is. I’d expect many people to know.
Do you think it’s weird or surprising to find someone who didn’t know this?
If the person was under 40, I’d find it a triffle odd, but no more than that.
Yes, but I think there’s a difference between ignorance of pop culture (e.g. knowing who Beyonce is, or what she’s famous for*), and ignorance of celebrity gossip & personal lives (e.g. knowing who she’s married to).
*(She was the girl in the third Austin Powers movie)
Who backpedaled? I seriously doubt they really know who Prince is. Actually, I think they’re more likely to have heard of Beyonce than Prince.
Again, incredulity that some people - even quite intelligent people - are that unaware of popular culture is in itself a kind of unawareness.
I wouldn’t say my friends are not deliberately aware of pop culture, or take any pride in not knowing. They just don’t care, so it’s virtually invisible to them.
If you are not interested in sports, you don’t pay attention to the sports news. I suspect lots of people who know that Beyonce performed at the Superbowl couldn’t name the teams that played that year.
Beyonce’s husband is Jay-Z, and I would be shocked to meet someone with even a low level of pop culture consumption to know. Basically anyone who goes to a standard America grocery store with magazines at checkout.
H.O.V.A.
Although, I should admit, when posed with this question a few years ago, I also failed. I didn’t think Jay-Z would get married. Why would he? He’s rich and famous.
Ah, dang, words were missing in my post. I was trying to say I’d be shocked to meet someone who didn’t know about them, unless that person never shopped at a grocery store with magazines at checkout.
He wanted to have 100 problems.
You also have the added advantage of not living in this country, if I remember correctly. I’m sure we export a lot of our pop culture to Panama, but it’s still not going to be nearly as ubiquitous as it is here.
What I’m surprised about is that apparently both of those two are fairly young folk. Idle, sure–but Miller, too?
I know who she’s married to, but I wouldn’t be able to pick him out in a crowd.
I haven’t watched the Grammys in years, every since I realized that the only people I knew were the ones getting Lifetime Achievement Awards.