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

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.

the writer is talking about the performer's artistry:

In the music industry, the performers are called artists, while the people who write the songs remain largely anonymous outside the pages of trade publications. But

can a performer be said to have any artistry

sorry bbcode

In the music industry, the performers are called artists, while the people who write the songs remain largely anonymous outside the pages of trade publications. But can a performer be said to have any artistry if, as in the case of Rihanna, her label convenes week-long “writer camps,” attended by dozens of producers and writers (but not necessarily Rihanna), to manufacture her next hit? 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?

cool sentence diagramming, really enjoying those sixth-grade flashbacks, but given that the next sentence talks about modifying a bar, something that producers do (and something the writer calls out Luke for elsewhere), it's fair to say that refers to the producer

god, this is overly pedantic even for me

sorry

was referring to myself

also max martin's not bald tbf

it's ambiguous to me -- in context it seems more likely that it refers to the singer than the producer, but at the same time it's not hard to believe that the author of the piece also thinks that about the producer.

it is not a bad piece but i also don't it is very good. it has this "let me blow your mind" tone that is kind of lame esp since these conversations about corporate pop machinery have been happening for a long time. the piece also ended much much sooner than i thought it would and i left thinking "that's it?"

he also doesn't go into any detail about why some stars are more successful than others, why someone like rihanna has been able to cultivate an individual presence as an artist while other stars fail despite both relying on similar teams of songwriters/producers

it is also not hard to extrapolate from the piece the hackneyed judgement that an artist writing & performing their own songs is somehow superior or more "authentic" than an "artist" relying on max martin and other producers

It's more abo

I decided not to post what I was going to post so let "it's more abo" be the whole of my opinion

it is not a bad piece but i also don't *think* it is very good.

typo sorry

but maybe he is... ARTISTICALLY BALD

xp

lol

re: carl's piece, which is fine, but

And both Tesfaye and Jepsen also collaborated with another Swede, Peter Svensson, formerly of the band the Cardigans, who were already somewhat of an ’80s throwback in the ’90s.

this links to a video that's been deleted, so i really have no idea what he's talking about

you guys need a good laugh.

"Before Dead Boys and Pere Ubu was Rocket from the Tombs, the Cleveland protopunk favorites Rocket from the Tombs raged through tracks that would eventually become “Sonic Reducer,” “Final Solution,” and others, changing the course for music as we know it."

http://noisey.vice.com/blog/rocket-from-the-tombs-coopy-video

oh noiseybot 3000, you never fail us....

In the music industry, the performers are called artists, while the people who write the songs remain largely anonymous outside the pages of trade publications.

this is like exactly how it was in the 50s and 60s during the heyday of tin pan alley and the Wrecking Crew and all that

yea i thought about that too