OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

is this thread where the most substantive discussion of the song machine book has been? has anyone read it?

One thing I think it's always important to keep in mind is how much insipid, throwaway pop music there has been in every decade -- this sort of helps me keep a mediocre Demi Lovato song in perspective.

x-post to Scott and others re that NPR soul article that makes some good points re retro soul...

But sadly that NPR soul article never mentions the over age 50 raunchy soul with synthesizers music that is coming out now, but is not marketed to the NPR world-- from Miss Jody on Ecko to the glossy sounds of Sir Charles Jones to the bluesey stylings of Otis Rush, to the recently deceased Mel Waiters, and countless others mentioned on the Chitlin Circuit soul thread and on websites like http://www.southernsoulrnb.com/

man alive otm. Lousy pop of the 70s or 80s is just as bad as the new stuff imo.

"and countless others mentioned on the Chitlin Circuit soul thread and on websites like http://www.southernsoulrnb.com/";

kinda understandable though, don't you think? that's a niche that has existed for decades.

Even on the early Beatles stuff there are different takes knitted together or a middle 8 from a different take cut in.

― Turrican, Thursday, September 17, 2015 12:25 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This isn't the case with their earliest EMI recordings. Each song on Please Please Me is from one take (though there were surely other takes, false starts and breakdowns).

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Thursday, September 17, 2015 4:47 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The count-in on 'I Saw Her Standing There' is from a different take to the rest of the song - a minor edit, but still an edit.

i dunno, the neo-soul/nu-soul thing is interesting, but also kind of a historical commonplace. dixieland was big in the 50's. the 50's was big in the 70's. the 60's were big in the 80's. the 30's were big in the 60's! it goes on and on. more interesting politically probably. why go back? back not good! forward good! the carolina chocolate drops are VERY popular around my white way and there is probably some sorta academic paper to be written about the significance of that.

all recorded music is an illusion.

― Turrican, Thursday, September 17, 2015 11:06 AM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

believing this has saved me a lot of anguish

― Ys Man a.k.a. Have One on G (geoffreyess), Thursday, September 17, 2015 4:30 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yup, me too!

(also re: the chitlin non-mention, it would be like talking about pop country stars going back to the 70's for their sound and not mentioning all the people who play Branson who never left the 70's...)

Millions of Swifties and KatyCats—as well as Beliebers, Barbz, and Selenators, and the Rihanna Navy—would be stunned by the revelation that a handful of people, a crazily high percentage of them middle-aged Scandinavian men, write most of America’s pop hits. It is an open yet closely guarded secret, protected jealously by the labels and the performers themselves, whose identities are as carefully constructed as their songs and dances.

Just getting around to reading this Atlantic thing, and I cannot believe the bolded section got through an editor and a fact checker. Has this guyever looked at liner notes, or like, a wikipedia page for an album?

OTOH, I was excited to learn that Rihanna fan communities refer to themselves at the Rihanna Navy. That's awesome and I didn't know that!

christ, this article keeps revealing new onionesque levels of stupid

carefully constructed dances, you say? that's kind of wordy, you might want to use just one word, one like "choreographed"

Nah, can't really describe an identity as "choreographed" IMO. Reads awkwardly. Should have scrapped that whole clause.

I guess "It is an open yet closely guarded secret" was his way of saying that it is in the liner notes but everyone is careful not to draw attention to it.

xxp

"open yet closely guarded secret" is nonsensical

Agreed just doing my best to interpret.

not really my point, my point is that using "carefully constructed dances" as a pejorative is hilarious, because that describes the entire practice of choreography, indeed, dance in general

what do you have against the pop star improvised interpretive dances of yore?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcrZIK3gqbU

i don't think black sabbath had any songs ready when they went in to make their second album. or very few. they had just put out their first album! just made stuff up. now we all sing paranoid together.

― scott seward, Thursday, September 17, 2015 12:40 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

actually they went in to record in june of 1970... by that time they had already at least written paranoid, iron man, fairies wear boots, and walpurgis (which they wound up redoing the lyrics to and turning into "war pigs"), because there are live recordings of all those songs from before june of '70. sorry for the nitpick, but i've been into sabbath since that '69 show the guys from iron claw taped leaked last week.

