FKA twigs

i think also when these arguments end up pushing for a particularly 'correct' aesthetic POV they end up on dangerous territory that undercuts the thesis ... that you're only upsetting the male gaze when doing something specifically 'ugly' ... you can end up buying into the supposed superiority of 'masculine' values or more dangerously, ignoring the ways in which 'ugliness' in, say, a punk context, can mean something different than in an R&B one...transgression, masculine power, etc. feminity/masculinity are constructed differently in different genres ... this can end up a bit overly simplistic or prescriptive ... idk. i feel like an asshole at this point continuing to argue, obv i agree that "women are subject to complex and often contradictory pressures, which are not applied to men"

not saying the author doesnt get this stuff, btw

D-40 loool I don't think that at all, like ever. I wanted to type more thoughtfully than some cheerleading but I was on my phone (and I don't/didn't have much to add.) The stats that Geffen is examining, I think it's more about the myopia of forming "objective" quantitative assessments of music (or any abstract form of art), and how that will always favour the patriarchal monoculture, pre-existing notions of "quality", work that toes the line rather than breaks the mold, but this was an unpopular argument that I was making back in 2007 and sure didn't have any legs then, probably not now either.

I acknowledge tho that a lot of points Geffen made is stuff that's she's talked about in other pieces / on Twitter, so I read the piece with a familiarity with the path she was taking, and the breadth of the piece seemed not-too-far-reaching for me.

When it comes to describing women's voices, I disagree that it's an issue of a binary of prettiness/ugliness. Skillfulness is more the issue

well frank ocean's always been punching a bit out of his weight class as a singer anyway

Right, which was part of my point. Female r&b singers of a similar skill level aren't generally given the type of praise Ocean has been and take a lot more shit if people give them the time of day at all. Fwiw, I'm sure I've been quite guilty of this myself.

you mean like noted belter Tinashe, Cassie, and Jhene Aiko?

Sure, although all of them are different from the r&b mean in a different way than Ocean's is. Maybe Kelis would be a better point of comparison?

i think it wd be really interesting to talk about gendered performance norms in an R&B context, but I don't think the terms or framework we're using is really sufficient. I think the 'skill' question is very different here than it is in other places. The Weeknd and Frank Ocean are both, in different ways, anomalies; both examples of a sudden turn towards R&B from people who hadn't paid it much attention since maybe Voodoo. But if you're talking about R&B on the whole, there's a long tradition of guys not only having to look like musclebound super-hawt stars (cf this new Luke James youtube.com/watch?v=R8zSJxA1-mA ] but to execute w/ flawless precision. On the other hand, you're also talking about a genre where the bulk of the audience is female

*are really sufficient

Was just tweeting about this piece but I think if we want to look at how gender is marginalized in popular music it helps to look at the framework this way; to see how pervasive certain values are in a big-picture sense: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~DRBR/canon.html

not that this is incompatible w/ the original piece posted btw ... just looking to complement it

Could I just throw the not particularly pleasant but still awesome and culturally important voices of Rihanna and Nicki Minaj into the discussion, please? Thanks.

"This voice has been determined as culturally important (and non-injurious to the human ear)" - they should put that on the label

The argument in the article is slightly muddied by comparing white artists to black artists, because black people are obviously also subjected to complex and contradictory pressures that aren't applied to white people and those pressures then manifest themselves in all kinds of different ways primarily according to audience.

If it's a question of who is and isn't allowed the automatic presumption of 'authorship' then Frank Ocean is kind of an anomaly even among male R&B singers (Usher, for example, is not really viewed as the principle creative force behind his own albums). But then there are a range of extra-musical factors that bear down on the way people write about Frank that make him something of a special case.

But it doesn't really change the basic point of the piece, and in any case black female artists are (in general) doubly likely to be dismissed by white male audiences. And white male artists (particularly indie-leaning ones) benefit from the fact that vastly lower standards are demanded of their vocals and personal appearance (and they get away with all kinds of lazy shit as a result).

