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

😬

a big scoop for music-news.com

Imagine releasing music and touring in your early sixties. Never been done.

Morrissey's dedication to music is only surpassed by his devotion to racism

It would be hard for even his most stubborn opponents to deny Morrissey possesses that extra “something” - that unique charisma and energy that keeps generations of music-lovers queueing at the barriers. Morrissey fills arenas, theatre stages and festival line-ups around the world, even after 40 years in the business. Looking back to those heady days of The Smiths, where his

etc

he fills festival line-ups

Did Morrissey write this?

Morrissey was a popular racist and he still is

My mama don't play no Moz
I saw her when she turned him off

To many, the Chili Peppers have always been synonymous with sexy time. Flea’s bass has always felt primal, like a playful slap on the ass during passionate lovemaking

i mean if you think of how the band envisions themselves . . . probably not completely missing the mark.

but yeah, gross. no.

The band’s history of accusations of sexual harassment of young women in the music industry makes that gross.

oof, you're right. even grosser.

(unless maybe the writer is just the smartest guy in the room and that's their way of drawing attention to the band's collective creepiness)

oh my, curious to see how workshop's "Meiguiweisheng Xiang" was received on release (it's a curious & very successful piece of CAN worship albeit a little more querulous & fey) i stumbled across this on allmusic
"While Workshop is similar to other indie-rock attempts at trip-hop (Broadcast, Portishead), the sub-par vocals and anemic production values sink the album."
erm...

I'm still dying of gross from that Chili Peppers review.

Dig around in the context and biography behind a famously ambiguous and opaque song until you can find a vague snippet to support a tenuous reading in the service of half-assed fashionable politics, avoid looking at the content of the work itself closely enough that it might challenge your fantasy, profit (not really).

6.
Nirvana: “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (1991)
As much as anything, it was a breakup song. “Who will be the king and queen of the outcasted teens?” Kurt Cobain asked in a discarded lyric from an early draft of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” One of his biographers is pretty sure he was talking about Tobi Vail, the “over-bored” and “self-assured” riot grrrl vanguardist. The two of them had had a brief romance, which she ended, and Cobain responded in the manner of so many thwarted, sensitive young men, turning rejection into a synecdoche for the oppressions of life writ large. He filled up his journal with violent fantasies and weird drawings. His friends started to worry. And somewhere in this burst of energy, Cobain wrote the perfect pop song.

A denial, a denial, a denial. It hangs over “Teen Spirit” like bad weather. Call it the teenage boy’s blues—a young dude’s awakening to the fact that he is caught in the crosswinds of, like, the whole system, man, that panders to him, that fires his imagination, and then constrains him, tells him to chill. Very often it’s sex being denied. Sometimes it’s a car, which is just sex at one remove. Maybe it’s money or a fix. Whatever their subject, the teenage boy’s blues have been the very stuff of pop music since around the time Chuck Berry went motorvatin’ after that Coupe DeVille. The result has been a great deal of regrettable pop songs, but on occasion there have been transcendent exceptions, like the lead single off of Nirvana’s Nevermind. Above all it rips, even still, from that first Gap Band flam to the last, exhausted denial. It’s got a screamy part and a soft part, and right at the point where you expect the song to fuzz out and go totally to shit, there’s a crisp guitar solo that restates the vocal melody from the verse, almost as if Cobain were satirizing himself and having a damn good time of it.

