★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★

for instance the two songs i like as much as "can't feel my face" ("acquainted" and "as you are") are marred by shitty codas

Acquainted really makes me want to kick him in the nuts. You're glad you're acquainted? Really? Not good enough!

some people have expressed gentle enthusiasm about the ldr collab and i would like to ask: why

this was samey enough that i started tuning it out but the diane warren-y closer is good/lolzy

drag triplet piano turnarounds :D

i mean i guess i just disagree that he managed the shift that you and the narrative want to credit him with

― insufficiently familiar with xgau's work to comment intelligently (BradNelson), Tuesday, 1 September 2015 18:45 (3 hours ago) Permalink

Useless codas still come after actual songs with catchy choruses, radio can just fade them right out

You don't dig the Kanye record?

not really. I mean it's kinda funny but the weeknd's voice against kanye's production is kind of a nightmare of treble

also "radio can fade them out" if they become singles which they might not in which case they'd remain interminable album tracks

idek what we're disagreeing about. the weeknd will totally be a pop star just not an effective or interesting one imo. he wouldn't be the first. new album is a mess conducted by an avatar who's both uninvolving and reprehensible (and tbh the "I'm actually falling in love" touches make it much worse) just like all his other albums, there's just traces of legitimate craft telegraphed in by cowriters

wait, people are seriously taking "acquainted" at face value?????

there are people in the world who can hear "baby, you're no good, think I fell for you, nobody's got me feeling this way, you probably think I'm lying, put some more inside your cup and drink till you numb the pain" and not have their bullshit detector go supernova?

I feel like when I first argued that the Weeknd sucked in the original Weeknd thread I was all on my alone getting the "deej...*rolls eyes*" treatment, where tf were all you guys then

At any rate of course he's a clown, that's not news!!

He's an "effective and interesting" pop star on "I can't feel my face" and "as you are" and others, IMO. One he's playing a cartoonishly douchey villain but CFMF is a better record than almost anything it's up against on the radio

I agree. Accepting that position doesn't make me tolerant of this vacuous album though.

CFMF is a good song but I can't believe dudes actually think this guy is sincere

He's an "effective and interesting" pop star on "I can't feel my face" and "as you are" and others, IMO

these songs succeed despite him or without him imo

but who knows, the trajectory of my posts on this thread suggest i will like this record by this time next week

half this album is really good including ones done by him and his old collaborators

I think this is an obviously flawed record from a flawed artist I just want to push back against the idea that it's just an easily dismissed record that is boring or uninspired, I think in all its fame-thirsty glory it's quite listenable much more often than I'd ever expected

It's so fucking weird to me reading writing about this album where everyone is like "gross misogyny tasteless creepy exploitative" etc like really where have you guys all been? It might get a passing reference in the HoB reviews. Is it just post-social media writing ? I'm not saying it's the same people per se but he's not any more creepy than he was four years ago! Folks are doing the same thing with Drake too, it's just wild to me--like everyone has suddenly developed a conscience after years of trying to convince me some of their most cringeworthy shit was actually high art. Now they're both good for a couple actual hits and everyone has discovered their moral compasses

Well in drake's case it's not actual hits but actually decent personal writing & good pop songs vs the tepid stuff of his early career, but you get the idea

There's been IMO a huge shift in the way he's talked about and it is really odd

two things about that

A) it's not the same people, but a lot of people have been saying this from the start, and

B) as a writer, it is a lot harder to place a piece criticizing an artist for being gross/tasteless/creepy/exploitative when most of the world thinks it's high art.

No ones having trouble with it right now! Look at pitchfork at this very moment

And a lot of people may have been saying it from the start but they damn sure weren't posting on ilx

I mean to get more to the point, imo there's a disingenuousness to how stuff is covered when it's perceived as new & cool vs when Mainstreamers are getting on board where there's a tipping point and suddenly a moral argument is a lot more fashionable

But maybe I'm being cynical and everyone is just that much more righteous since the advent of Twitter

I'm not complaining about ppl realizing he's skeezy---I said as much in the original weeknd thread ages ago--I just think it's odd and suspicious how that was something folks would so readily block out for years and now it's the main argument on everything written about him

it's hilarious and appropriate that The Weeknd is the first person i've ever heard sing the word "friendzone" on the radio

Friendzöne.

