Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor have written Faking It: the quest for authenticity in popular music, a book that tackles the "pop paradox": the harder popular musicians try to "keep it real," the faker their music becomes.
Is something as transcendently artificial as "I'm a Believer" less valid an expression than, say, something as apparently sincere as "Smells Like Teen Spirit"? Maybe, but I have to admit that I experience joy every time I hear that rising yelp of "Then I saw her face!"—which, at 40 years and counting, makes it a mighty potent act of insincerity.
