who is Bob Lefsetz?

and fwiw loggins messina renaissance is already underway, come on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpmr9P2_K4g

so everyone is mad at lefsetz for this today: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/

"I wasn’t sure what to do after Beyonce’s appearance, join a gym or masturbate." stupid line, and the guy is an awful writer, but i fail to see how this piece is sexist or racist. maybe it's because I personally can't stand Beyonce because I hate her music and everything about her. But I restrained myself from saying anything in person or online last night because I knew I'd get my head bitten off. I don't doubt the dude is a pudgy Boomer prick with an ancient outlook, but what about this piece is getting everyone so pissed off, aside from his dislike of Beyonce's performance?

another egregious line tho - "hip hop is full of attitude"

x-post

On what are you basing your suggestion that this piece is getting more people pissed at Leftsetz than other ones? Tweets? facebook? ???

I've read almost as much twitter vitriol on the subjext today as I read about the superbowl itself yesterday.

in addition to the masturbation thing this part was pretty sexist (and just gross generally in other ways:

Who do we blame? Madonna? Who invented a new paradigm and then went for a victory lap wherein she dieted down to nothing and spent hours a day working out? Do you think Adele works out? Ha!

"Do you think Adele works out?" Go fuck yourself, Lef.

"the Lumineers are bigger than Alicia Keys" Yikes.

but i fail to see how this piece is sexist or racist

you mean as in only one or the other?

lol j/k who cares what this nobody-guy writes on a blog

x-post -- Tweets About Beyonce or about Leftsetz re Beyonce?

Leftsetz has a huge mailing list of industry people and musicians who always seem to put up with his cluelessness

I saw Ned talking about it on twitter and then saw the deluge of music crits and randos going nuts...

@LauraSterritt I'm so so appreciating all of the men I'm seeing calling out Lefsetz's Beyonce post. Really heartwarming.

@1000TimesYes Everyone please quit calling the Lefsetz post "sexist." It's racist too!

@robmitchum So McCain and Lefsetz both committed social media suicide before noon today. This could turn out to be a pretty great week.

‏@randlechris lefsetz confused here. "ONLY MUSIC MATTERS" but if women made it you apparently prefer to write about their bodies with a pair of forceps?

@Marcissist Truth RT @maura hey bob @lefsetz: you are a gross sexist scumbag and the fact that anyone takes you seriously about anything is embarrassing

@lfitzmaurice The easy joke there is that Bob Lefsetz would be better off choosing the gym
^lol

@lfitzmaurice What RT @Lefsetz: Alicia Keys is the new Sheryl Crow. Showing up everywhere. Hey Alicia! There's a supermarket opening around the corner!

@killquilty if there's anything more infuriating than the lefsetz letter it's the lefsetz letter wasting time focusing on amanda palmer

@brandon_weigel @notrivia Couldn't get past the second sentence of Lefsetz's garbage.

The assertion that the Lumineers are bigger than Beyonce was pretty lol.

there's not one sentence of this that rings true at all.

I wasn’t sure what to do after Springsteen’s appearance, join a gym or masturbate. It was spectacle befitting the game, one could argue strongly it was more dynamic and exciting than the game. You had no desire to check your Twitter feed, all you could do was pay attention.

But how much did this have to do with music?

Who do we blame? Tom Petty? Who invented a new paradigm and then went for a victory lap wherein he embodied blue collar America in a tight t-shirt? Do you think Tom Petty works out? Ha!

Springsteen made Tom Petty look old. He proudly strutted his beefcake arms, in one fell swoop making a whole swath of America’s men feel good about themselves.

She proudly strutted her luscious thighs, in one fell swoop making a whole swath of America’s women feel good about themselves.

Stupid Beyonce liking ladies.

man I'm glad no one sexualizes Prince

x-post- you should send that Springsteen satire to Leftsetz

Scroll down to the previous Lefsetz Letter for pure Patrick Bateman vibes - an ode to Phil Collins' Face Value.

even the under-the-radar digs are just meaningless, like:

The thought of her drinking Pepsi is akin to believing Alicia Keys uses a BlackBerry!

uhh you can very well believe keys uses a blackberry. shitloads of people use them! she endorses them, right? (esp if lefsetz means "BB" as a stand-in for smartphones in general) and no, it doesn't make it more likely that beyonce drinks soda.

really annoying that i feel compelled to direct any brainpower toward this crap, but this guy is inexplicably influential

i saw the twitter hate but not the reason why til now. feel slightly unclean.

why DO people pay attention to this guy though?

