What is smartdumb?

In search of smartdumb: heavy metal; Tapes N' Tapes; dumbdumb, dumbsmart, smartsmart; Immanuel Kant swamp ass; How Long Gone; getting one's freak on.

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A few years ago I began batting around the concept of “smartdumb” with other musician friends. Initially it was just a parlor game: a loose framework to categorize the kinds of things I liked and the kinds of things I didn’t, and an effort to understand why I felt the way I did about either. The term naturally invited a Cartesian plane of categories – dumbdumb, dumbsmart, smartdumb, smartsmart – and when I first posted about it online, those categories understandably upset a lot of people, mostly those who didn’t want to hear that the thing they like is considered “dumbdumb” by a middle-aged white dude. At the same time, nobody seemed to disagree that Jack Antonoff was “dumbsmart,” so perhaps I was onto something.

I’ve had a lot more time to live with the idea. I think of it less now as a cheap way to categorize pop culture, and more akin to a broader cultural ecosystem, with four broad experiences keeping each other in balance. The term became a guiding light for my own work as well – a way for me to hit reset on myself and get out of my own way. When I quit my old company a few years ago, I knew immediately my next one would be called Smartdumb.

Since so many of you are new around here (thank you for subscribing), I thought I’d try to explain where I’m at with everything – the origins of the idea, the different categories as I understand them (dumbdumb, dumbsmart, smartdumb, smartsmart), and how “smartdumb” has become a mantra as I try to figure out how to make a living as a culture laborer in the year 2025.

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When I moved to New York in the early 2000s, I interned for the writer Chuck Eddy. Eddy was (and very much still is) a music critic who was skeptical of music that music critics like. A proud midwesterner, he liked what he liked without reservation, and dismissed what he didn’t with withering, balloon-popping ease. He often used the term ‘heavy metal’ to describe certain seemingly superficial, aggressively bone-headed musical entertainments he found to be quite meaningful — certainly as meaningful as anything other critics deemed ‘art’. When I worked for him, he argued relentlessly for industry confections like Ashlee Simpson, alt-right hillbillies like Kid Rock, and novelty acts like country-rappers Big & Rich — which was itself a very heavy metal thing to do.

This was not some corny Signifying Rappers-eque Well Actually-ing of supposedly low culture. My sense is that Chuck genuinely was moved by these entertainments, not because they signified anything, but because they somehow managed not to signify anything at all. They were pure pleasure — 100% id. And for Eddy, as a critic, this kind of shamelessly sui generis, brain-shortcircuiting pleasure is the highest virtue. Where it gets dicey – and often where it gets sublime – is grappling with the perverse pleasure so many of us can take in enjoying entertainments we know to be ugly, misogynistic, outright brutish or pubescent, or simply in supposedly bad taste. I don’t know how else to say it but to say it: Nobody does it like Chuck. I’m grateful I got to spend time with him.

A few years earlier, Eddy edited a writer named Kelefa Sanneh, who would take Chuck’s heavy metal approach to even more extreme territory. Sanneh’s "Rap Against Rockism" essay becoming a kind of manifesto for something called ‘poptimism’ – the argument that commercially minded, industrially manufactured ‘mere’ mass audience entertainments like pop and rap and country could be just as artistically valid as supposedly ‘serious’ art. Poptimism slowly but surely became the dominant mode of all music coverage, right at the moment legacy media was beginning its great contraction.

When I first began to engage seriously with music, the walls between “art” and “entertainment” had already begun tumbling down — or perhaps the better metaphor is whatever happened to that wall in the Run DMC/Aerosmith video. New York Magazine played fast and loose with its four-quadrant Approval Matrix: from Lowbrow to Highbrow on one axis, Despicable to Brilliant on the other. Girl Talk mashed up Elton John with Notorious B.I.G., while DJs like Nick Barat made a name for themselves jamming high against low. For a moment, it seemed the most interesting writers were only interested in mass entertainment. At the time it was oddly bold, if not slightly trollish, when Pitchfork to decide cover Taylor Swift in earnest, amidst news items for a new Deerhoof album or a tour dates for Tapes N’ Tapes.

