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

don't worry, will likely

For the record, I was being facetious. Being a fan of Wire, The Fall and suchlike, I'm all about bands not 'playing the hits' if they so wish. (Although I can't say I know much about Bobby M.)

Post of magazine covers was a direct response to a poster saying that pop stars are not on magazine covers fwiw.

And my original point was not that pop music is absolutely inescapable for everyone as much as that it still seems relatively prevalent in the environment in a similar way as it used to be; I was also saying, just as much, that pop music was escapable before the Internet. I actually thought ums made some fair points in response to this btw (particularly to do with the limits on purchasing options for people in smaller markets pre-Internet) so thanks to him.

https://metro.co.uk/2014/04/13/nine-things-the-kids-of-today-will-never-understand-about-britpop-4696887/

oh yeah, i read that article a couple of weeks ago. half those things have nothing to do with Britpop. also - do kids these days not try and sneak into drinking establishments?

vs
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/apr/27/britpop-and-me-looking-back-not-in-anger-eva-wiseman

Britpop was our moon landing, except janglier. It was our Summer of Love, our Nelson Mandela's presidential years, our fall of the wall. It was the awkward suburban girl's Wonderful World of Colour. The never-kissed's big bang.

gonna venture that was not written with an entirely straight face

The ATP news feed on my fb posted a link to some Anthony bourdain yells at cloud piece on dance music and all the comments were ppl telling them off, lol. I suspect mischief on ATP's part. Didn't read the piece but seems like a candidate for this thread.

oh yeah I skipped that one too

This kinda makes me want to back in time and not get bored w Britpop after a year or so purely to annoy Taylor Parkes

http://thequietus.com/articles/15092-blur-parklife-anniversary-review

related to earlier discussions: how editor's choices of title skews author's meaning
http://www.pajiba.com/think_pieces/how-saloncom-rewrote-my-headline-and-turned-me-into-an-internet-troll.php

that taylor parkes article is briliant and doesnt belong here

The quest for clicks overrides the intentions of the author. Probably happens all the time.

Those shiny compact discs were seriously expensive in 1994. We’ve since spent a fortune buying them again as downloads.

uhhh you know that you can rip a cd into your computer, right?

lol

what??!

XXXP: Taylor writes his own headlines. It was a fair assumption as most don't but wrong in this case.

that taylor parkes article is briliant and doesnt belong here

I love Taylor Parkes and agree that his article does not belong here, but at the same time his prose style remains so redolent of Melody Maker circa 1995 that it produces a weird sense of discombobulation. Every sentence makes me more nostalgic for Britpop (maybe even the experience of hating Britpop at the time) than most of the other shit I've read about it in these terrible weeks.

is there another thread where we're discussing this article? there's lots there to unpack (and i really like it). his fixation with the obnoxiousness of blur is really useful. did make me want to listen to lots of pulp and bbr and the other also-rans that don't fit in his (or britpop's) narrative.

(of course there's an impt sense in which pulp are hardly an 'also ran' so forgive me) (and then how does this then pivot into B&S idk)

why are there so many articles about Britpop lately?

100-year WWI anniversary. It's all linked

trench warfare = Melody Maker magazine

lord kitchener = jo whiley

the somme = ok computer

Somme less wasteful

Sterling the discussions over on the britpop thread. Cant link from here tho, sorry

Crut its 20 years since parklife came out

20 years since 1st Korn album tlater this year. Just wait til those thinkpieces hit!

had to google Parklife tbh

blur were shit

weren't they

^thinkpiece

mogwai thought so

they knew about middle class private school educated rockers pretending to be working class..

I remember seeing Blur in those days (I think it was in 1992 in Palo Alto, according to Songkick), and damn that was a lame show. They were crazy drunk and spent most of the show trying to push over the PA speakers...

The Taylor Parkes piece is too muddled even though I agree that Britpop's aesthetic complacency was related to a larger political complacency that was rampant during the Blair/Clinton years. Don't really understand British class politics so I can't speak to that aspect of Blur's legacy. They sound stressful.

From my own experiences political complacency in the UK was at it's peak in the period that lay between Blair's election and the war in Iraq. That's my own outlook as I was a student during that time and I was horrified at how few students were interested in current affairs. The number of people attending student fee protests on my campus were negligible, and this is Essex Uni we're talking about, a hotspot for lefty sit-ins during the seventies. Ibiza Trance and UKG were by far the most popular styles of music for students at that time.

I put it here bc I honestly regretted reading it, and it left feeling quite favourable towards Britpop, so

Of course a period of prosperity between the Cold War and 9/11 was going to be more apolitical but if you're going to blame Britpop for epitomising vacuous optimism and complacency then you should also blame dance music and nobody seems to be doing that.

That's what I'm saying. I'm not blaming dance music for being apolitical (although I remember being dismayed at the time at how dance music had lost its anti-authoritarian stance and was now being used to tout 2for1 WKDs on a Friday). But why is it suddenly Britpop that's being held to account for eliding politics? What were the Smiths, MBV, Ride, the Stone Roses and umpteen other popular pre-Britpop UK indie bands saying that the likes of Pulp and Blur weren't?

it's sort of depressing how uk ilm is basically 100% britpop this week, above almost every current thing happening in music, even though half of you profess to hate it. get. over. it. as much time as i have for kicking it, obsessing about it to this degree either way is an admission of defeat

hoist by thine own petard, lex.

although really we should keep discussion to the Britpop thread here, really: Britpop : Time For Reevaluation?

the only dog I have in this horse is I downloaded a bunch of sleeper b-sides the other day and they are kind of great and now I am doubting everything (caveat: american)

(the piece doesn't belong in Worst Music Writing Evar at all, it is quite well-written, I just think I disagree)

the only dog I have in this RACE. SORRY I just got off a red-eye I wasn't even expecting to be allowed on and am tired etc

I didn't know this thread ws specifically for music pieces that're technically poor, soz

given the amount of bad music writing that exists pretty sure that's a prereq for "worst evar"

Yeah, fair enough

the ILM worst britpop ever spotify playlist