pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Like imagine being this much of herb to reduce N.W.A to this

I know Ice Cube is a formidable performer; he’s also the author of the dulcet couplet, “You let a Jew / Break up our crew” and an adherent of other anti-Semitic nonsense I don’t recall him ever disassociating himself from, much less apologizing for. I know that Dre is one of music’s most important producers; he’s also a guy who beats up women. And I know “Fuck Tha Police” is a great song; but I also know that its genesis came when Dre and Eazy-E were driving around Compton with a paint gun, shooting at people at bus stops — that is to say, ruining the clothes of working folks going to a crap-paying job to feed their lame kids. N.W.A is more than a footnote in rock history, but there’s not much to the group beyond their first album.

*scans list*

Bill Wyman? more like Bill -- why, man??

IT'S THE WOOOOORLD'S BIGGEST DICK

a dulcet couplet!

Nice how he points out all the bad things the members of NWA have done but puts Chuck Berry at #1 with no mention of any of the stuff he did.

nostalgia is a vaseline-covered motherfucker

kind of an epic troll though. maybe he should get props for that. every rock fan on earth can find something to get pissed about reading that. wait, thumbs up!

oh my fucking god

Her controversies, from “Papa Don’t Preach” onward, have always been more than a bit épater le bourgeois, her proclamations of control manifestations of insecurity. Look closely and you see that she’s never written a hit on her own; and as her career has gone on she seems more and more ridiculous. But that’s not the critical consensus, which says she was a game changer, a master at pop marketing, a postmodern superstar. Whatever.

This sentence will haunt my dreams tonight

Note that, besides the undeniable Bowie and cuddly Elton John, the hall has been very wary of the effete and glam side of rock — no Todd Rundgren, no Dolls, no Mott, no Roxy Music, no Pet Shop, no Marc Bolan, and stretching all the way to the Smiths and Joy Division — while just about every hirsute assemblage of spandexed wankers from that era and every one since have been ushered right in.

like, he isn't just wrong (um, yes, she wrote "Lucky Star" on her own, for one), but he he has to play psychotherapist too

Most bullshit part of that NWA thing is that Niggaz4life is probably a better album than Straight Outta Compton. And wasn't NWA & The Posse the first official release?

it becomes painfully obvious halfway through that he's writing longer blurbs when he thinks he's got something clever to say, and they end up being less insightful than the "I don't know much about this person but they're rightfully ranked highly in my list" blurbs

why is the entry for Solomon Burke entirely about Roxy Music?

180. Solomon Burke (2001)

A happy warrior and another openhearted soul singer. But there are literally dozens of more important artists who are not yet in the hall.

Let’s look at Roxy Music for comparison’s sake. These guys were taking rock into unseen and weird places on their first album, a maelstrom of emotional melodrama and louche sexuality set to blaring art rock and boasting the mischievous contributions of synthesizer innovator Brian Eno. Mixing rock signifiers like teenage-idol hairstyles and ambiguous sexuality, they evolved into more formalized paeans to decadence, ennui, and passing regret, particularly on their early-period masterpiece Siren. Then the band pivoted, and with Bryan Ferry’s pulsing emotions front and center, created two of the deepest and sincere pop-rock releases of all time, Flesh + Blood and Avalon. Roxy is one of the most important and original bands of the 1970s. Again you get the feeling that since the band was confronting and questioning the rock-star postures and practices of the time, the guys in the nominating room get a bit uncomfortable.

gotta fill'em in somewhere

Rush are unique among galumphy prog-rock bands in that they lack a single song (you know, like “Roundabout,” “Court of the Crimson King,” “Freebird,” “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway”) you could play for someone to try to convince them of the band’s import.

i totally like roxy music more than solomon burke. that guy otm.

Imagine being so much of a piss-smelling D&D fatty that you think any of those songs are better than "Tom Sawyer"

i would just play them "xanadu". instant fan!

What songs did Rush even do? It's unknowable...

i totally like roxy music more than solomon burke. that guy otm.