The business of supposedly smart people engaging with supposedly dumb shit is still alive and well, but perhaps not exactly as alive as it was. (Certainly not as alive and well as the business of dumb people engaging with dumb shit.) Writers like Spencer Kornhaber and Ted Gioia have made some headway trying to understand the consequences of this hierarchal breakdown and shift in where we put our attention. For my money, nobody understands it better than W. David Marx, whose excellent book on culture in the 21st century, Blank Space, arrives later this Fall.

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What is a smart person and what is a dumb person? Pardon my heavy metal. To me, a smart person is simply someone who engages with the world, attempts to create new meaning, and in the process challenges or supplants the old ones. A dumb person is simply someone who experiences the world without necessarily engaging with it. He does not create meaning, and accepts the meanings previously created by others. For my part, I am way more a dumb person than a smart person, and have the screen time reports to show it, though I admit that’s a very smart person thing to say.

What is smart shit and what is dumb shit? I use these terms loosely as well, and suspect they line up with W. David Marx’s definitions of ‘art’ and ‘entertainment’. Smart shit is, loosely, art: It challenges your understanding of what is fun or beautiful, and in the process rewires your brain and expands your possibilities moving forward. Dumb shit is, loosely, entertainment: It often conforms to the lowest common denominator understanding of what is fun or beautiful, and technically speaking the ‘best’ dumb shit is essentially frictionless in its erasure of your free time. Dumb shit, in this way, is a kind of accidental propaganda for dumb shit.

Very few entertainments are purely smart or purely dumb. I studied Lucretius in college, and was always taken by his understanding of his own work: If you want people to drink the medicine, you have to put honey around the lip of the cup. De Rerum Natura was his explanation of how the world works. In some parts he went into very esoteric territory, like explaining how free will was possible due to the random swerve of invisible particles, which is to say Lucretius was way early on “atoms”. It was a science textbook. The honey? He wrote this textbook as a poem. Adjusting for the time difference, that’s like learning AP Chemistry with Grape Juice Boys memes.

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As for the word ‘smartdumb’, let’s start with the obvious. Smartdumb is extremely pretentious. At the same time, I’d say it’s as forthright about that as any word can be about itself. If it is unpretentiously pretentious, it is also, somehow, pretentiously unprententious. So yeah, all this is pretty fucking silly when the world is burning and children are starving. You’re totally right.

But when you’re taking something that’s both highbrow and totally inconsequential seriously, calling it “dumb” is an easy way to acknowledge that. And when you’re taking something lowbrow and totally inconsequential seriously, calling it “smart” is an easy way to get people’s goat. The former gets annoying in a false humility kind of way. The latter often results in the worst kind of Well Actually – true boner killers. But the gesture has the same function: You’re signaling to the world that meaning is flexible, structural. You’re the creator of your own meaning.

Mashing opposites together and trying to make sense of it all is nothing new. It’s at the core of zen. The goal of any koan is to get yourself past dualistic thinking. To go east is to go west — just think about it. That tree that fell – the one that nobody heard – both made a sound and didn’t make a sound.

Smartdumb is different from “smart things, dumbed down.” Like a koan, there is some irreducible mystery at work. Something so profoundly simple, you’re left in a state of awe. If you smell Kant’s swampy ass around the bend of this incredibly pretentious Well Actually-adjacent paragraph, you would be correct. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

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Let me try to summarize where we’re at and try to stick some semblance of a landing:

(a) There’s the distinction between "smart" entertainments, which we might call art, challenging and rewiring your understanding of what is beautiful and all that good stuff; and "dumb" entertainments, which we might call merely entertainment, i.e. entertainments that more or less 'gives the people what they want," or conform to the current understandings and forms of what is beautiful and/or entertaining, or some hyper-compressed, hyper-addictive can’t get enough of it version which we call, with love, ‘trash.’

