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

Should have just talked about the band Marillion instead.

"I’m not saying that John Mayer should be sealed away, tortured, blinded, and de-fingered because it would better his music."

go figure

Whether Jagged Little Pill sounds of it's time probably comes down to whether you heard it at the time. The reference points for music are so different now that perhaps it would sound new to someone who is younger and only aware of the current sounds in music. That's a huge assumption on my part though

Over the weekend my girlfriend and I were on a quick road trip and for lack of anything else we listened to one of those Jack-FM style stations -- "Ironic" came up at one point and in the context of the mostly newish songs around it, it just sounded pretty out of place more than anything else. (Less so than the Thriller-era Michael Jackson songs they played, or anything random from the 80s.)

I was gonna say, it would probably sound old to someone who is younger, like '60s music did in the '80s.

i think the basic point is that, when it comes to production, you can cherry pick more or less any element from the last forty years of music and use it as a filter, a signifier, whatever, and most likely people will hear it as contemporary. nobody in the '60s had that luxury and nobody wanted to "sound like" robert johnson or joe liggins or amos milburn in terms of production.

what that has to do with food, or eating beetles, tough, is beyond me

though*

I can't ever imagine the drum loops on 'All I Really Want' or 'You Learn' sounding contemporary to anyone in 2017.

what i'm saying is that we live in this kind eternal post-modern echo chamber and it's really hard for me to imagine something sounding utterly new (isn't there a thread about this somewhere?) anyway,

i just went and listened to those songs, i've never heard alanis morissette before, i guess i'm on the fence specifically with her production. the big compressed drum loops yeah, wasn't beck doing the same thing around the same time? is '90s beck really '90s sounding? my feeling is that you could salvage many elements of this sound and put it on the radio and re-contextualize it and people wouldn't immediately be like "woah time-warp to the nineties right here" but maybe i'm wrong

How could a Guardian article about music be inflammatory enough to inspire a petition with over 600 signatures, I wondered. Then I read and marvelled: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/27/music-lessons-children-white-wealthy#comment-95607277

lol that is incredible

That is seriously like the Monty Python architect sketch come to life

Ha. I meant to link the article, not a comment by a teenager: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/27/music-lessons-children-white-wealthy

I'm actually completely in favour of teaching music without notation in certain contexts but this article (and headline) still seem pretty wrongheaded to me.

My advice would be to go into science, medicine, technology, languages etc. Anything but music. There's no money in it and it gets you nowhere - study something useful instead.

ok this isn't "bad" per se https://theoutline.com/post/1368/pop-collabs-are-boring

but i feel like taking issue with the fact that features don't always synthesize artists into the song assumes that a hip-hop feature on pop song has to be a synthesis. the fact that ty$ and fifth harmony sound distinct from each other on Work From Home doesn't make the feature "disposable". also, equating "disposable" with "boring" is (semantically, i know, but still) kinda shortsighted, especially when most pop is knowingly "disposable" already.

maybe it's just that this feels pretty under-researched and "pop ruins everything"-y, overall—i'd love to look at a thing about how exactly the feature (are we talking about hip-hop verse in place of bridge or disco-diva style EDM vocalist, though? another glossed over distinction) became a staple of the pop hit structure, but this is so fixed on putting down its subject any good points feel totally lost.

i think that's pretty bad per se

lol wasn't sure if everything had to be as glaringly bad as that Flume review from the independent

would be more interesting to talk about how guest raps have become the equivalent of the guitar solo

or how men have to horn in on ladies' songs for reasons that probably boil down to "millennial male" appeal, to sometimes disastrous effect (shudders at memory of soulja boy clomping around the opening of vistoso bosses' otherwise lovely "delirious")

anyway the outline's writing on music is p poor across the board. lifeless and whiny and completely lacking in descriptions of sound - you know. the important part

yeah they should stick to their lane of lefty politics and whatever this was

lol i didn't think soulja boy on "delirious" was that bad but yeah it was def unnecessary :X

but otm re: that kind of pairing

Not writing, but on his podcast the great Wesley Morris went on a riff about how we're in a musical period as great as the 70s with Kendrick as Stevie Wonder and Drake as Fleetwood Mac, with Views as his Tusk that just made my head explode.

barf

Finally, a TUSK we can call our own

I don't remember Fleetwood Mac sucking all to be damned

a drake is a male duck

I don't remember Fleetwood Mac sucking all to be damned

I do.

http://carriewintour.tumblr.com/post/143556693100/drake-is-the-modern-lindsey-buckingham

drake is rap's phil collins only i still don't like him

he's the phil collins era of genesis but only the song "illegal alien"

ok, not really, but that's the worst collins-related thing that came to mind

the article itself is not really noteworthy but the title made me want to crawl into the crypt:

"Shawn Mendes' 10 Best Deep Cuts"

there's only one shawn mendes deep cut I'd care to hear about tbh

going to show *some* restraint and not post about this on Twitter, but this is seriously one of the biggest self-inflated music-related clickbait abortions I've ever seen

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/7768061/100-greatest-choruses-21st-century

Like, bear with me and ignore that the company that literally uses MATH to decide what America enjoys saying that some Sufjan Stevens song is somehow a more important/indelible chorus than Flo Rida. Also, ignore that it completely ignores "Uptown Funk" which carried TWO DIFFERENT HITS. Also, ignore whatever insane millennial retcon job where world-changing, wedding standards songs like like "Hey Ya" and "Crazy" and "Hips Don't Lie" and "Single Ladies" and "I Gotta Feeling" and "Happy" are all not "good" enough choruses to make this list because the staff at America's chart-pop music authority actually(?) somehow thinks that Mika and The Knife need those slots.

Ignore all that.

What makes this bad, irresponsible, deceptive and outright factually incorrect is that the list makes no effort to actually say where the melodies and music come from. Its gross, lazy, and def of a piece with the Donald Trump era where facts are worthless

To wit:
--The "Get Low" entry makes no mention of the fact that "To the windows, to the walls" was actually from a black fraternity chant
--The "Paper Planes" entry makes no mention of the fact that the hook is actually a repurposed line from Wrecks N Effect's mega-hit "Rumpshaker"
--The "Drop It Like It's Hot" entry makes no mention of the fact that the phrase was born out of New Orleans rap music and, although I am no expert and would have to check, likely has an deeper history in New Orleans bounce music

At it's best the whole endeavor is millennial laziness cynically exploited by a company wealthy enough to buy Spin and Vibe, at worst it's a gaggle of white writers actively erasing black voices.

we felt it was time that to start figuring out the new canon

^ their first mistake

we felt it was time that

to start figuring out

i read through that whole list and i feel that much more cretinous now

beating canons into shares

blessed are the canonmakers, for they shall be really short on irl friends

can't really say anything about this

first time for everything i guess

whiney

whiney

this list is obviously a load of nonsense but you've literally reached the point where you're gunning for the black eyed peas over the knife

karin andersson came BARRELLING down the hill yelling "NO!" at the black eyed peas, who were forced to jump into the east river

drake is rap's phil collins only i still don't like him

― Bobson Dugnutt (ulysses), Thursday, April 20, 2017 12:14 PM (five days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm contractually obligated to point out he's def a top 20 rock drummer of all time easy

nah man Drake's top 30 AT BEST!

amazing how the most anodyne fucking comment possible still gets me insulted for no reason

Aw, it was an open goal, k, nothing but love

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEXMJfvuQcQ