WHAT BEYONCE THINKPIECES TELL US ABOUT THE DEATH OF THE HIGHBROW:

I don’t say this to disparage popular music, even though I suspect that in a hundred years, most of it will be remembered about as widely as Mairzy Doats. (Look it up, kids.) A simple and catchy tune is perfectly valuable on its own merits, and not every piece of music or television show or movie has to engage the brain at full capacity.

But the middle-brow cultural establishment is determined to freight the flotsam and jetsam of popular culture with more intellectual weight than it can carry, sinking it under a lot of pretentious commentary about its very great significance.

I remember when “middlebrow” used to mean something very different than Beyonce. To understand how quickly a culture can change, here’s what then-Washington Post-owned Newsweek was writing about the Beatles when they touched down at JFK in 1964.