For posterity, here's the link to the actual super bowl/beyonce post rather than his blog's generic url:
http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2013/02/03/beyonce-at-the-super-bowl/

"She proudly strutted her luscious thighs, in one fell swoop making a whole swath of America’s women feel good about themselves." nvm somehow i missed this one, moronic and offensive. but. man i hate beyonce's music and thing.

...though i wonder if he really is. is there a term for people who don't advance thought in any way but have a career bravely telling people what they already think? it's not really 'influence' but, idk, management

Blame the CD, where subtlety doesn’t sound good.

you are totally illiterate about your own field of expertise, jesus

The pundit class?

Xpost

wish wcc had saved her powder for this dude

well of course, but i meant a succint term as opposed to 'influence'

"confluential" maybe, lol

people pay attention to him because the music industry, including the gameable bullshit awards like the grammys, are more about appealing to the executive wisdom and idiocy of the lefsetzes of the world than actually making music.

same old shit

Scroll down to the previous Lefsetz Letter for pure Patrick Bateman vibes - an ode to Phil Collins' Face Value.

He's not kidding. Sadly.

I'd say less influential than indicative of the type of people at the executive offices of music labels.

he reminds me of ~music matters man~ middle aged dudes on message boards everywhere (not just rock boards either, classical music boards too)-- there's always some invariably female pop star acting as an ideological bugbear for these ppl, fuck these assholes in the eye IMO. At one time it was Madonna, then it was the (always misspelled) 'Brittany' Spears, I'm seeing Katy Perry inveighed against a lot now...

keep scrolling down to where he links up amanda palmer and howard stern approvingly!! well, stopped clock i guess

The conflation of Madonna as a looks-only, no-longevity musical phenomenon that he's comparing Beyonce to falls completely flat when you realize Madonna is in her third decade in music and still relevant enough to be played regularly, even if newer material falls flat at the super bowl or whatever. Trying to make her performance about looks, and then saying that Beyonce succeeded on looks, is ridiculous.

Dude is a biased old sexist.

uhh you can very well believe keys uses a blackberry. shitloads of people use them! she endorses them, right? (esp if lefsetz means "BB" as a stand-in for smartphones in general) and no, it doesn't make it more likely that beyonce drinks soda. -goole

Not to defend Lefsetz, but I recall him quoting an older A. Keys article where she said she used an iphone and so he was critiquing her based on that prior usage. in addition to Leftsetz, others were commenting on her suddenly endorsing Blackberry after having been an iphone user (with her own designed iphone app too I think)

Jon Lewis OTM. The Steve Hoffman board is lousy with those schmoes.

huh all right. i could have figured. that's pretty damn dumb.

xp

His recent discovery of '90s techno was pretty funny. He circulated a playlist someone sent him with Moby on it

wonder if he thinks all the people in super bowl pepsi commercials actually drink pepsi all the time

I mean, other than beyonce

That seems dumber on Blackberry's part than Keys. Lol at the idea that the authenticity fetish extends even to product endorsements.

tbf Lefsetz reminds me of the brand-loyal old people who are wandering in trying to buy an RCA television or whatever because the one they had for the last thirty years was the best

Yes & no. He definately has that old-school mentality regarding certain values and certain styles of music but he is always boasting about how knowledgable he is on the latest tech, he happily praises Amanda Palmer for her online approach, and he dismisses the music industry for its stuck in the past ways regularly.

Great, so instead of 1974 he lives in 2004.

that old-school mentality regarding certain values and certain styles of music

RCA televisions

btw his traditional likes are kind of artistically and technologically bankrupt, too

he likes amanda palmer's online approach because she works in a more classical mode of composition and live arrangement

racism and sexism are timeless and really have nothing to do with whether he likes the Eagles or crowdsourcing or both.

the main way the music industry is stuck in the past is the idea that the heads of music labels, who themselves do not make music or tour at this time, are arbiters of taste and success in the music industry

these are also the only reasons people listen to him, assuming that experience is key over popular appeal and experience of those who regularly tour

i'm sure i said this on another thread, but he's got some kind of cossacks-work-for-the-czar mental error going on. his analysis is that it's "the industry" that's pushing all this bad CD-quality (lol) pop music (at once blander and more aggressive than is ideal) on "the people", who could not possibly like that music really, which is why the business is faltering. but "the internet" will allow new rabble-rouser/hustler types to reach the people directly, resulting in a hopeful return to dominance of AOR/MOR folk-pop with feelings.