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

this. except i just write "i can't even..."

"I don't read anything, I just link it on Facebook and write "this" in the comments."

...can we talk about that Aretha piece.

this...

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/taylor-swifts-weirdly-mercenary-album-release-continues-with-ready-for-it

"...can we talk about that Aretha piece."

its best to forget that 85% of all music writing ever happened.

David Nathan (who wrote a LOT of pieces on Aretha and who was responsible for the food-related piece above) called the aforementioned Time piece "(the story that probably did more damage to Aretha's relations with the press than any other ever did)" in a multi-part career retrospective he penned in 1977.

janet joplin and mahalia jackson as secondary sources is something.

Blue-Eyed Soul. Does this mean that white musicians by definition don't have soul? A very few Negroes will concede that such white singers as Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee have it, and Aretha also nominates Frenchman Charles Aznavour. A few more will accept such blues-oriented whites as the Righteous Brothers, Paul Butterfield, and England's Stevie Winwood—largely because their sound is almost indistinguishable from Negro performers'. But for the most part, Negroes leave it up to whites to defend the idea of "blue-eyed soul," whether by the criterion of talent, experience or temperament. Janis Joplin argues it this way: "There's no patent on it. It's just feeling things. A housewife in Nebraska has soul, but she represses it, makes it conform to a lot of rules like marriage, or sugarcoats it."

If the earnest racial jockeying can be suspended, the question of who has soul actually becomes intriguing, if rather fanciful fun. The very elusiveness of the soul concept invites a freewheeling, parlor-game approach. Not long ago, in an eleven-page feature on the soul mystique, Esquire half seriously argued that there are only two kinds of people in the world: the haves and the havenots—soul-wise. Others have taken up the sport, which prompts the engaging notion that important personalities of history and legend can be classed in these terms (see box).

As for those to whom soul is anything but a parlor game, one thing is certain: the closer a Negro gets to a "white" sound nowadays, the less soulful he is considered to be, and the more he is regarded as having betrayed his heritage. Dionne Warwick singing Alfie? Impure! Diana Ross and the Supremes recording an album of Rodgers and Hart songs? Unacceptable! Yet many "deviations" may be solid professionalism, a matter of adapting to changing audiences. As Lou Rawls says, "Show business is so vast—why should I limit myself to any one aspect if I have the capabilities to do more?"

On the other hand, some soul singers are so deeply imbued with the enduring streams of blues and gospel, so consumed by those primal currents of racial experience and emotion, that they could never be anything but soulful. Aretha Franklin is one of them. No matter what she sings, Aretha will never go white, and that certainty is as gratifying to her white fans as to her Negro ones.

uh

is it bad that I feel like you could swap out Aretha/Janis/Dionne/Diana/Lou and put in Fantasia/Ariana/Beyonce/Rihanna/Miguel and I would expect to see that in a revived 2017 Da Capo

the question of who has soul actually becomes intriguing, if rather fanciful fun, DJP.

"earnest racial jockeying"

underrated big black b-side...

i think we all agree that there are other examples of bad music writing, other than the piece being discussed today

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/RkI-B2JWSZI/hqdefault.jpg

yeah dan i definitely saw parallels between "the discourse" then and now.

linked not for the Newsweek writer but for Rove's stunning blurb http://www.newsweek.com/national-sleep-well-beast-karl-rove-662307

max landis.....hello

(for real, though, if I were in CRJ's crew I'd be investing more heavily in personal security)

if you visit the website he set up for this, it shows him Jared Leto Joker-style in a mental hospital. this is as far as i made it.

im hoping he turned himself in to save us all the trouble.

I blame poptimism for this.

i blame capitalism

I blame masculinity

this level of self-indulgence is indistinguishable from psychosis

katherine otm

http://stars.topix.com/slideshow/18800

don't click that by the way... it's one of those weird slideshows where you need to load a whole separate page to proceed to the next slide. the list is "27 Hilariously Lame Artists that Hipsters Love" and the author says that Modest Mouse is a "pale imitation of the Talking Heads" and that Radiohead's only good song is "Creep."

To be honest, the writing isn't as bad as I expected.

I mean, it's very bad, but still.

First, Aphex Twin is not a band, it's the stage name of Irishman Richard David James. He rose to fame with a song called "Windowlicker," which should tell you all you need to know about this ambient techno artist's off-putting vibe.

see how many mistakes you can spot

really into how mad the writer of that is about the very concept of solo musicians and also how despite their remit they can't bring themselves to be snarky about the Lumineers

this is bad:

There’s a reason a rock god like Springsteen might keep the prompter out of sight of his adoring fans. Because if they saw it, would they wonder: Is he singing from the heart? Or is it just from the McScroll?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/bruce-springsteen-uses-teleprompter-in-performances-does-it-matter/2012/03/30/gIQAQTXGlS_story.html?tid=a_inl

Is this the early 90s?

Don't know about you but I'm forever racking my heart trying to remember the lyrics to songs.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DKRHuKiUQAEL2SW.png:small

there's a bit in one of the lyttle lytton writeups about this kind of sweeping pat journalistic rimshot flourish (earlier this year: "The award show was a veritable orgy — not of sex, but of cultural appropriation") and it's bad enough when it's just about some college football team, not actual people actually dying

holy shit that is tacky

yikes

bol serves up this hot piece of shit that is the first time i can honestly say, yes, this might be the worst piece of music writing ever. vile.

https://www.getrevue.co/profile/byroncrawford/issues/why-i-support-xxxtentacion-74240

i have no idea how or why you would read a Byron Crawford article if you're not attuned to his schtick

"I can't *believe* this thing I saw on an account that I follow that has done exactly this type of thing for 10 years"

well I actually saw Craig Jenkins tweeting taking shots about some article that mentioned his writing and was like hmm I wonder what this is and the article was that bol piece.

am I grounded?

Def on goon cru probation

damn :(

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/opinion/what-sincerity-looks-like.html?mcubz=3&_r=0

"Swift is a phenomenally talented and beautiful songwriter who has lost touch with herself and seems to have been swallowed by the ethos of the Trump era."

david brooks retire bitch

yeah that seems willfully ignorant
"some ordinary-looking backup singers behind him"

"It’s interesting how corporate the video looks and the song sounds. It’s been a long time since the Sex Pistols burst on the scene."

EVER FEEL LIKE YOU'VE BEEN CHEATED???

Back in the 1950s, sincerity seemed treacly and boring, and authenticity, in the form of, say, Johnny Cash, seemed daring and new. But now rebellious authenticity is the familiar corporate success formula, and sincerity, like Chance the Rapper’s, is practically revolutionary.

https://media.giphy.com/media/26BRq84rhISRcFVUQ/giphy.gif

A person has a soul, which is what Chance is worrying about. A brand has a reputation, which is the title of Swift’s next album. A person has private dignity. A brand is a creation for an audience.

so was chance acting like a person or a brand when his management went after a MTV News writer

lol SERIOUSLY