★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★

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.

this is an xpost and maybe the kind of thing we're all done thinking about here? sorry, please skip it if this is stupid:

- I liked that Lex's article really quickly turned around from the Weeknd and made a strong (positive) case for r&b he liked. I think it's sort of unfortunate that it required the "better than the Weeknd" peg for him to get the right space/attention to do that. And I think it's fairly sensible for a critic to use something people in a given circle are paying attention to (like the Weeknd) as a hook to try and steer them toward other things they might pay attention to. (Also on some level I admire Lex's willingness to be a little needling and bullying about the way he goes about that, something I just ... wouldn't be able to summon up, I don't think.)

- I am really NOT in favor of everyone politely liking everything, but I do find it interesting that a lot of pop politics are really based around what people feel like they should be curious and open-minded about and what they're not required to. I was going to post earlier that a lot of critics now talk about "indie" stuff exactly the way indie kids talked about pop in the 90s -- that this is the bland, predictable stuff that's somehow being spoon-fed by oversized media (top-40 radio or Pitchfork) to a sheeplike public that refuses to know better and be curious about something more interesting and vibrant. The stereotypical old-school indie kid's snottiness and dismissal and refusal to engage with what a smart person might get out of pop -- that's really hard for me to distinguish from, say, the way Lex talks about lots of indie sensibilities! It makes the claims that (a) I already understand everything I need to about this sensibility, and (b) it is patently terrible and people are being deliberately ignorant by engaging with it. (This slight reversal has occurred in critical circles despite things like pop and r&b still dominating mainstream media; it's just that there's now enough of an online/indie/crit substream to treat it like a pop hegemony or something.) Maybe I just had way too striking an experience, around age 20 or whatever, of realizing how much of the music I cordoned off as not-worth-bothering-with was actually great -- and maybe it's just that people's cordons for that seem to move according to fashions that are driven by stuff well beyond the state of the music itself -- but I personally cannot figure out how to hold them seriously anymore. But I'm glad other people do, because otherwise music and criticism and fandom wouldn't really work so well.

- I'd like to note for the record that when I first enjoyed the Weeknd I had not noticed the singer had an Ethiopian last name.

i'm still not clear on what the weeknd is fusing together

trip-hop, post-punk, R&B and reverb

nahhh

wld be unfortunate if "reverb" became its own genre

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.

It's kind of... not "dangerous", but misleading to conflate/ignore the segment of the population you're describing who don't mind if the style/genre is diluted or compromised if the end result is an enjoyable listen.

xp: it practically is; did you not ever hear that Creep record?

maybe I mean "echo"

no i don't think so?

song is the tits (and way better than The Weeknd)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAoBeVV-e8c

love that creep single. their next one features nina sky! an r&b/indie fusion i'm down with. i am really not against the idea people fusing different styles - just against the way a certain kind of fusion is so often held up as better than a non-fusion.

I'm sorta looking forward to the point where a bunch of related fusions -- the million different versions of "gothy r&b" and "screwed & gothed" and "dark/atmospheric smartypants metal" and "gothy lo-fi bedroom pop" that seem to be floating around -- possibly fuse together and concentrate on one good subgenre where everyone wears robes.

monk & bass

http://roadburn.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Sunn-01.jpg

churchstep

haha YES

maybe that's what my music project should be

a lot of critics now talk about "indie" stuff exactly the way indie kids talked about pop in the 90s -- that this is the bland, predictable stuff that's somehow being spoon-fed by oversized media (top-40 radio or Pitchfork) to a sheeplike public that refuses to know better and be curious about something more interesting and vibrant. The stereotypical old-school indie kid's snottiness and dismissal and refusal to engage with what a smart person might get out of pop -- that's really hard for me to distinguish from, say, the way Lex talks about lots of indie sensibilities! It makes the claims that

^^^once again the smartest man in the room, kids