So, why is this column called “Pop Exodus‰Û? It should be pretty self-explanatory, right? I‰’m probably taking a long journey through the war-torn desert of pop music, already dissected over and over again by self-indulgent critics and propers up of the so-called high arts. While I do believe that the desert of pop is war-torn — full of heated arguments about auto-tune and authenticity and “the Industry‰” — I also think that some parts of the desert are less explored.

From my patchy memories of Sunday School, The Exodus was about someone named Moses who heard a message from God and decided to take a whole bunch of people on a long journey to the Promised Land. Everyone making the exodus was starving and fighting, but Moses pushed them further and further into the desert until God gave them some commandments to live by. Now I‰’ve gone and destroyed my metaphor because obviously the Pop Gods are not going to give us commandments about Objectively Good Music. While pop can be formulaic, other genres probably wouldn‰’t exist if there really were Ten Commandments or some predetermined recipe for success.

I‰’m not really interested in the Ten Commandments part, anyway; I‰’m not looking to crack the code as to why “Call Me Maybe‰” is supposedly the perfect pop song. Instead, I‰’d much rather spend my time in the desert than looking for the Promised Land.

I want to unpack the motivations behind the starvation and fights, asking a question: why do we bother arguing about pop music? Why did Moses and the other travelers keep going without knowing that they would ever reach the Promised Land? What keeps us motivated to continue dissecting pop, even though so many people, intelligent people, believe it to be a worthless mechanism of corporatism?

I‰’m not denying that pop music is a mechanism of corporatism; in fact, I‰’d say that pop music is one of the foundations of a corporate ideal, and I won‰’t pretend to think that being a corporate ideal is anywhere close to a good thing. But that‰’s not a discussion I want to have either.

Instead, I want our Exodus to explore the word ‰worthless‰’; I want to prove that pop has worth, even though I‰’m not yet sure why it does. I know that pop music is significant because it‰’s something of a permanent fixture in our culture. What I want to know more about is how pop confronts things like the body, or the notion of the self, or the lived experience. How does Pop combat oppression? How does it express nationalism? How is it internalized?

I‰’m not doing anything new by taking something considered to be from low culture and looking at it through a loose theory based lens; it‰’s just that I don‰’t think we do that enough. I don‰’t think we take popular music, as a function of popular culture, seriously.

Throughout this not-so-brief introduction to my column, I‰’ve talked a lot about what I think I know, what I don‰’t know, and what I‰’m not interested in knowing at all. Before I go, I will talk about one thing I‰’m certain of. Pop Music is best when it‰’s surprising and subverting, and also when it is conventional and mundane. It‰’s amazing and terrible and can be appreciated ironically and unironically, and often both at the same time.

If you don‰’t agree, that‰’s okay. But please understand that Pop Music has value because of everything I‰’ve just said, and because of many more things I‰’ll discover soon. I‰’ve parted the Red Sea; now it‰’s time we take the Real Pop Exodus.