Rock On

Kelefa Sanneh's lead essay in the New York Times' Sunday arts coverage, "The Rap Against Rockism," is a phenomenon one sees too often: a critic spouts widely-accepted, conventional wisdom and tries to pass it off as a brave new vision.

Better watch it, Kelefa, for just as what's "classic" in rock regularly changes, so does what's fashionable in pop criticism. With the ground always shifting, yesterday's exciting new notions can become reactionary overnight.