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

Frederik … No. Not least because you can't cuckold a woman. You cuckold her husband. A cuckold is one whose wife has had sex with another man. Also, no particular practices are associated with cuckolding. It's just having sex.

But he says that Eazy wants to cuckold the sister? So is she in a same sex relationship, would that work?

"The lyrics are about the tension of desire, but the mise en scene is power."

Ah yes, of course, the mise en scene of power... (???)

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20985-m3ll155x/

Sorry, probably doesn't belong in the "worst" thread, but this still annoys me.

You'll have to take that up with him, not me, Frederik. It's possible he did not fully understanding the correct meaning of "cuckold".

left to his own devices he'd prob make a fairly homogenous list that was almost entirely boomer rock plus maybe some metal and 90s indie-slacker shit

the rockist swine

xpost The line he's referring to "...and make your sister think I love her" doesn't have anything to do with cuckoldry afaict

maybe he used it in the 4chan meme sense

hopefully Rap Genius has answers

pop criticism in 2015: you are either an uncritical memeleader, or you are this: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/hit-charade/403192/?utm_source=SFFB

Where is the artistry when a producer digitally stitches together a vocal track, syllable by syllable, from dozens of takes? Or modifies a bar and calls it a new song?

Great question. Let's ask Teo Macero.

it's more than a bit of a stretch to say that's what teo macero did

where is the artistry when a poster digitally stretches together a comparison

maybe you should stop doing criticism, think abt it

ignore me if you havent already, i promised myself I wouldn't say anything about this dumb article again and that was super lame.

well now that's confusing

katherine,

dont stop doing music crit

thnx

lol most of the ppl who buy enough into popstar fandom to call themselves 'swifties' or 'katycats' understand the machinations of the industry far more deeply than this dork and are well aware of these writers and producers and their writing camps that he seems to think are obscure secrets that the industry guards with care.

the book he is kinda-sorta reviewing must be hella basic if some of the tantalizing factoids he mentions from it are things as well-known as the existence of lou pearlman/denniz pop and tlc having turned down "baby one more time" etc.

also wtf, the "already gone"/"halo" soundalike controversy was not shrugged off or unnoticed by pop fans at all; it arguably was the foundation of most of the former song's publicity, especially b/c (the surely input-free, manufactured) kelly clarkson spoke out about it herself

you're a bag of shit

thx

that's a really good article, I learned a lot from it

two posts on the bounce that confirm dyl's point

I don't necessarily agree with the entire tone of the piece, and I think it's a little lightweight, but I found it interesting it taught me some new things and clarified some old things. This is all from the POV of a Britisher who's slightly divorced from mega-pop, by and large.

very grateful to that article for clarifying for me (via thesaurus-speak) that lou pearlman is a sweaty fat dude. i needed to know that.

As a bald of Norwegian decent I find that subhead to be offensive

seriously, though, i'm kind of conflicted re: the pop oligarchy. like, for some reason that's the only area of music where the economics apparently work out, though i confess that i'm mystified as to how. and as much as i'd like to say that the institutional oligarchy of pop music has degraded its aesthetic qualities, i don't believe that to be true. max martin works hard, does excellent work, and deserves to be rich. i'm not at all against oligarchs, i just wish there weren't so few of them!

Male-pattern hair loss in Norwegian men: a community-based study:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10828630

^require reading for anyone wanting to understand US pop music of the 2010s

any critic speculating on the nature of "Max Martin" as signifier of assembly line pop productions doesn't give a damn about the degree to which Martin's productions have changed. His Britney stuff in 1999 sounds nothing like his work with Taylor Swift.

also wtf, the "already gone"/"halo" soundalike controversy was not shrugged off or unnoticed by pop fans at all

the Maps/Since You've Been Gone connection hardly went unnoticed either, for that matter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1&v=DBr5FPIL8UU

yeah, not to be captain save-a-max but the book review made the book in question seem shallow and unresearched, which is pretty much the opposite of a book review's job. (a point made elsewhere: how do you write a piece about the exploitative pop machine and mention dr. luke and lou pearlman by name and with mention of lawsuits, and not mention that they both have sexual assault allegations against them?)

i thought that was a good article

this isn't really a bad piece of music writing per se, but what is with people incorrectly claiming that modern pop sounds like "the 1980s" http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/music_box/2015/09/the_weeknd_carly_rae_jepsen_taylor_swift_why_the_sound_of_the_1980s_became.html

when i first heard can't feel my face in the car it was just an immediate: *oh man smash hit that i will hear EVERYWHERE for months on end*. and i had no idea who wrote it or performed it. it's just BAM. 50 zillion people making music would KILL to come up with something like that. dude is unstoppable.

Max Martin is def unstoppable

how is that ugly-ass image in the op not deadlinked yet

that is what i think of every time i open this thread

Obviously it's silly to say that digitally stitching things together doesn't involve "artistry." I do sometimes feel a little creeped out by just how down to a science catchy pop song writing/production has become though, the way it almost doesn't matter if I "like" or "hate" some songs, they just WILL get stuck in my head after hearing them maybe 2-3 times, the way I can hear the formula so clearly but am unable to resist it.

it's very scientific.

http://randomnerds.com/fck-dr-dre-and-fck-straight-outta-compton-too
in which the author assigns blame for institutionalized racism, misogyny in hip hop, puberty and Borgore to NWA
Exquisitely atrocious sentence structure

There was “Automobile” as well, the sing-a-long date rape song that made “My Dingaling” — a song covered by Chuck Berry in 1972 that was my introduction to tongue-in-cheek songs about the joys of having women interacting with penises — sound like learning addition when calculus was on the chalkboard.

In a manifestation of deep seeded white-hot white-girl lust that was lost in a pavilion at summer camp as a blue-eyed Becky in black jeans and white Keds busted a cap in my dreams of bad intentions for her body, one of my favorite songs in recent memory was “Decisions.”

As well, I definitely needed a great number of white women, who in my clearly quite afflicted mind were sexually uninhibited and had likely never seen a black person before. Deep down, I felt like college — more than any other place — would allow me the opportunity to make good on my N.W.A.-aided summer camp goals.

akin to the professional mouth feel technicians who come up with the perfect potato chip.

yeah exactly, the metaphor that came to my mind was "taste enhancers" in food

In fact it's a very similar sensation to when I eat a Dorito -- "Is this good? Do I like this? I want more of this. It's not delicious, but I want more."

also akin to the video game makers who know how to make games that have the most addictive play/feel/etc. definitely a science. the people who are good at it are SO good at it. too bad these people don't work for NASA. we'd be on Mars by now.

Obviously it's silly to say that digitally stitching things together doesn't involve "artistry."

that's not what the article says tbf

"In a manifestation of deep seeded..."

you get a prize when you do this.

uh, no, this is what the article says:

"Where is the artistry when a producer digitally stitches together a vocal track, syllable by syllable, from dozens of takes?"

kinda think there should be a ban on sites like whatever the hell randomnerd is though. on this thread. i doubt they have editors. or standards. or whatever.

i agree and i hesitated tbh. It showed up in factcheckingcuz's music eblog though so i read it more or less accidentally and felt the need to inflict further.