'Sincerity' in Music

An eye-roller if ever there was one, right?

Right.

(This is an addendum of sorts to our latest discussion in the ‘dis hyped releases’ thread.)

At first glance, critiques of sincerity in music are similar to putdowns of authenticity in that they seek to right the wrongs (whether real or imagined) inflicted by decades of institutional rockism, the hobgoblin being an excessive or altogether misguided glorification of the ‘genuine’ artist, presumed to be at one with their art in a manner that purportedly bypasses artifice (mastering ‘real’ instruments, writing original songs, resisting ulterior commercial motives, exuding ‘soul’, etc.). As a corrective to this crude neo-Romantic view, which puts the creative genius on a marble pedestal and legitimizes a conception of aesthetics that ultimately gives little credence to the works themselves, deconstructing sincerity is a necessary gesture.

It seems fair to argue that a song is never more convincing by dint of the artist (or artists’) supposed sincerity, if only because one cannot know for certain what is truly ‘meant’ when a given piece of music comes into being. Artists themselves are often unsure as to the exact process that led them to fashion such and such a work, and even when they (think they) know what they’re doing, there is no guarantee that the audience will pick up on their intentions, including (somewhat perplexingly) when these are stated outright, whether in an accompanying explicative essay/interview or, more rarely, as part of the work itself.

But what if sincerity hinges upon the work of art? Is it then projected by the music itself, without immediate reference to its maker(s), or is belief in a given piece’s sincerity or insincerity a mere projection on the listener’s part? Or is this a false dichotomy, one that is, quite simply, silly and undeserving of our attention? Perhaps.

As a baseline, however, I’d like to posit these two simple observations, which may in fact be utterly bogus (I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this), but that don’t strike me as unreasonable per se: 1) when I dabble in creative work, I am usually able to distinguish between moments of sincerity, which genuinely feel like I am expressing something that is in tune with whatever it is I then happen to be feeling, and moments of insincerity, when I am clearly just going through the motions and latching on to formulaic bits of would-be inspiration that make me feel like I'm lying to myself (with the proviso that these ostensibly formulaic passages may turn out to be more valuable and interesting than the seemingly sincere ones in retrospect, once the work is ‘finished’, regardless of whether they were ‘meant’ or not), and 2) my state of mind, and hence my psychological experience of ‘sincerity’ (no matter how fleeting and minimal) during the creative process, is likely to leave a mark on the piece I am working on, which means that some measure of sincerity is potentially imprinted upon the work, and that said mark may subsequently and in theory be recognized as such by the listener/reader/viewer/spectator, etc.

Even if we allow this to be the case, these residual ‘fingerprints’ of sincerity are hardly a sign that the work is a success (whatever that means), so I don’t think they ought to be used as a critical sieve, to separate the chaff from the wheat. More importantly, they are so nebulous and transitory as to be quasi insignificant – hence the temptation to dismiss this whole line of inquiry from the outset. And yet…

…they are there, are they not?

I, for one, cannot rule this out completely. Setting aside, once again, the all-too fraught question of these traces’ aesthetic *value*, I don’t think it entirely senseless to speculate as to their existence, which is why spotting apparent moments of ‘insincerity’ while listening to a particular piece of music isn’t all that far-fetched a response, even though – and this is key – I may be (and no doubt am, most of the time) quite off when discriminating between the ‘truly’ sincere and the insincere within a single album, for instance. And this doesn’t even account for the somewhat paranoid yet not inconceivable scenario wherein all of these supposed traces of sincerity are parsed as insincere depending on who the listener is and/or what their current circumstances are, just as the artist’s spells of insincerity as they arise during the music-making process can all be ‘falsely’ interpreted as sincere, rendering communication all but moot.

So that’s a fuckton of caveats – might as well just let it all crumble, no?

I suspect that, in most cases, we spontaneously and no doubt cruelly go ‘this is bullshit’ when hearing music that sounds phoney to our ears, and leave it at that, just as we’re perfectly willing to go along with the fiction according to which the artist(s) is/are sincerely expressing something profound as long as the music charms us (perhaps our ephemeral, possibly insincere belief in this sincerity enhances our appreciation of the music, even). For professional music critics, who devote a considerable amount of time to figuring out what makes the work tick beyond these admittedly philistine intimations of ‘sincerity’ (or the lack thereof), this kind of talk can only be irritating, and I honestly sympathize. But the subjective judgment of amateurs has a limitless arsenal at its disposal, and I think it fair to include the problematic category of ‘sincerity’ therein.

