look i know we're not supposed to give Adorno's ideas about popular music any credence on account of his infamously silly comments about jazz (mind you he'd probably only heard a Glenn Miller or Benny Goodman album) and his general haughty tone of hetero-modernist snobbery versus mass culture, but i couldn't help thinking of his concepts of "pseudo-individuation" and "part interchangeability" when reading SF-J's piece on reggaetón in the New Yorker, viz this bit especially:

"Because all the acts used backing tracks or records, there were no instruments to assemble or break down, and the sets—each only three or four songs long—succeeded one another quickly, before similarities between them became obvious."

which is immediately followed by the wry comment

"Wisin & Yandel did not appear as scheduled, but the genre has no shortage of male duos."

Adornoid thoughts also occurred while perusing various enthused dissections of Girls Aloud's new album when it became clear that even their most passionate and unstintingly analytical fans cannot distinguish between the girls' voices on record (although some seem to be able to tell them apart okay as fantasy fuckmates)