OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

he makes a reasonable argument that Ellington wasn't actually composing long-form works, just creating medleys of shorter pieces and adding framing devices.

With varying degrees of contortion, one could say this about any long-form work by any composer. I think Teachout's view is a combination of the John Hammond (and borderline-racist) "Hey, you're supposed to just be a swing/dance band! Stop trying to aspire to more than that!"; and the generally Eurocentric "no, THIS is what constitutes a long-form work! Stop trying to reinvent/redefine it!"

And if Teachout believes Ellington's work suffered due to procrastination, this means that a) Ellington released half-realized work at some point in his lifetime (evidence of which is as yet nonexistent); or b) Teachout (and no one else) has access to Ellington work that, presumably supported by documentation, was not sullied by procrastination, and Teachout is therefore able to make an informed comparison/judgement.

I'll go out on a limb with a half-baked thesis - hopefully the cheesy crusty parts will be edible though:

Teachout dismisses late Duke Ellington because:
1) Some of it gives equal billing to Billy Strayhorn, hence working against the "exploited Billy Strayhorn" angle
2) Some of it was undeniably achieved after the death of Strayhorn, hence working against the "after 19xx, he was nothing without Strayhorn" angle.

I don't have the background knowledge to defend these so do shoot away...I suspect I'm not entirely wrong either

"With varying degrees of contortion," you can claim Teachout is saying almost anything you want. Read the book. I'm not suggesting I agree with him 100% across the board, but I'd be more interested in discussing it with people who'd read it.

What I'm characterizing as procrastination, btw, is multiple projects - stage shows, movie musicals, etc. - that fell through because Ellington promised people a full score, then never got around to writing one and attempted to fob off producers with existing leftovers.

As someone who loves ie Far East suite, in a sentimental mood, Afro-Eurasian eclipse, 70th birthday concert, money jungle et al--I think there's a pretty legit argument that ellington's most significant work, the perfection of the aesthetic he divised, was not in his long form symphonic works but in his three minute sides for like, okeh records. I think this is a pretty standard line on Ellington at this point ! 3 minute records was the canvas he was built for, at least in terms of recorded output

Yesss ^^ it's possible to feel this way w/o being a condescending dick about it like TT. I'm not one to cry racism at the drop of a stereotype but TT also clucks his tongue at Duke's prolific infidelity during a long marriage in a superior tone that suggests well, you know how these black guys are...

"With varying degrees of contortion," you can claim Teachout is saying almost anything you want. Read the book. I'm not suggesting I agree with him 100% across the board, but I'd be more interested in discussing it with people who'd read it.

I'm mostly basing my characterization of Teachout's contortions on his "(Over)praising Ellington" essay. When Teachout writes, "The idea, I guess, is to push him up into the classical-music arena: he played in Carnegie Hall, therefore he's serious. And that's completely wrong. Duke Ellington is serious because he is Duke Ellington" I think he's otm. But elsewhere in the essay, he's critical of Ellington for aspiring to lengthier works because Ellington didn't have the tools necessary to realize works Teachout thinks Ellington should never have attempted. If Teachout simply thinks Ellington's longer works aren't fully realized, that's fine (if a bit predictable -- and Teachout, in his essay, gives no indication of trying to meet the works on their own terms). But as I noted upthread, he's critical of Ellington for not studying that which Teachout thinks he never should have studied anyway.

What I'm characterizing as procrastination, btw, is multiple projects - stage shows, movie musicals, etc. - that fell through because Ellington promised people a full score, then never got around to writing one and attempted to fob off producers with existing leftovers.

I would hope that Teachout fleshed these scenarios out within the context of, say, Ellington having to constantly keep his band on the road in order to meet payroll. But I found his Armstrong bio underwhelming, and since Teachout apparently doesn't know what the word "influential" means, I'll skip the Ellington book.

XP-that's interesting, I thought the Armstrong bio was...well, delightful. I thought it was warm, enlightening, thorough and sympathetic. I guess he used all his compassion on Armstrong though.
I somewhat regularly read his sightings column, which is to say when I can stand it, so I'm not surprised he blows it on Ellington.
which isn't too often.

second place is still open tho

lol contenderizer

This one is so bad I'm providing it via donotlink. http://www.donotlink.com/framed?704999

not saying there's any edit of that which could make it worthwhile but it's a textbook 'pick out the most obnoxious sentence and make it the headline' dealie

have a go heroes

Famous Briton Dolores O'Riordan

xpost to the meme that will not die
have a go and a smile

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121794/other-peoples-playlists-spotifys-secret-social-network
i have a real sore spot for "i typed in a phrase and look at all these big numbers" writing and the faux naif patina is grating

Keep going, listening to snippets of songs or speech. See what tugs at your ears. It’s one of the more satisfying ways I know to spend an hour. At the end you know something.

People lament the ascendance of pop culture. Just because Katy Perry is in charge doesn’t mean that Charles Ives is out in the cold. He has 57,643 listens for his 1906 composition “The Unanswered Question.” Honestly, I don’t care what people like, only who they were and what they thought. I want a way for people to mark their paths through all this sound, so that I might follow.

I start with someone popular but a bit weird, like Peter Gabriel, and then I click on the “Related Artists” tab and up pops a set of similar musicians: Sting, Dire Straits, Roxy Music.

It makes me wonder, what the hell is wrong with my friends? One listens to too much classical; another is far too into electronica. There’s the music critic who loves her 1970s metal, the Depeche Mode-obsessive, and a host of other breeds of snob or miscreant.