So yeah, having just reread this, there are a few points I myself could easily quibble with, but I’ll let them stand as is and see what you make of this whole musical ‘sincerity’ business.

I generally don't think of making or listening to music in terms of expressing something that can be true or false, which is the only way the concept of "sincerity" makes sense to me.

Seems like Pam is getting at some concept of artistic truth, which would be different from factual truth. I take it to mean something that is the opposite of cutting corners to get a result. Did you spend the time crafting the Platonic ideal of whatever you are making or did you just roll with the first thing that kind of fit?

*Pom

Hm, that wasn't quite what I got from this:

moments of sincerity, which genuinely feel like I am expressing something that is in tune with whatever it is I then happen to be feeling, and moments of insincerity, when I am clearly just going through the motions and latching on to formulaic bits of would-be inspiration that make me feel like I'm lying to myself

I'm not saying it's a bad way to look at music, or that it doesn't work for a lot of people, btw.

Does this become more of a factor in music with lyrics and singing vs instrumentals?

Perhaps lyrics are a factor, perhaps not. If a musician is hired to play an instrumental piece they strongly dislike, for instance, might their distaste be audible, be it only as an underlying indifference towards the performance itself? Conversely, do musicians play ‘better’ or with ‘more feeling’ when they sincère believe in the value of the material they are playing?

(There are countless ways of approaching this particular problem, so think of my original post as spitballing more than anything.)

*sincerely

French autocorrect ftw

I think of authenticity and sincerity as poses, they're just as much part of performance as lyric composition and vocal delivery etc. They're one of many ways to provoke a reaction in a listener. There is plenty of music I love because I "believe" in its self-contained narrative construction, but there's also plenty of music that I love because of its artifice. The problem is that when music wants you to believe it is sincere and seems inauthentic, or when it wants you to be wowed by glamour and it fails to dazzle, that's when I switch off, but to use sincerity as the main measure of value is not always valid - sometimes a banger is just a banger that you want to hear go bang.

it might sort of be a thing but even then might be pretty much impossible to identify idk

the most obvious appearance of sincerity that comes to mind is one that is telegraphed by some element of the performance or in the structure of the work. when this fails for a listener is probably the most obvious appearance of insincerity. except for cases where an appearance of insincerity is the point in which case...

I still don’t understand what separates this from the whole authenticity debate it resembles at first glance

were the sex pistols being sincere about meaning it, man?

I think criticising music in terms of authenticity and sincerity is a dead-end and I've thought that since ILX got it fucking infinitely wrong about PC Music.

Where someone like Taylor Swift is open to criticism is in terms of arguably compromising her art for sales. A lot of major artists do this, of course, but making albums really long to maximise streaming plays and remaining decidedly risk-averse a majority* of the time are certainly two criticisms I'd squarely aim at her. I've called her 'dead-eyed' before, but that has more to do with what I've perceived as cheaply-bought catharsis. I'm sure it's still sincere but it feels condescending at times. Anyway, she's a Big Pop Artist, she can handle herself.

*her latest album bucks this now and then, thankfully, but it does require a bit of gold-panning

She made overlong albums before streaming era and her disapproval of streaming services is widely documented.

well I have no idea why her albums are so long then but it smacks of caring more about ubiquity than the art. at least when The 1975 do it it's to create a massive & kaleidoscopic experience

but this is the point: I wouldn't call it insincere

if you're a singer that isn't a recording artist, you spend your life singing many things you don't mean. I made $500 a caroling season singing a capella religious Christmas tunes despite being an Atheist. it was rewarding from a musical and financial standpoint.

it's also really easy to fake sincerity as a performer, it's practically a skill taught to most young performers when they're just starting

"Why do you say everything
As if you were a thief?
Like what you've stolen has no value
Like what you preach is far from belief?"

moments of sincerity, which genuinely feel like I am expressing something that is in tune with whatever it is I then happen to be feeling, and moments of insincerity, when I am clearly just going through the motions and latching on to formulaic bits of would-be inspiration that make me feel like I'm lying to myself

for me, I just love creating music and singing/etc, particularly in a choral context, even if the lyrics are about fucking a walrus. I miss it a shit ton right now - there are two breast cancer fundraisers my close friend puts on a year, and both had to be virtual this year, and that meant our 'choral' experiences were made by all submitting individual recordings. it's not the same.

even beyond singing though, I used to play guitar in a more public setting, and I could play a song I hated, but enjoy the actual act of forming the song, playing the instrument, putting my own stamp on it, despite hating the song.

