We need to talk about POP...

dyer’s description of cultural production under capitalism as ‘necessarily contradictory’ is essential, because it highlights the importance of our ‘use’ of disco or pop music, in ways that differ from what was originally intended. there is a fundamental ‘dirtiness,’ an impurity, in disco and pop music precisely because of their contradictory nature, their capacity and willingness to be used in alternative and subversive ways, and this partly accounts for the bias against these uncontrollable musical forms. the art held up as most superior according to highbrow standards prizes individualistic forms of cultural production—the artist, after all, must have a ‘vision’ or else he/she is a phony—and often lapses into an instrumentalist view of art, that it can be used to reshape society in a very mechanistic, cause-and-effect manner. one fundamental difference here, then, is in who is given the final authority in ‘completing’ the work of art, so to speak: is it the artist, who fashions a work narrow and tailored enough to communicate a very specific vision (that you either get or you have somehow missed something), or is it the audience, who takes a somewhat ‘incomplete’ (read: open) work of art, such as a pop song, and repurposes it to suit a variety of needs.

— trevor link, POP UTOPIANISM: a manifesto / WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT K-POP: a mix,