QT - Hey QT

Any opinions about this? It's suddenly everywhere. I've been playing it on repeat for two days, still not sure if it's going to be anything special in the long run, but there's *something* there, and I don't think it's camp or irony.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6_ikWlJu_0

this may be relevant to yr interests. We've been hotly debating it's authenticity.

♥☮☯♫ PC MUSIC ♫☯☮♥ ☺☺☺ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°✌

XL has its own Vengaboys!

this may be relevant to yr interests. We've been hotly debating it's authenticity.

♥☮☯♫ PC MUSIC ♫☯☮♥ ☺☺☺ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°✌

yeah, everyone seems to be annoyed at it for being postmodern / art-studenty / deliberately bad but I'm not hearing any of that & really don't give a shit about authenticity, especially in pop music.

The live performance

Demonstrating QT is Hannah Diamond, pitched up

omg that live performance is heinous, especially the five-minute spoken intro. how can y'all actually pretend there is no irony involved here? audience unsurprisingly = 3 people in the front dancing while everyone else just kind of stares blankly wondering why this is what their pitchfork overlords have placed before them, occasionally giggling

Pitched down version is slightly more tolerable.

Had I been there, four would have danced.

And what the fuck is wrong with a bit of metatextuality? I'm not the one hating fun here

N/A, scrap the Aphex Twin pre-covers project, it's too ironic

yeah yr right i hate fun, ya got me

a fake energy drink, fake popstar performer, and song subject all named qt w/ some sub-robyn 'organic meets synthetic for an optimal club experience!!' bullshit = metatextual

haven't been following the discourse so maybe this is a profoundly redundant thing to say, but there's something very indie-pop about the vocal performance and the tune too for that matter.

I love this song esp when the beat kicks in and I WISH I would hear it everywhere bcz the only time I have ever heard it is when I play it myself

i think i share this opinion:

if this worthless shite was comparable to aqua it might actually succeed as actual pop rather than this contemptuous parodic approach

― lex pretend

i think i share this opinion:

if this worthless shite was comparable to aqua it might actually succeed as actual pop rather than this contemptuous parodic approach

― lex pretend

I enjoy it as much as I enjoy Aqua, which is quite a bit. Think "contemptuous" is reading way too much into it. Seems like people are annoyed with it for having a silly concept, but many many great things in the world have silly conceptual design.

more like poopee - hey poopee

song is fine but people sharing it / defending it / dialing it up on youtube at parties etc. are the worst.

it's a pretty good nrg hook. the verse is terrible. agree with lex about the vileness of this mode of pop appreciation, it isn't contemptuousness rly it's just so extremely received boring and predictable, where the stupid boundary is for this kind of thing, it shifts a little bit with each passing year, soo mindless! it's just incredibly stupid imo, that stupid lyric, basically acceptable misogyny, the opposite of what so many freestyle jams or w/e were, soulful maybe a little derivative, the contrast between the synths and the feeling. ok i've talked myself from not caring to hating this *clicks submit post*

"white people enjoying their own assholes*

some british variation or other

http://www.fwweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/gas-price-1024x682.jpg

..and of course there's this...

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/26333907/Pieces+of+a+Dream+QT.jpg

Hey QT!

yeah?

http://patdollard.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/quiktrip.jpg

that's what i get for having images off

would love* imago to explain the metatext in this that he appreciates so much. what does he think it is teaching him about pop.

*not really love

There's no mind-expanding epiphany there at all, but the metatext is that these are some people consciously playing at pop, acting it out from an external position, and somehow (imo) making something that bangs

'basically acceptable misogyny' is a whopping great call, though

as in, defend it now, pls

but the metatext is that these are some people consciously playing at pop, acting it out from an external position

why is this better or more interesting than pop that's sold as non-metatextual? why is the external position interesting? what does "consciously" playing at pop mean? are ariana grande or britney spears unconsciously playing at pop?

i'm not saying ariana grande or britney spears don't stir similar feelings in me! iirc both have done some stuff i've really liked & given me the sense that, um, 'i got a plan'. it's not an either/or

i'm not saying i like stuff more if it uses slightly tweaked tropes to 'play at' pop but i do enjoy hearing musical ideals approached from new angles, and this is not quite like anything i've heard before, it's their spin on it. i dig that.

haven't been following the discourse so maybe this is a profoundly redundant thing to say, but there's something very indie-pop about the vocal performance and the tune too for that matter.