Yep. According to indie logic imperfection = transgression = agency. Frank Ocean's less than perfect vocals thus make him a better artist than Usher, a point that is only strengthened by his "transgressive" sexuality. Likewise, white male artists (particularly indie-leaning ones) benefit from the demand for imperfection-as-distinguishing-mark.

who gets to decide whose singing voice is "perfect" vs. "less than perfect"?

me

spoiler: no one is perfect

(Thomas Quasthof comes close, though)

Bernard sumner right behind him

that would be a duet of the gods

the piece was at its best when she was talking more generally, i think. each example opens itself up to a number of counterfactuals (i think jessie ware and frank ocean weren't really particularly helpful cherries to pick), though the section about the knife seemed pretty nailed down.

wow pitchfork dudes not feeling this criticism of pitchfork dudes

ok maybe not THAT harsh, but it sounds like you guys are giving it a 7.1

the entire knife section is about pitchfork!

i said 7.1

you're certainly ANTI her argument you just think it was a little scattershot and misguided at points, not really the front-to-back classic takedown of pitchfork dudes that pitchfork dudes think they deserve

Yeah, but then again there's someone like Robyn, who does not usually write/produce her own material yet always outshines her male collaborators and gets the press. I suspect this happens because she does not conform too easily to received notions of female beauty (don't get me wrong, she's beautiful and p hot to me but that's irrelevant). She comes across as pure subjectivity.

woops i meant you're certainly not ANTI her argument

Xxxxxxxxxpost

sorry it's just funny to see a bunch of dudes in her line of fire be like "oh i don't disagree that we're awful i think she just did a sloppy job of explaining how, she's kind of missing the larger context at points"

on the contrary if anything i think i should feel flattered as a man frequently covering female singers on pitchfork whose writing wasn't singled out in a piece about how pitchfork covers women poorly

so it's big of you to instead offer a critique of her critique

Yeah, but then again there's someone like Robyn, who does not usually write/produce her own material yet always outshines her male collaborators and gets the press. I suspect this happens because she does not conform too easily to received notions of female beauty (don't get me wrong, she's beautiful and p hot to me but that's irrelevant). She comes across as pure subjectivity.

― longneck, Thursday, September 11, 2014 12:35 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nah, it happens for two reasons:

- robyn generally gets judged by indie standards but pop standards, so she is pretty much seen as a step up in subjectivity by default;
- robyn's collaborators are people like patrik berger and klas ahlund, whom basically nobody pays attention to.

overall a really good piece that said a lot of shit that needed to be said; i think the ware/ocean examples weren't necessarily off base but she didn't really acknowledge the difference in gender expectations w/r/t different genres (i mean, opening that up would've necessitated triple the word length to untangle). i feel like the misogynistic trope of portraying r&b singers as mere vocal ciphers in the hands of their auteur producers is slightly different to the misogynistic trope of assuming, in a knife-style electronic/dance group, that the man does the production and the woman only sings.

first reduces the importance of the voice, the assumption is that the "genius" is in the production rather than what a (usually) highly-skilled vocalist brings to the song (and as longneck said, vocalists who bring *less* to the table in terms of technique will be disproportionately praised for that)

the second is kind of a product of tons of acts where this was the dynamic (that they presented) - thinking of lots of '90s trip-hop acts - combined with laziness in actually asking the band who does what, and at its grossest will be manifest in suspicion that female solo artists "must" have been helped in some way by a male producer

i'm not sure of the equation of vocal distortion/mangling/"not singing properly" as a means of disrupting this - one of many ways to disrupt it, perhaps? i feel it does women who do aim for "perfect" vocals a disservice

man i've undoubtedly been guilty of this myself but every "male critic explains how female critic didn't quite accurately capture the sexism of male critics" post is megalolz

i am applauding the piece!

you're definitely giving it constructive criticism

ok let's not discuss the very interesting issues it raises then, whatever

Sexists have feelings too!

was debating whether to say this but fuck it: as someone who has written for pitchfork about many of the artists mentioned upthread, this "you only quibble with it because you're a p4k bro and are CLOSING RANKS" line of questioning is a very bad look

well then to be clear - i just find it funny when men respond to criticism of men by quibbling without the slightest bit of apparent introspection. this weird "oh no i totally agree sexism is a thing in men reviewing work by women but *reviews work by woman*"

i apologize for saying "pitchfork dude" initially cuz that's really a subset of what i'm describing

my point was not brand loyalty

...and you're picking on *Lex* for doing this, rather than some of the idiocy upthread from Brad and D-40? Come on.

The article benefits from the fact vastly lower standards are demanded from music writers (particularly indie-leaning ones) as compared to -say- philosophy writers (and they get away with all kinds of lazy shit as a result).

i am not leaving brad or d-40 out of this observation. if they were posting that stuff now my posts would immediately follow those instead of j0rdan's and lex's.

And we've got ILX's resident MRA spouting his ~opinions~ about the article all over the thread, too, and it's like, you're picking on one of the guys who has actually engaged the article and the topic all over ILM for years? I guess maybe it would have been better if you quoted, Croupier.

i am not "quibbling". she opened up a massive and complex subject - really well - and there are necessarily other issues it raised that would not have fit in her word count.

well no, because i don't want to leave lex OUT of what I'm describing. if you want to hand him a pass, fine.

xpost