― scott seward,

yeah I think that blurb was otm actually

i totally like roxy music more than solomon burke

I do too tbh, just boggling at the fact that he doesn't even try to make any connection between the two, just briefly notes Burke's existence and then writes a paragraph explaining why he digs Roxy Music

This sentence about Patti Smith, citation needed

She also reinjected Van Morrisonian levels of exaltation and ecstasy to the music, which then lived on in the work of R.E.M. among others.

that solomon burke blurb is hilarious

they shudda done that for every entry, a one sentence mini-biography followed by a paragraph on roxy music

i'll be honest, i'm kinda mad that i didn't think to do something like this. it's so pointless in the exact way that i enjoy being pointless.

i'd read scott's version any day

especially if it's mostly asides

I do too tbh, just boggling at the fact that he doesn't even try to make any connection between the two, just briefly notes Burke's existence and then writes a paragraph explaining why he digs Roxy Music

― soref, Wednesday, May 2, 2018 7:56 AM (twenty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's easy to understand, it's because he doesn't know anything about Solomon Burke! though "happy warrior" and "openhearted soul singer" are very solid shortcuts to describe artists of a certain specific genre you're ignorant about, i guess...

"A graceful, elegant presence over decades" is a great way to describe Ray Charles if you don't know him from much more than his appearance on Super Dave

idk Solomon Burke = Hubert Humphrey is a weird comparison imo

certainly the women he worked with thought Ray was a graceful, elegant presence at all times

Its really sad for the editors of Vulture to take advantage of and not properly edit a *googles* 57 year old man like this

still grimacing about what he said about Depeche Mode tbh

“Mama Said Knock You Out” is almost his One Great Song. But I don’t believe a word he says in any other track he’s ever recorded. I was surprised to read that he had actually made the short list several times. The guy on the Grammys wearing the funny hat and nattering on about “Grammy moment” this and “Grammy moment” that — that complete industry tool in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

*grimaces harder*

A sui generis blues boogie stomper, often slowed down to barbiturate levels. I like Hooker, but why is his oddball shtick lauded while those of so many others ignored?

scott will never top his ayreon review tbf

that said, they've got a new one out! get on it

it was all downhill after that.

even the ayreon guy liked it. he e-mailed me.

“Mama Said Knock You Out” is almost his One Great Song. But I don’t believe a word he says in any other track he’s ever recorded. I was surprised to read that he had actually made the short list several times. The guy on the Grammys wearing the funny hat and nattering on about “Grammy moment” this and “Grammy moment” that — that complete industry tool in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

― we æt so many shimripl (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, May 2, 2018 10:37 AM (eighteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

alks;jdfp;laskjhdgfoashdgilsadf

https://youtu.be/0ilMpknVt2k

Gee how to turn a really good idea into something absolutely vile and terrible. And I say this as someone who's spent his life escaping the sound of Queen.

Careful, Queen are right behind you, watch out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc4lnoZFD9Q

I was prepared to defend a music writer’s right to be catty in a low-stakes listicle about how all our favorite acts are basically awful as both artists and people, but even by the opening paragraph - “the idea of a bunch of self-satisfied music-industry fat cats in tuxedos having rock stars assemble for a command performance in the Waldorf Astoria Ballroom once a year is precisely the sort of thing rock was created to be the antidote to” is just “this glossy bop-pop was the indifferent aristocracy to punk rock's stone-throwing in the late 70's” for an era where you can’t come out and say that.

a bunch of self-satisfied music-industry fat cats in tuxedos having rock stars assemble for a command performance in the Waldorf Astoria Ballroom once a year is precisely the sort of thing rock was created to be the antidote to

doesn't seem like chuck berry would have a problem w/this...though do the inductees perform for free? he wouldn't like that

popular musicians tend to like recognition and adulation and validation. and awards. and people clapping for them. and a good steak dinner.

i would get inducted into the rock n' roll hall of fame every day if i could

if I got free steak and cocktails, sure!

we need to con someone into an ilx awards sponsorship so we can all just go somewhere to have steak and cocktails imo

it should really just be called the popular music hall of fame, thank you for taking the time to read this insightful post