― john wahey (NickB), Sunday, September 14, 2014 7:30 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is an impt post itt tho & key to the enmity imo

yes, you got us, we all hate indie pop

all abt context

blogdeth vaporwave

Am totally playing Hannah Diamond and GFOTY out in my next indiepop set fwiw.

The pitched-down version is kinda cute in a Sputniko! kinda way.

But jesus christ I couldn't make it through 30 seconds of the original.

Wow, though, people reading so much emotion or intent into something so... nothing. But I guess that's the point?

Like, it's the kinda thing I'd dance to at the Windmill with a dozen people on a Monday night. But being released on XL is just... what? Why.

the pitched-down version is definitely way more palatable

http://media.merchantcircle.com/33258165/Overflowing%20Dumpster%20pic1_full.jpeg

Plenty of 'pop stars', from the more leftfield (Naomi Elizabeth, Freezepop etc) to the more commercial (Tomoko Kawase, etc) have a similar kind of quasi-ironic distance / outsider perspective while making good-to-great music. As a performance art piece (which this at least partly is) it's not very interesting. As a song it's ok.

For some reason, the little "flash in the sky" special effect strikes me as the most contemptuous moment on this.

the accent too

So I suppose it's up to me to try to defend it, nobody else seems keen. What I like most about it is those synth sounds - it's like they've taken that witch house drone and pulled it into a futuristic j-pop shape, but you can still hear it there, and it's sort of odd and thrilling. When the chorus kicks in and it all rushes in at once it's incredible (on decent headphones at least, it disappears completely when I listen to it through computer speakers) - it just sounds new and intense in all the right ways. The vocal reminds me of Oh My Gosh by Basement Jaxx, but with this (again J-pop) android vocal processing - it sounds human and alien, innocent and sexual all at the same time. I can see how it could be annoying, but it's like that for a reason. The idea that it's condescending seems misleading as, while it may well be non-pop people playing at being pop (1) nobody owns pop and (2) everyone I know who's connecting with it is doing so in a genuine "I love this" way rather than the ironic "pitchfork overlords" fashion patronisingly assumed above.

It sounds super retro to me, which isn't really a problem, but the future / nowness element is passing me by completely. It's like a pastiche of early 90s J-pop.

One of the reasons this song is so great is because of all the haters, none of whom are remotely close to nailing it.

This is what we call sub-Raccoon Tanuki reasoning.

liking a song metatextually or something, presumably if we'd kept our mouths shut there'd be nothing to enjoy

Well you've certainly not kept your mouth shut Lex. You've made the same "leave Britney alone" argument about how contemptuously anti-pop it is about five times over two threads on ILM and elsewhere on the internet too.

*farts*

For the record, people reppin for BIPP should've seen this coming tho.

i intend to make people feel bad for enjoying this song

― emo canon in twee major (BradNelson), Tuesday, September 16, 2014 10:08 AM Bookmark

same

For the record, people reppin for BIPP should've seen this coming tho.

this is true and unfortunate :\

brad, do u see me coming n shitting up the 1975 thread? play fair pls

besides steely dan is there fake pop that's even good

i always think, why don't you just try to do this actually, or are you not good enough at it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXGXDmtW4Zg

lol i meant the remix

anyway that wasn't a 100% srs answer. wtf is 'fake' anyway

My favorite fake pop act is Du Jour.

i always think, why don't you just try to do this actually, or are you not good enough at it?

― goole, Tuesday, September 16, 2014 1:54 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Who do you think this about other than QT?

hey hey hey, bim's on the way

no one is "shitting up" this thread; if you want a dedicated thread for only positive remarks about an artist you can make one yourself

cool ok well you'll be seeing a lot more of me on the threads of bands you all like that I think are trash, k

it is kind of wonderful how annoyed the pop authenticity brigade have gotten tho, it's like this music has rly hit a nerve. good

you are deeply confused.