There's also the clueless asshole his friends might think is a friend.

"[Selena Gomez]'s music is produced via a complex industrial process involving engineers, songwriters, and coaches" -- gee, you don't say

I actually thought the piece was OK but "this pop music is so artificial, unlike every other form of music, but it's an earworm anyway :(" is the laziest trope of music writing by non-music writers

"At the end you know something."

This is so brilliant. Some kind of pure idiot savant green tea zen sloaneering.

Also that is possibly the weakest playlist ever. This whole article is like a robot trying to read tea leaves.

this is kind of great though-"Watching other people listen to music is too much like knowing their sexual proclivities: You start out curious and end up horrified."

just a note, archive.today is a better way to not give websites traffic than donotlink, which only really affects a site's google pagerank, which isn't a thing as much as it was a few years back

About that New Republic article:

-Since when is Blancmange "weird"? I can think of quicker ways to find obscure synth pop. Like typing it in.

-One can never listen to too much electronic music

I have not read the piece yet but I'm going to put it here based on this subhead:

"Is it time for a disruptor to change what songs look and sound like?"

nope, not great at all

Lmaooooo

cuepoint just always wins this thread

this only tenuously qualifies as music writing but it's enough to crowbar it into any thread with 'worst ever' in the title http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/uk-shops-that-sound-like-the-hottest-rappers-of-2015-10276462.html

hardly the worst of its problems, but there are two number sixes there.

For her "Butterfly" single and video, Mariah Carey intended to finally let go of all her inhibitions, insisting on rubbing her bare vagina all over the camera's lens. Eventually, the director fought for a reshoot, not out of fear of offending, but because the footage looked like "a giant squid attacking a sub." Mariah still forced her ideas into the single packaging, suggesting she squeeze the head of her kitten, Nipples, between her thighs. The art director note d they could achieve the same effect in graphics editing, but Mariah insisted on grounds of realism and "that look of pained resignation." Tommy Mottola wasn't havin' it, and sold the image to Lords of Acid.

http://pitchfork.com/features/staff-lists/6194-the-worst-record-covers-of-all-time/7/

way to take Nantucket to task for their visual identity

Terrible, unfunny article there. Goddamn.

Balls to the Wall posters prompted Deutschland dads to retool the focus of their "we need to talk" talks from satanism to sexuality, especially upon learning Accept's singer and guitarist, Udo Dirkschneider and Herman n Frank, translate loosely as "silicon buttplug" and "her lady penis."

Great work, guys!

BTTW is a fantastic album cover on multiple levels

As is Smackwater Jack,which I doubt they have ever seen a real copy of, since the point of the cover is that its got a weird shiny part and a matt part, sort of creating two images however you look at it. Plus, inside the gatefold is the funniest pic.

guys that is literally a ten year old story

yea i was wondering who was gonna say it first lol

like how is it remotely trenchant/relevant to bring up a decade-old piece by a dude who was a punchline right out the gate (deservedly so, his writing sucks) but hasn't made so much as a peep as far as i know or care in any way that the average person would see...like om gosh pitchfork did dumb things then and now what a brave truth-to-power statement

*but hasn't made so much as a peep as far as i know or care in any way that the average person would see in like 5 years

On the other hand nothing wrong with visiting that Kid A review once in awhile.

given that this thread was started to clown an article in a zero budget British university newspaper I think that Pitchfork is also fair game

I know this is 'rolling terrible music writing thread' by any other name but most articles tend to only be written right after they're published and then never again so

I don't normally believe in "so bad it's good" but that Brent D's Kid A review is the exception that proves the rule. Every sentence is pure magic.

Haha omg I was seriously just reading the p4k worst albums cover thing like last weekend

i can recite huge chunks of the kid a review from memory

comparing this album to other albums is like comparing an aquarium to blue construction paper

something about witnessing the stillbirth of a baby while also watching it "play in the afterlife on imax"

those first 3 covers are classic, what the hell

iirc it has a single lucid and effective metaphor ("kissing around a big nose"), like a flawed rug, xp

Vice Exclusive: People should dance at dance parties
https://thump.vice.com/en_us/article/if-you39re-facing-the-dj-you39re-getting-dance-music-wrong

Perhaps our attention spans are such now that we constantly need a focal point. It could be tied to our worrying inability to 'do nothing', without inevitably flicking our phones open. In a club setting, we are hard-wired to search for what we assume to be the central point of meaning in the room, rather than allowing the music (a more abstract sensory focal point) to possess us like a sexy demon.

Dancing doesn't have to be funny or embarrassing (unless, of course, you're one of those chiefs that starts doing the worm and the splits, like a town fair acrobat). Let's have a boogie, or at least do something more expressive than the mimicking of scraping dog shit from your shoes for three hours. Not to get all "good old days," but a glance at a video of the acid house era, or a story from Studio 54, will quickly illustrate the simple truth: we are getting it wrong. The time has come to take ownership of this epidemic, to accept that we're uncoordinated and uncool. The DJ isn't there to be stared at. They are there to be forgotten completely.

Madonna' - "Allow The Music (A More Abstract Sensory Focal Point) To Possess Us Like a Sexy Demon" [Let's Have a Boogie Remix]

In a club setting, we are hard-wired to search for what we assume to be the central point of meaning in the room, rather than allowing the music (a more abstract sensory focal point) to possess us like a sexy demon.

Either I stopped going out to clubs at the right time of my life or this is the dumbest, most inaccurate thing I've ever read

rather than allowing the music to possess us like a sexy demon

to think i was just considering having a new dn