(b) There’s the understanding that these distinctions are somewhat malleable, or at the very least exist on a spectrum of taste. There’s the original concept of a ‘guilty pleasure’ — liking something below one’s supposed taste level – which slowly but surely, by the term’s very persistence, negated the taboo itself. I watch "Love Is Blind" with the same verve that I read William Gaddis. Taste as a status signifier has evolved as well. Like microplastics in our bodies, it’s nearly impossible for even the most high-minded snoots among us not to like at least a little bit of dumb shit. In 2025, I’d say we say one has "taste" to the extent that we think their balance of supposedly smart and supposedly dumb preferences is in an interesting configuration. “I like Pauline Oliveros and I like Teddy Swims.” Weird but sure, let’s get coffee. “I like Teddy Swims and I like Benson Boone.” Skeletor runs back into cave.

(c) While most cultural products seem to exist somewhere between smart and dumb, there’s something oddly mysterious and irreducible and zen-like about the things we call smartdumb. It’s best understood in relief, i.e.: If it looks like art, it probably isn’t.

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I moved to Los Angeles almost nine years ago, the day before Trump got elected. 2016 was a come to Jesus moment for me. I had had some success in the music industry, and an artist I had developed was signed to a prestigious British label. But I was running out of time and money. If I wanted to continue to make a living as a music producer, I would need to put myself in a position to do more business within the larger industry. My path to success at that point had been extremely anomalous and self-defined. In a word, I think I just got lucky. For me to have any sustained career, I would need to learn how to make entertainments.

It hasn’t been uncommon to encounter independent musicians like myself say, in a moment of weakness or self doubt, something to the extent of, “Fuck it, I’ll just move to LA and make pop music.” In practice, it’s so much harder than that, but not because pop music is technically difficult to make. It’s because human ears are incredibly good bullshit detectors. The casual listener can hear a piece of music and know, intuitively, that whoever made it is just going through the motions. You don’t need to know how to play instruments or how to write a song or really anything. Something will feel off. There’s a frequency that just seems to be missing.

What I realized quickly out here is that the people having success making commercially minded pop music genuinely believe they are making awesome stuff. Someone like Benson Boone genuinely likes Benson Boone’s music. He’s not making Benson Boone type music just because he thinks that’s what the people want. He believes Benson Boone music is fundamentally meaningful art. People need to believe you believe in it. They can tell when you’re just phoning it in.

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Which brings me to what should be the super controversial part of this piece – where I say some things are dumbdumb, other things are dumbsmart, and so on – but this far in I hope you can tell I actually care about all this and am not just taking the piss. I know how hard it is to make stuff – not just stuff you like, but stuff other people like, and stuff that other people like more than other stuff made by other people and which gives you a fighting chance financially and spiritually of making more stuff that hopefully both you and other people like. This shit is hard. I’m right there with you.

To me, Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” is textbook dumbdumb. I say this with love and admiration and without judgment. There is so much about this song and recording and performance that is, by any standard, “of quality”. I should say I also love many dumbdumb things, and admire the relentless versioning and craftsmanship necessary to make truly frictionless, hear it in CVS dumbdumb type things. Everything about “Beautiful Things” is entertainment. It conforms to what a significantly large number of people believe to be “good”: real instruments, a dynamic American Idol-type vocal performance, a big huge chorus that the singer is really, really selling hard, a wordless post when the feeling is just beyond words, as if to say: the beautiful things truly are gone.

It’s a recording that could have been made 50 years ago because it was, to some extent, a recording that was made 50 years ago. “But it’s just a great song, you know?” The people who say things like this are not the same people who say, “If it sounds like a great song, it probably isn’t.”

Dumbdumb has no rub. It is without guile. It is nostalgic for nothing in particular. In music it is the sonic equivalent of a rollercoaster ride, with twists and turns and ‘surprises’ at the exact moments our brains have revealed themselves to want twists and turns and surprises. It’s a rush, for sure. But nothing in your life changes when you get off the dumbdumb rollercoaster. You will not see the world differently.