Wrecking Crew supposedly did not -- they were sightreading all that stuff.

that is true scott but i expect they practised a lot before going in

they were really good at doing stuff fast. people couldn't do that now. unless they just hit record and a band started playing with minimal fuss. but even that would probably take a long time now.

a good contemporary analogy to that is any orchestral hollywood score. it's all on-the-spot sight-reading, and everything is done in two or three takes. and that's with a full orchestra playing together.

which is to say, LA is crawling with musicians who could do that now on any pop record if anyone making pop records had (a) the money to hire them and (b) the skills and/or money to write all those parts out.

"sorry for the nitpick, but i've been into sabbath since that '69 show the guys from iron claw taped leaked last week."

nitpicking is fine. i just remembered reading that they rushed them in and they had to write stuff on the fly. but it makes sense that they had already worked on stuff live and in rehearsal.

Many xps, but presumably -- or not! -- the writer understands that pop star identities have ALWAYS been "carefully constructed?" Like, going back to Rudy Vallee at least?

Wait until he finds out The Beatles were not just four lovable aw-shucks mop tops from Liverpooll!

not sure why that npr retro soul piece is in "worst music writing" thread because it was very interesting and not bad writing. but anyways since we are talking about it here i generally agreed w/ emily lordi but i also thought she was perhaps a little too harsh on leon bridges? i mean i agree that complete devotion to replicating a retro sound is not particularly interesting but it did seem like she dumped a lot of criticism specifically on bridges himself and perhaps less so on the general phenomenon of white audiences feeling particularly pulled toward this purely retro sound.

unless i'm mistaken, i think it was just here for reference and not as pertains to thread title

ah ok

http://crackmagazine.net/article/music/battles-through-limbs-and-wires/

yeah, i posted that NPR thing because of the talk about "the good old days" on here. and how that relates to the pop producer article. the backlash against disposable digi-pop, etc. it's a good interview.

i'm not reading that Battles thing but it's nice that Tom still has some time in his busy schedule

the summer music festival in town here is FILLED with examples of updated retro from a surprisingly wide range of genres. or older artists who still perform in bygone styles. it's a wildly successful fest supported by the local radio station here that plays all that stuff. and the festival itself was bought by the successful label/recording studio that also loves all that stuff. western mass kinda ground zero for fans of nu-western swing, nu-gypsy, nu-latin, nu-folk, nu-blues. it's deep starbucks/npr/big chill gen stuff. and people are very serious about it.

http://www.signaturesounds.com/

alabama shakes kinda the dream band of the local station. old r&b + wilco? is that a fair assessment of alabama shakes? anyway, they are kinda the house band of the station. they play mostly boomer 60's soul when they play soul though.

http://wrsi.com/playlist/

noodlevague never forgave Tom for unleashing Drenge

I like how the writer of the Battles piece spells John Stanier's last name wrong twice in the first paragraph, then just gets on a first-name basis with them for the rest of the piece. And honestly, he's gotten a little better - he only did the that's-almost-the-adjective-you-want thing a few times, as opposed to doing it in every sentence like he used to.

alabama shakes, fairly or unfairly, strikes me like the aughties version of Hootie

they need to have at least one hit single first to earn that comparison

imo they're more the '10s Lone Justice

I feel like this is verging on needing a separate thread, but it was interesting to me to read the contrast between that NPR interview and the comments thereon -- perhaps not surprisingly, a lot of NPR listeners (and probably a lot of music fans in general) really resist political readings of any popular music or the placing of music in a political context.

a josh ritter/alabama shakes/carolina chocolate drops show around here would be pandemonium. latte in the streets...

"resist political readings of any popular music or the placing of music in a political context."

they really like things comfy casual.

the choc drops stuff is really explicitly socially political and explores historical ideas about race and appropriation in a way that very few bands were doing
of course, that's not quite what got them on the national radar and they've basically atomized these days into new projects anyway

there is a thread for that too:

Can we agree on a definition - "NPR Rock" ??

from the first post on that thread:

"Comfy, Acoustic, Literate, Upscale, Non-Threatening......... what else???? (white?)"

non-threatening is good. i would add toothless. just because.

to be fair, those listeners are the only people who never forgot tracy chapman.

to be fair, those listeners are the only people who never forgot tracy chapman.
--scott seward

Pitchfork 80s list stans for Tracy Chapman

"Fast Car" is one of the greatest songs ever written

I got a plan to get us outta this thread

Be someone
Be someone

;_;

i will stan for tracy chapman any day. she remains a bucket list concert.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jakwsneGokg

I don't really read many music sites so I'm a bit nonplussed at the word count and approx reading time in the Battles piece... is that normal practice these days or am I right in finding that kind of weird?