K-pop (2014)

no posts from imago hmmm maybe somehow i can begin fathom the depths of his ignorance

idek if 'authenticity' is really my issue but then again i have difficulty putting my finger on it

in either case even if all the pretentious cabbage were trimmed away the song would still be pretty substandard compared to others of its ilk

i said some very very nice things abt the k-pop in the 2013 year-end ballot tbf, just never know where to start. might check some out!

was it 'pink tape'? that was awesome

authenticity is not my issue; my issue is contempt.

lol these threads are still funny. There's a soft rule that if an artist gets their own thread outside of a rolling thread, people will be having a dumb, protracted argument inside, whereas the rolling threads are for grunts and humphs and other semi-intelligible murmurs. people won't really miss your contingency of the creative class.

song's ok pitched down, but the song's beside the point of the thread at this point. Who knew it was ironic or conceptual until ppl started 6/10ing it and making other important, not at all ephemeral contributions to music criticism?

cool ok well you'll be seeing a lot more of me on the threads of bands you all like that I think are trash, k

― imago, Tuesday, September 16, 2014 6:48 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

when did you become such a baby?

also, this song is so transparently someone's idea of a postmodern art project i can't even really get bothered by it.

always rolled infantile, difference is i'm not actually going to carry out that threat nowadays ffs, life's far too short

bottom line hey qt has been stuck in my head at times, w/e

got nothing really to add to the engaging discussion itt, but would be interested to know if the people hating on this feel similarly towards 'Bipp'? feels like that song has something a bit more substantive / less lightweight about it than this'n and is possibly less reducible to a postmodern prank as a result? but as bamcquern intimates, i can't really even tell if the argument is about the music or the attitude behind it or both at this point

This song is anything but postmodern or metatextual or however you feel it needs to justify its existence, it's just a hella catchy/annoying sweet song that's just tweaked enough to piss you off or to make you go gaga for it, it's very well pitched (up) for that and as such is pretty of-its-time. The entire point of the PC Music thing is making everything as hyper-synthetic and borderline unreal/unhuman as possible, teetering on uncanny... why would anyone need a pitched-down version?

The sound palette of AG Cook etc is so consistent over all the PCM output I just don't buy the contemptuous, sneering anti-pop angle.

cmon man you cannot sit here and tell me straight up that there's nothing metatextual going on with this

xxp also there's the fact that "Bipp" wasn't framed as a postmodern prank

Are we able to seperate the packaging (which I don't particularly care about) and the music? - seems like people are just talking about one or the other.

we could but that doesn't seem to be in keeping with the spirit of this stuff

i mean this song is terrible as a song, it's poorly produced and lazy as hell, so i'm going to need something else to go on.

i don't feel similarly toward "bipp" for reasons that rev sums up deftly. really loved that song when i first heard it and still get into when i hear it.

never liked "bipp", thought it was awkward and tinny, never heard it enough to hate it as music beyond bafflement that people preferred it to "nothing more to say"

even apart from the framing "hey qt" is bollocks though. bad pop, shrill and annoying, as pure music doesn't work on any level really

I can't believe this song has generated even this much discussion

How long have you been on ILX, Dan?

lol

touche

The entire point of the PC Music thing is making everything as hyper-synthetic and borderline unreal/unhuman as possible, teetering on uncanny

have you heard Invincible?

I don't love "Bipp" but it is an interesting curio.

have you heard Invincible?

― goole, Wednesday, September 17, 2014 8:17 PM (2 hours ago)

Nope, link me up!

i was shocked to hear this on pop radio here in FL, USA last night. it was during a friday night euro dance thing, but still.

!!!

hey qt

no

Yeah?

best song of all time

there's something I want to say

yeah?

i had no idea this was so contentious on ILM.

i don't think it is a parody of pop music or whatever lex was saying. i think it is a song that is interested in the way songs can be commodities, and how commodities -- ideally -- have a kind of effervescent unreality. but it's not really trying to take the next step and draw out a sinister dimension to this sort of alienation like vaporwave or something.

bipp is still fantastic this not so much

Thread = weird. Song = awesome.

agreed w/ ufo, + i think "bipp" is what accomplishes what treeship refers to rather than "qt"