What I admire about dumbdumb is that it doesn’t promise that you would. What troubles me about dumbdumb is that it seems designed to keep us from even considering the possibility.

Reality shows, amusement parks, Jimmy Fallon, social media influencer content, the grist of doom scrolling, the kid on Instagram who says “Boom” with his dad – almost all this is usually, probably dumbdumb.

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Then there is smartsmart. So much music by Daphne Oram is smartsmart, as is a lot of music brought to us by Editions Mego. Steve Reich’s “It’s Gonna Rain, Pt. 1” is smartsmart. Many paintings by Cy Twombly are smartsmart, and many films by Stan Brakhage are smartsmart. Gaddis’s JR is smartsmart. I love many smartsmart things. These are blinding lights, pure, uncompromising art experiences that challenge the status quo of what is beautiful, good, and meaningful. They announce new ways of seeing and hearing. They don’t care if you are entertained.

Many smartsmart things have rewired by brain and changed how I see the world. But at the same time, they take a lot out of me. I’d much rather watch Arrested Development than Window Water Baby Moving. I find that smartsmart things are more fun to think about than to actually endure. What I admire about smartsmart things are that they have no interest in entertaining me. What troubles me about smartsmart is that I kinda wish they did, at least a little. I can’t shake the sense that their medicine would hit harder if there was just a little honey around the cup.

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Dumbsmart, to me, functions like a gateway. It’s what you get when well-meaning people with smartsmart ideas or left-leaning interests try to figure out ways to introduce those interests to a broader audience. There is a beautiful, inclusive intention at work here. Dumbsmart is work that appears sophisticated, if not a little aspirational for a mass audience. It promises an elevated art-like experience, but wants to spare you the full-on discomfort that a true art experience often requires. There was a coffee shop on Manhattan Ave that my old bandmate Matt used to say served “hipster shots”: espresso pulled in such a way that it was big on fruity and exotic overtones, but had little actual coffee body, where the bitterness resides. This is dumbsmart.

Most LCD Soundsystem songs are dumbsmart. Beyonce’s Renaissance is dumbsmart. Jack Antonoff seems to have the dumbsmart Midas touch, making the most rote I-V-vi-IV sparkle again. Prestige television is, for the most part, dumbsmart. Self-serious lyric-forward indie rock — stuff like The National, or Mitski, or Phoebe Bridgers — is often dumbsmart. Something like the How Long Gone podcast is textbook dumbsmart. Most books by Jonathan Franzen are dumbsmart. A lot of new electronic dance music that makes a costume of the sounds of credible musical subcultures but then puts in service of a traditional vocal performance and song structure, verse chorus verse chorus bridge – that’s dumbsmart. Pollen is dumbsmart. It’s not a bad thing.

Which is to say, if I’m being candid, most of my work as a music producer has been dumbsmart too: well-intentioned attempts to broker subcultures and “pure” art ideas to people who are rightfully skeptical of “pure art ideas” or who simply don’t have the patience or time for them. I am recontextualizing, re-presenting, or perhaps just abridging. I love a lot of dumbsmart music. What I admire about dumbsmart is spirit of inclusivity, and its concern for the actual minute-to-minute experience of the work itself. Dumbsmart, like dumbdumb, wants you to be entertained. What troubles me about dumbsmart is, even while I am enjoying it, I can’t help but feel like I’m being handled. I can’t help but feel like I’m getting a watered-down version of the real thing.

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I agree with David – culture is best understood as an ecosystem. I am concerned about the invasive nature of dumbdumb species, which grows everywhere and gladly takes up all the attention space we’ll give it. Smartsmart species are not exactly flowery, don’t attract many pollinators, but the pollinators they do attract historically change the landscape in good and profound ways. I struggle most with the optimism of dumbsmart, as even when it flourishes – creatively, commercially, whatever – I can’t unsee the myriad compromises it makes in order to survive.

