MARCH 2020 71OMNIVOREThe New Rules of
Music Snobbery
Hulu’s High Fidelity reboot captures
the end of elitist condescension
and the rise of fervent eclecticism.By Spencer KornhaberTwenty-five years after Nick Hornby’s novel High
Fidelity psychoanalyzed fussy record-store clerks,
and 20 years after the movie adaptation made John
Cusack their avatar, the once-inescapable and now-
obscure archetype of the music snob is being re issued.
Hulu’s charming High Fidelity reboot stars Zoë
Kravitz in a 10-episode riff on the ways that music
culture—and the preposterously learned, list-making
taste cops intrinsic to it—has changed in the era of
AirPods. The first law of post-snob snobbery: Speak
before you Shazam.
A telling early scene in the old High Fidelity saw
Barry, the bombastic employee of Cusack’s Rob, repel
a would-be customer searching for Stevie Wonder’s “I
Just Called to Say I Love You.” Barry decreed the sin-
gle “sentimental, tacky crap,” saying the middle-aged
man who asked for it “offended me with his terrible
taste.” The equivalent moment in the 2020 version
arrives when Cherise, the Barry-update played with
delicious verve by Da’Vine Joy Randolph, calls out
an iced-coffee-drinking bro who has strolled into the
Brooklyn record store owned by Kravitz’s Robin. He
holds up his phone to ID the song that’s playing. “You
do know there’s an actual person standing right here
in front of you?” Cherise says before launching into a
semi-castigating, semi-flirtatious sermon that irritates
its target so much, he leaves. She isn’t out to shame
the Shazamer so much as to connect with him. “The
problem with these kids,” Cherise yells afterward, “is
that the generation has completely fucked off.”
A less perceptive reboot would simply have made
Ed Sheeran the new sentimental, tacky crap, but Huluhas gone beyond grafting contemporary references
onto Hornby’s tale of 30-somethings who are more
adept at sequencing mixtapes than at maintaining
healthy relationships. The series captures a funda-
mental reorientation in listening these days: Elitist
condescension about musical preferences isn’t cool
anymore, but maybe—die-hard fans fear—obsessing
and connecting over music are no longer cool either.
Barry-types once used their taste to prop themselves
above the less erudite, mainstream-minded listeners
they mocked. Cherise, by contrast, just wants to chat
about a song—and the consumer, cozy in a private
digital bubble, decidedly does not.
The much-discussed “death of the snob” in the
internet era explains part of the shift on display. Even
though some High Fidelity–style shops catering to
vinyl collectors have survived the extinction of big-box
retailers, streaming and downloads have chipped away
at the super-listener’s pretexts for arrogance: special
knowledge (entire discographies are now explorable
with a click), special access (few B sides can hide from
Google), and curatorial chops (algorithms can DJ
your life). Cloistered listening has become more com-
mon, as Spotify and the omni present earbud turn an
entire art form into an on-demand, all-you-can-stream
personal utility. Meanwhile, many of the remaining
gatekeepers have mellowed into “poptimists” who say
Taylor Swift and Radiohead can be equally worthy of
praise and exegesis. Ideals of inclusivity— not exactly
a trademark of the straight-white-male audiophiles of
the original High Fidelity— have driven that change.
The 2020 record store’s denizens—two women
of color and a gay white man—seem to realize that
hierarchical edicts are out. Certainly the staff is nicer
than the old guard was. Barry and Rob squabbled so
acridly that they nearly came to blows; their descen-
dants banter with noticeable sensitivity and esprit de
corps. Outsiders, in fact, are surprised at how agree-
able the crew is. One guy Robin goes on a date with,
upon learning that she owns a record store, asks if
she’ll walk out on him for enjoying Fleetwood Mac’s
“Dreams.” Robin, as it happens, loves the song,
though she’s iffy on its album, Rumours. The tension
and humor of the scene then turn on whether she’s
too voluble in her analysis of a band she was expected
to disdain. Intensity, rather than pretension, defines
her. She’s a geek more than a snob.
Not that these characters aren’t snobs in other
cultural arenas. Generally they hate the super ficial:
overpriced coffee shops, selfie-taking influencers,
and other lifestyle-as-branding trends. Cherise
never says it, but you can guess that she worries the
Shazamer will simply add the song—which she’d no
doubt fastidiously selected—to some chill-out play-
list, rather than engage more deeply. Such anxieties fitA less
perceptive
reboot
would simply
have made
Ed Sheeran
the new
sentimental,
tacky crap.