Well, he probably was, right? Self-doubt is everything in “Teen Spirit.” The song famously stands outside itself, mocking its own postures, hating its own apathy and irresolution, anthemic in its insistence on being unanthemic: “Oh well, whatever, never mind.” I remember the girls in middle school who had Cobain’s photo taped up in their lockers and thinking how funny it was that they were treating this king of the outcasts like something they'd clipped out of Tiger Beat. But of course they were the ones who were actually seeing Cobain clearly—that underneath all the marketing and self-mythology and fraying cardigans there was a true pop idol, beautiful, androgynous, too wounded to be threatening, a troubadour of their uncertainty. He sang as if he were owed something. That’s the teenage boy’s blues. In the next breath he wondered if he was worthy of any of it. That’s a blues for everyone else. –Tommy Craggs

I remember the girls in middle school who had Cobain’s photo taped up in their lockers and thinking how funny it was that they were treating this king of the outcasts like something they'd clipped out of Tiger Beat. But of course they were the ones who were actually seeing Cobain clearly—that underneath all the marketing and self-mythology and fraying cardigans there was a true pop idol, beautiful, androgynous, too wounded to be threatening, a troubadour of their uncertainty.

He was a good-looking rock star, it's not that complicated...

yeah that is awful wtf

Sometimes I see a vague resemblance between Kurt and a 1970ish James Taylor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0FJUVo-BaM

Must be the sweater

kurt was way hotter imo

that's bcz he was beautiful, androgynous, too wounded to be threatening, a troubadour of our uncertainty

not even joking

I swear, something about this song produces the absolute direst music writing

well, a key line is "here we are, entertain us"

‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ is a Men’s Rights anthem, and that’s okay

treasure trove of lol terrible writing in here (alongside some not-terrible writing)

https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/musicians-on-their-favorite-albums-of-the-90s/

Dawn Richard on Throwing Copper: "This album had a lot of layers for me. It was the lyrical journey that I found myself loving the most."

The 90s revisiting/revival has produced a lot of shocking takes but "I'm into Live for the lyrics" is one that I may never recover from

I'm not in the least surprised she'd like it.

harsh - i thought you liked her!

I do. Many artists like shitty music and write better music based on their affection for the shitty music.

It's hard to imagine Dawn Richard's agon with Ed Kowalczyk, it's true.

Jewel's entry is somehow far more embarrassing. Almost poll-worthy

xp I don't see the revisiting/revival in that quote. the album came out when she was 10.

not the quote itself but the piece that produced it, which is part of pforks current big 90s deep dive feature

lol that jewell blurb is gold

truly a masterclass in making everything about Jewel

Mike Kinsella (American Football)

Back in the ’90s, hamburgers sucked, moms and dads weren’t ironic, and “’90s albums” were just called “albums.” The one album that probably influenced me the most is Loveless by My Bloody Valentine.

Hamburgers sucked(?) What does that mean

it means he thought they were bad not good

maybe he meant "Hamburglar sucked"

I really like what the American Football guy wrote. also thing the Slowdive guy wrote some good stuff about Cranes.

thing = think

How have hamburgers changed

Is it a Mad Cow joke?

(I also don’t get the “moms and dads” thing)

We didn't have fast casual burger joints in the 90s

the moms and dads thing I think is in line with how every commercial and kids show is made by aging hipsters these days

Trying to parse the burgers thing, since I'm procrastinating anyway: maybe he's talking about the rise of places like Five Guys and In & Out Burger and other relatively upscale (ie more expensive) franchises as alternatives to McDonalds and Burger King, but that's just a wild guess, I'm a vegetarian, I dunno

i do not think that sentence is worth this level of analysis

Let's not get into 90s hot dogs

“’90s albums” were just called “CDs” would have been a better joke, IMO

Cobain responded in the manner of so many thwarted, sensitive young men

biting my tongue REAL FUCKING HARD here

iykyk

The Amps’ Pacer (1995)
Excellent noisy pop album, every song’s a hit! The production works really well with the style of songwriting. I also love the 33 minute and 15 second run time.

girl talk otm

ok, i'll say it. if you're a guy and you, in your heart, think of yourself as a "thwarted, sensitive young man" with a "teenage boy's blues", "beautiful, androgynous, too wounded to be threatening", you should consider whether you might possibly benefit from a blue pill made by Teva Pharmaceuticals with a lowercase "b" on the side.