pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

All I need from a U2 review is the names of the band members:
Bonobos, Thedge, Adam Clay Two Thousand Pounds, Larry Mullen Srs.' Son

AARP sponsored content...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FsEvGoWaUAA3ZYq.jpg

Well if you were in college when Talking Heads and Television debuts came out you could collect Social Security now

xp That doesn’t look like actual content on their site(?) I think it’s just an ad (being served up to you!)

Nice find:

you would never guess in a million years what album’s pitchfork review opens with this paragraph pic.twitter.com/1p7PaYV299

— collin (@spiketvviewer) March 30, 2023

Luckily for Gillian Welch, the path to acclaim in the folk-country genre doesn't require moving to Oklahoma, Appalachia, or a Mississippi riverbank. Nor does it call for songs about killing people, peddling crack, or mining for black ass-gold (in fact, the latter is probably anathema to the cause). Rather, it's just fine if you sound like you know what you're doing and appreciate tradition, and Welch achieves that with ease.

Well she did move to Nashville in 1992

ass-gold

xpost - my wife spent some time working with AARP on a campaign and I can assure you that Gen X is their prime ad demographic. they don't aim at people they know are retirement age, but those heading that way. so makes total sense that Pitchfork would be in an ad buy.

Fun fact, iirc you can join AARP before retirement age.

yes, it was called Dad Rock

Fun fact, iirc you can join AARP before retirement age.

They used to be spookily good at sending you mailers the minute you turned 50, but neither my wife nor I have seen anything.

I'm a CARP (Canadian) because of a cheap cellphone plan I got once. They market to seniors. Ironically they're called Zoomer Wireless. I guess it has been around a while.

Ha ha... in another 40 years or so, their name will be in sync.

"Aarp" - the sound of turning 50

Boygenius are currently featured six (6) times on Pfork's front page  – i.e., via items displaying their name or pic (not counting a seventh feature in which they also appear). That's a lotta Boygenius!

Korg AARP Odyssey

no comments on this big "blurred lines" ruination of society piece?

i couldn't get far either

I read it but didn’t care for it. It’s one of those things that recaps a bunch of bummer stuff you already know, to unclear purpose/arguably unsound thesis (I also didn’t care for the way it addressed the infringement lawsuit).

is it time for the 10s discourse revival already

Pitchfork Reviews Reviews nostalgia

is it time for the 10s discourse revival already

please no i shouldn't feel this old already

the piece itself wasn't that great or well-structured, but i enjoyed it as a longtime blurred lines hater; very much in a "yeah what other toxic bullshit can we link to that trash?" way. so yeah, i appreciated the piece calling out the song for the toxic bullshit that it was all along. i drink a very bitter haterade, so it's nice to be acknowledged by other connoisseurs from time to time.

Pitchfork Reviews Reviews nostalgia

― INDEPENDENTS DAY BY STEVEN SPILBERG (President Keyes), Saturday, April 1, 2023

yes

also Hipster Runoff

“blurred lines” is a great song, so are “we can’t stop” and “wreckingball”. 2013 was an iconic year for music

This part of the essay makes no sense to me:

Songs that exert this kind of stranglehold on the public imagination always wear out their welcome, but there is a special kind of vitriol reserved for the ones that are upbeat, peppy, or salacious. If Mariah Carey’s soaring breakup ballad “We Belong Together,” a song that spent 14 weeks at the top spot in 2005, came on while you were waiting in line for coffee, you might not wince. But imagine your reaction to Flo Rida’s “Low” (10 weeks in 2008) or the Black-Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling” (14 weeks, 2009) playing over those same coffee-shop speakers. Things curdle when left under a spotlight for that long.

Probably the only time since (pre-teenage) childhood I've ever felt fully in tune with the world was the rollout of Random Access Memories.

And yet my favourite UK no. 1 of 2013 is still the one from 1994. :S

My personal feeling is that 2013 was the last time pop genuinely felt huge, to me in my increasingly shelled up existence. I can still recall how most of the (again UK) no. 1s from that year go like. Come 2016 and there's a 15-week Drake number one that I didn't even know existed until a few years later.

I thought the Blurred Lines essay was good on a first quick readthrough. like it or not, that song -- and all the discourse around it -- really does feel like a turning point in pop culture.

The Warren Zevon lead review today is really good. I had never listened to the album in full but between the two compilations I've owned over the years — A Quiet Normal Life: The Best of Warren Zevon and I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: An Anthology — I had heard all but three songs.

Cush is one of their best.

I thought the blurred lines piece was real good w a complex subject. My only quibbles were I think it bears noting that robin thicke's fanbased up until blurred lines was predominantly black R&B fans, seems like a relevant point; and that robin thicke using a sarcastic voice, "as if this provided mitigating context," sounds like it does in fact provide mitigating context, but he kind of reports it like its an ad hoc mea culpa

on the whole tho, again, I thought it handled a pretty layered conversation admirably

I'd have been more favourably receptive to that very well-written Warren Zevon review if the rating had been anything but a 10 (for an album where I only really like two songs).

Depends what you want from critical writing. I don't expect my judgments to coincide with the writer's; I get off on the insights and turns of phrase.

Someone pointed out on Twitter that it was weird that the name Linda Ronstadt didn't appear anywhere in the Zevon review. I mean yeah, the album came out and did OK on its own, but Ronstadt's covers of "Poor Poor Pitiful Me" and "Carmelita" and "Hasten Down The Wind" probably did as much to get his name out there as anything he did on his own.

I don't expect my judgments to coincide with the writer's

Nor do I, but anybody's perfect score feels really pushy: "you can't not love this!"

Resist, my son.

I have fought dragons like My Boring Dull Torpid Fantasies before.

I also understand that, for every decimal point they go below 10, fewer listeners will be inspired to listen to any vintage record they review.

My reaction if “Low” or “I Gotta Feeling” came on would be to bop my head! The idea that “upbeat, peppy, or salacious” songs curdle from overexposure feels straight-up wrong (and including “salacious” in the list is putting finger on scale… obv “Low” may not be appropriate for all settings, but that has nothing to do with the point being made).

Discarding the specific examples, I'd say an overplayed ballad often feels more like an ambient irritation, while an overplayed uptempo number tends to have a stronger hook to remember, which is a double edged sword. Huge generalization I know.

Overplayed uptempo numbers tend towards the coercive.

I think for me, the worst kind of overplayed song is something like Semisonic's "Closing Time" (or, to choose songs I "actually like"), "Losing My Religion," or "Sweet Child O' Mine"... mid-tempo rockers with insistent rhythms that leave no breathing room.

Overplayed uptempo numbers tend towards the coercive.

Oh, I didn't have dance tracks in mind -- always the exception.

I cannot hear "uptempo [god-damn] numbers" without thinking of Casey Kasem's hilarious outtake!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDYK2H0ldbo

Ha ha... I don't even have to watch that, it's burned into my brain :)

Yeah! The one where he butchers the radio station name, then just yells, "Oh, FUCK!"

good discussion upthread but IMHO the only valid reaction to hearing "I Gotta Feeling" in 2023 is immediately setting the building you're in on fire until it stops

the only reason why it's not BEP's worst song is because they have so many worse, i.e. "My Humps".

I think the only ones I like are "Where is the Love?" and "Let's Get It Started"