I know those compromises well. To be clear, I am very grateful to be in a position to be making those compromises, and there’s a lot to knowing which compromises to make. Ten years into living out here, I can say, at the very least, I am a serviceably good maker of compromises. I make a lot of kind of weird music that sort of a lot of people like.

But then I think about Benson Boone, and how I imagine Benson Boone feels about Benson Boone’s music — the sound of two hands high-fiving all the fucking time. I genuinely wonder what it would feel like for my tastes to perfectly align with the tastes of a global audience. For my whole life, I’ve made peace with the fact that this was just not in the cards for me. But what if I was wrong? What if I had a backflip in me after all?

A few years ago, the artist Sarah Belle Reid challenged me to make a list of music that had achieved commercial success that I also admired on a formal, musical level – music that had succeeded as entertainment but also spoke to me as art. I wrote without thinking: SOPHIE’s “Lemonade”, Nelly’s “Hot In Herre”, M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes". Missy Elliott's "Get Ur Freak On". Clipse's "Grindin'". David Bowie's "Fame". Beastie Boys's "Sabotage". Tiga's "Bugatti". Daft Punk's "Around The World". Beck's "Loser". White Zombie's "More Human Than Human". Yung Joc's "It's Goin Down”. Barry White's "It's Ecstasy When You Lay Down Next To Me". Rage Against The Machine's "Bulls On Parade". Jay-Z's "Can I Get A". OG Maco “U Guessed It.” Was there a common thread?

In the flow of the assignment, I just started writing things I loved, anything, in whatever order it came to me: Fluxus. Cy Twombly. Basquiat. Miles Davis On The Corner. Basic Channel. Denis Johnson. Lydia Davis. Fred Troller designs. Iggy Pop. Lou Reed. Eastbound & Down. Jane Hirschfield. Winesburg, Ohio. I Think You Should Leave. Adams & Carmichael productions. Caravaggio. Digi-dub reggae. Excepter’s “Vacation”. Helter Skelter. Dance Pt. 1. And so on.

Not all of these things succeeded as mass entertainments. But what struck me about my list was that, at the intersection of wildly popular entertainments that also happen to be art I like, there is a certain degree of Eddyish heavy metal. These musics have clarity that comes from their being exceedingly reduced – distilled to their essence. It’s unclear how or why they work, but they do. In the process of distillation, they have become even more fundamentally mysterious.

What is there to say about SOPHIE’s “Lemonade”? The experience of it is the meaning. There is nothing left to explicate in a Basic Channel record. There is no water weight left to burn off in this chorus: “It’s getting hot in here/ So take off all your clothes/ I am getting so hot/ I’m gonna take my clothes off.”

There is no alterior motive – no “infiltrating of the mainstream” – in “Lust for Life.” Johnson: “I knew every raindrop by its name” – semantically it’s quite clear, yet the sentence has an aura. What is there to say? It just is! At once, a question mark and an exclamation point.

That’s where I’m at with smartdumb. It is, to me, the most beautiful and elusive species of art-entertainment. It succeeds as both by not trying to be either. If I can’t make it myself, at the very least I want to help steward it.

My friend Erich Schwartzel recently said to me that he liked my “technology newsletter” – speaking about this very newsletter you’re reading. It didn’t occur to me until he said it, but so much of what I’ve written about so far is me trying to figure out what kind of music is worth making right now, in this moment of significant and likely irreversible technological upheaval. It’s a moment where the technologies, and their primary stewards, seem actively if not sentiently trying to convince us that humans making art isn’t that important. As a working human artist, it’s a black hole I just kinda have to choose to ignore if I want to get through my day intact.

Smartdumb, whenever I encounter it, makes me feel the exact opposite way. The way I feel, I imagine, is not unlike how that kid from American Beauty felt watching that plastic bag in the wind, or how my young son felt this afternoon as he rolled oranges down the slide of his playhouse, laughing uncontrollably as his mother tried to catch them mid-air. I wouldn’t mind feeling like that more often. I suspect you might agree.