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

Article on Creed in Slate today. Reads utterly incoherent to me and I'm not sure that it's not a joke, but it seems sincere enough I guess.

I'd hardly say its incoherent save for

"Higher" might turn out to be the nu-grunge "Don't Stop Believing": dismissed by cognoscenti on arrival as bludgeoning and gauche but destined for rehabilitation down the road as a triumphant slab of ersatz inspirationalism.

ersatz?

inigo_montoya.jpg

Oh just go for the clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2Sk

That article was fine. It was of a piece with Slate's baffling obsession with contrarianism and revisionism. It was a decent read.

It was a great read, except it would have read EXACTLY the same if it was on The Onion.

derivative blowhards with a self-righteous Christian agenda

i like how he describes in 8 words why no one likes creed and then spends 5 paragraphs defending creed.

I'm a sucker for a thoughtfully contrarian essay, so this worked.

Then you remembered the sex tape with Kid Rock and came to your senses.

I can share Brett Michaels' own tape with you.

Why is Creed "good" and "underrated"?

1. They write "first-rate schlock-rock."
2. "In his lyrics, Stapp is a well-meaning, Bible-fluent doofus, easy to chuckle at"
3. Stapp's stage presence is "obnoxiously anachronistic"
4. "Higher" is "a triumphant slab of ersatz inspirationalism"
5. "Tremonti was a brutally effective guitarist"

It's like he couldn't even take his own argument seriously. His defense is pretty backhanded.

the bar is pretty low for good music writing tbh

Why is Creed good? Cuz they write shit songs with bad lyrics and their frontman is irritating. THAT'S WHY!

Wait, it's that they're ersatz good.

the slate thing is just a space-filler, but its hardly terrible. or terribly written anyway. dunno if it was worth the effort...

what IS worth the effort these days? where's the good writing thread? i haven't read anything good in a dog's age. somebody must have written something good this year about music.

you don't need space-filler on the internet. it's not like a newspaper or magazine where you have to fill space; you choose how much of the theoretically infinite space of the internet you want to use.

but even internet newsmags have, um, theoretical space limits and such, no? they have sections. they need to fill a section. they need product, basically. same as a regular magazine.

that's probably because old people run it

it's the internet just throw up whatever

in case anyone was wondering why they ran that article, its because it gets forwarded around the internet and posted on message boards like this, and then people go to the site and some of them click on the ads, and then slate gets money, and pays its writers

Thanks for explaining the internet Max, you are a hero.

it's the internet just throw up, whatever (xxp)

np jon seemed like there was some confusion on this thread vis-a-vis the article, and why slate would publish something that wasnt particularly insightful but was contrarian enough that people seem to want to tell everyone about it

it's about as contrarian as a cannned ham.

cannnnnned ham

"utterly incoherent to me and I'm not sure that it's not a joke, but it seems sincere enough I guess."

Ha! sums up my feelings re: Creed and maybe Rammstein and Rush. Maybe ICP and Burial, too.
What groups are like that for you guys?

To compare Creed and ICP to Rush is sacrilege.

Bill Magill OTM. Faygo & Seminars>>>>>>>>Ayn Rand.

which awful alt-weekly cover story essay on jay-z is worse??

http://www.citypaper.com/music/story.asp?id=19159
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/old-bull/Content?oid=2473786

jk the stranger one is ugh but the cp one is http://www.soulstrut.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/lvl.gif

He is Gen-Why's Crack Cobain, in their search for a new musical Nirvana.

man i fuckin hate wordplay

it's about as contrarian as a cannned ham.

What about scrapple?

city paper joint is the worst piece of rap writing i've read this year

RIP al shipley circa 2008 getting space to rightfully shit on 'american gangster'

He may be getting old, but this album is a warning flare to the world that he could do this shit forever.

like, i don't even know where to start

haha i still get space i just wouldn't use it to shit on nu-jay more than once

"Jay may be the Magna Carter (though they aren't related, both men share similar surnames) but Weezy smells succession"

similar?

He is "literally" carrying hip hop on his back.

"And we are in the age of Obamica now; if a black man can become president of the United States, then a wicked jump shot or slinging crack rocks—as the greatest rapper of all time, the late Christopher Wallace once suggested—is not the only way out of the hood. The looming shadow of the big baller/shot caller has not disappeared completely, but it's getting smaller."

This paragraph is literally burning my eyeballs. My head is literally going to explode. Figuratively speaking, this is a terribly written piece.

btw that goof jonah weiner who wrote that article on Creed has a 'conceptual' rap group:
http://www.myspace.com/spiderfangz

haha the way nick sylvester constantly posted about 'spiderfang' on his blog i thought it was just some bullshit he made up himself

Ghostface Killer (Tony Starks)

ohhh, he means Tony Starks

honestly the predictable contrarianism of that creed article is so obnoxious to me for some reason ... like yes, we get it, all music isnt that bad when its not on the radio all the time

i just hate the idea that dude was like, "oooh creed catalogue torrent ... maybe ill make a hundred bucks in slate cash off a half assed review of this that SHOCKS MUSIC FAN SENSIBILITIES"

So hold on, is Weiner now Slate's official pop critic?

http://www.slate.com/?id=3944&qp=43219

Jeez, that's f'n depressing...

they were going to hire me and give me free reign to write about Wilco every week, but the deal fell through at the last minute.

they went for second best.

If I ever got a chance to interview Jay, I

so sad that this sentence occurs in a cover story on the guy

isn't a covery story

er cover story