CFMF is funny and bad

really where have you guys all been

tbh was hoping his career was dead after kiss land, prior to this i would've focused on other artists instead of writing a tract about his emptiness

CFMF is funny and bad

― soyrev, Wednesday, 2 September 2015 10:47 (2 hours ago) Permalink

Funny and the best no 1 hit in ages

ergo, http://www.allkpop.com

xxp tbf the trajectory to pop star was much more likely; kiss land is not that far from this, or HoB, like w/ some editing there were the same ideas there it was just a bit aimless

i think it is reasonable that people could tolerate shitty aspects of the weeknd's (or anyone's) persona for a couple albums but then start to wear on it/call it out when we're a few more albums deep, doesn't seem that mysterious to me

it was transgressive to like the weeknd 3 years ago now it's not

i think it is reasonable that people could tolerate shitty aspects of the weeknd's (or anyone's) persona for a couple albums but then start to wear on it/call it out when we're a few more albums deep, doesn't seem that mysterious to me

― marcos, Wednesday, September 2, 2015 8:19 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'd buy this if the music now wasn't substantially superior

It's all ppl with cloth ears susceptible to marketing imo

It also just strikes me as the kind of "we could like him more of his politics were more like ours" myopia that keeps people from understanding how music works in the real world that like...by the logic of us deciding it's purely his problematic persona that grates, we end up turning criticism into a series of litmus tests

politics bullshit. I don't like dealing with players (to put it mildly) in the real world, why the hell do I need to subject myself to it in music as well?

or in other words, it's a matter of "who is this 'we' and what sort and/or gender of person is it made up of?"

that's a bit too simplistic, perhaps a better way of putting it is "I don't like being around people who concoct elaborate mythos with Tolkienesque levels of continuity about how good they think they are at playing women." (that "lana del rey is the girl in my songs and I'm the guy in her songs" quote is amazing -- in one fell swoop it renders both of their entire canons of music hilarious and impossible to take seriously)

sometimes there's no real explanation why mass opinion seems to shift. counter-currents in a conversation come to the fore after a while, who knows? feel like there was a big sigh of relief/"THANK YOU FINALLY" kind of reaction to meaghan garvey's piece on drake, for instance. (drake stans going mini-gamergate on her in response didn't help)

in one fell swoop it renders both of their entire canons of music hilarious and impossible to take seriously

Without ever making it necessary to answer the question "Why were you taking this seriously in the first place?"

I wasn't but a fuck of a lot of people were

politics bullshit. I don't like dealing with players (to put it mildly) in the real world, why the hell do I need to subject myself to it in music as well?

or in other words, it's a matter of "who is this 'we' and what sort and/or gender of person is it made up of?"

― for sale: baby shoes, never worn your ass (katherine), Wednesday, September 2, 2015 11:01 AM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I have no problem with someone finding his whole worldview off putting and saying so, it's more that this reminds me of when people would say shit like "if only Tyler the creator didn't rap about rape, I would love his music!" When rape was like 40% of his lyrical content! Reviews concocting fantasy versions of artists where the artists are different people entirely read to me like people more enamored of the marketing than the music

It also just strikes me as the kind of "we could like him more of his politics were more like ours" myopia that keeps people from understanding how music works in the real world that like...by the logic of us deciding it's purely his problematic persona that grates, we end up turning criticism into a series of litmus tests

it's not just his "politics" (lol what a way to characterize the weeknd's schtick) it's that he also has no presence in his own music, so it's just this collapse of hideous signifiers that fail to even take a shape ("i do drugs!" "i don't respect women!"). imo this is cynical and alienates me from his music even when i like it

sometimes there's no real explanation why mass opinion seems to shift. counter-currents in a conversation come to the fore after a while, who knows? feel like there was a big sigh of relief/"THANK YOU FINALLY" kind of reaction to meaghan garvey's piece on drake, for instance. (drake stans going mini-gamergate on her in response didn't help)

― goole, Wednesday, September 2, 2015 11:05 AM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The thing is, people were saying it all along! Like myself and Katherine.

To me seeing it happen with both drake and the weeknd feels like evidence that it has little to do with the quality of the music and a lot more to do with far more arbitrary cycles of cool

i'm not sure who you're really talking about deej

@brad I know there's a lot more to what is wrong w/ his music--IMO, even an extremely critical review could be very interesting (maybe that should say "especially") I think this record could make for some very good music writing ! It's dense in the sense that what makes it good and bad is woven pretty intricately, I suspect part of why I like it is bc it provokes lots of ideas, gives me a lot to respond to, even tho I think dude is corn and his worldview is sadlol

I'm more concerned w the depth of criticism being kind of basic

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51RNN9S5X4L.jpg

i'm seeing mostly positive (?) reviews floating out there but tbh i'm not very interested in reading about the weeknd beyond this discussion so that's prob why my understanding is impoverished

I pitched the weeknd record but none of my pitches landed so I'm not sure what I'm expected to do here

haha this thread is such a weird ritual of circling around a would-be clusterfuck nobody feels strongly enough to actually start

it is also pretty wild how all the folks who were the biggest weeknd enthusiasts the first time around—Lamp? Grady? Jaxon? have vanished over the years lol