★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★

I don’t think I’ll be reading this whole thread.
Had some people over the other night and threw The Morning on during the nightcap session. A+ shit right there

I think most publications need a combination of "picking your way towards reasonableness" type critics and rabid attack dogs - I prefer to see debates enacted among writers within the same publication rather than with reference to a critical space that's bewilderingly large for most readers.

I mean, there's nothing more disheartening than debates getting bogged down in "OMG blogs said this" and "OMG Pitchfork said this" as this thread illustrates perfectly well.

music critics should have their own publication or their own message board where they can react to each other's editorials

ILM?

you ruined the joke

p4k has their own board iirc

and the Stylus board is still going, believe it or not.

I got around to listening to this last week and wanted to check out this thread to see what people thought but fuck that shit

so Dom is still posting?

wtf @ dudes complaining about music critics posting on a board full of music critics

fwiw im saying this not as a music critic: this music is not good

cool, debate closed

but in all three cases i do get frustrated by the refusal to ever really bring the HATE when it comes to bad, over-hyped music

tom, nitsuh and tim's seeming inability to do this is the biggest proof of what fantastic writers all three are, who don't cheapen themselves with bitterness. positive reviews are creative, negative are destructive. i don't care if anyone disagrees because i know it's true!

What I like about those three writers is the wilfulness to examine their dislikes and prejudices. Out and out hate is entertaining to read but is rarely actually informative.

i don't care if anyone disagrees because i know it's true!

someone's new display name right here

Not that Tom hasn't dished out a few memorable slaggings as well.

yeah analytical negativity is fine, and slagging off a record on a messageboard or at the pub or whatever, go ahead. but agendae of negativity are a bad sign.

i'm sure there are threads in the archive where i'm like this about dance music, let me hereby say it's a fucking stupid way to be.

music criticism is officially about never saying anything bad about anything then

It must be hard for some to even listen to music when while lugging around so much baggage and shit. idk I guess that’s why I don’t read ilm much

or music reviews

then why are you here now?

Out-and-out hate is fine but you have to build a case for it as much as you would with out-and-out love for a record, I think, otherwise it's just going to be overlooked (ie like those Confused Uncle Syndrome reviews we all like to have a pop at). There's a pretty good case to be built against The Weeknd admittedly.

you know, the more i think about it the more i feel people should embrace writers' idiosyncracies. saying that you should or shouldn't approach an article or review in a certain way is like telling an artist what paints or colours to use. whether a music writer comes off as frustrated or funny or overpassionate shouldn't matter so much as if they're doing what they set out to do. music writing should be as diverse and challenging as music itself.

music criticism is officially about never saying anything bad about anything then

― lex pretend, vrijdag 1 april 2011 18:25 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

http://media.bigoo.ws/content/gif/music/music_139.gif

(That said I think the Lex is right about this really quite boring record and he's kind of being the victim of some major butthurt going down on this thread)

also how the hell can you define my work overall by a "negative agenda" given that i write positively about music i love at least 3/4 of the time?! but if you want pollyanna shit you can look elsewhere, b/c i do think that the music industry (by which i include the press and critical consensus) i often deeply rotten, and don't see why i shouldn't point this out

*is often

and yeah the people who've said that my piece was correct, and they're glad someone actually said it, vindicate it way more than the butthurt indie critics who could do no better than throw weak "lol british" xenophobia around on twitter

can handle people saying bad things about stuff, just "i hate indie" is sorta tedious after 11 years, not least when the defn of "indie" is as wild and all encompassing as the phelps family's defn of "fags"

x-post i am almost at the end of this record now for the first time, i liked the first track but yeah it gets pretty crap by the end, sounds like a boyband a little bit

then why are you here now?

― lex pretend, Friday, April 1, 2011 12:27 PM (6 minutes ago)

because there are some good threads with compelling exchanges about music on here somewhere iirc
this thread is a freaking bummer though

(That said I think the Lex is right about this really quite boring record and he's kind of being the victim of some major butthurt going down on this thread)

― Matt DC, Friday, April 1, 2011 12:32 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

seriously, this is the dumbest place to be having the 958th discussion about lex's critical approach.

can handle people saying bad things about stuff, just "i hate indie" is sorta tedious after 11 years, not least when the defn of "indie" is as wild and all encompassing as the phelps family's defn of "fags"

this. it winds me up. people throw the word "indie" around and it means so little anymore. anti-rockism used to be about opening people's worldviews to more music, but more often than not I hear the argument being used in exactly the opposite way. no more so than in the weeknd debate when people are saying "it's not real r'n'b therefore it's no good". sounds like all the old rock fogies moaning about synthesisers fuckign up their steez.

(sorry if this has already been said - i haven't been reading the whole threaD)

GOD HATES INDIE

marketing labels such as 'indie' or 'alternative' were never meant to describe a music's sound or style.

xpost

^ t-shirt material

no one had a problem with whiney's anti-witch house crusade, iirc. is that just because the weeknd are more defensible than salem?

probably?

Haha that Salem thread was also hundreds of posts of eyerolls and "god please make it stop" as well iirc.

this sounds a bit like george michael at the end

said it so many times but when i was a nipper, my metal and grunge lovin' friends used to call anyone who listened to dance or hiphop "ravers". i even got called a raver for saying i liked cypress hill. that was when we were 13-14 and young enough not to know better.

no one had a problem with whiney's anti-witch house crusade, iirc. is that just because the weeknd are more defensible than salem?

well... yes

For one thing, The Weeknd isn't completely unforgivably inept and awful on every conceivable level

i once met a man on the street

haha, local garda, i subconsciously wrote that in that style, didn't i?

time was, people liked things

I still like the three Weeknd songs I heard, but not enough to actively seek out more.

sure, but it seems like a lot of people arguing with lex in this thread don't even like the weeknd's actual music, and are just going on general principles of criticism & authenticity etc

the thing salem and the weeknd have in common is that they're essentially trying to fuse two or three quite disparate genres together, and purveyors/gatekeepers will often act in a very hostile way if said style or genre is diluted or compromised.

Death to false trip-hop.