Johnny Mathis will get through to us all eventually.

xp

So far the consensus appears to be that it's at best undetectable (which comes closest to my position), at worst a total red herring, which is fair and what I have often argued myself, but… it still feels like a bit of a cop-out to me, and maybe part of the reason why is because I've spent an inordinate amount of time listening to different recordings of single works of classical music and in some cases the performances *sounded* less affected (or, in some cases, would-be 'objective') than others, which gives off an imagined whiff of 'sincerity', no matter whether it matches the artist's own psychological experience, and on that basis it doesn't seem all that absurd to wonder about whether said experience can be communicated unto the performance/work. So while my verdict is 'probably not, no', I still find this to be a bit of a nagging question, whereas most of you appear to be comfortable with its complete dismissal, which is in many ways a sensible approach.

I still don’t understand what separates this from the whole authenticity debate it resembles at first glance

They overlap a great deal, no doubt about it, but authenticity covers a broader range of concerns, I think, including, say, charges of cultural appropriation (you can be very sincere about cribbing someone else's culture and get called 'inauthentic' by unsympathetic critics).

i often think of this scene from 5 Easy Pieces (though obv Nicholson is a total asshole here)

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

This fits better here than the dis hyped releases thread

Though it’s true, I typically cringe away from critique which is grounded in projecting onto the artist, especially in a context where one is not motivated to extend the artist the benefit of the doubt and doubly-especially when the projection goes to whether the artist is authentic or being sincere - I mean, positive projections are also usually a bad idea but at least more thought, and more content actually derived from the object of critique, tends to go into them.

― Tim F, Saturday, December 12, 2020 7:00 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I feel like there's this inherent trap though, I do agree with you in broad terms but the way culture and stan culture and the industry is so incredibly invested in the "intense personalization" unperson mentioned upthread, like christ there were practically explainers about Pete Davidson references on that Ariana Grande record, and I've read similar things about Swift like oooh massive shade to this ex boyfriend...I feel like you're constantly being told no this isn't up for interpretation - this is how X album is positioned in this star's life journey right now and here's x and x and x lyrics about it

So I get that projecting high school feelings on to a pop star's persona or your impression of them as a person isn't a great way - in the abstract - to judge art, it feels like a lot of things in late capitalism, it's basically made inescapable (like using Uber or something) by forces much bigger than you, but you're a dumb asshole if you do it

Another example more recent is Megan Thee Stallion, like maybe you can step it back in your own mind and not interpret it through the lense of the Tory Lanez incident but it's pretty hard to say people are dimwits for doing so when literally the entire coverage of the album is framed that way and then she does interviews about it and starts the album with a song about it

So I mean I think it's natural when albums are framed in these ways, as outgrowths of the life journey of famous people who we all feel a faslse sense of intimacy with because of social media, that people are going to judge the art based on their gut feeling about the sincerity of the person making it

Don't know if that makes sense

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Sunday, December 13, 2020 8:06 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

It is an overwhelming thing, sometimes, for me to grasp that in the eyes and ears of the consumer, the personal lives of these pop stars effectively intersects with their art as vividly as WWF wrestling, and yet these are "their actual lives" and not constructed fictions

― flamboyant goon tie included, Sunday, December 13, 2020 8:10 AM (fifty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Wrestling is a great comparison, that weird mix of the real person, the character they play, the scripted events and real events all intermingled

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Sunday, December 13, 2020 8:13 AM (fifty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

It is an overwhelming thing, sometimes, for me to grasp that in the eyes and ears of the consumer, the personal lives of these pop stars effectively intersects with their art as vividly as WWF wrestling, and yet these are "their actual lives" and not constructed fictions

If the major record labels still had any real power they could do what the Hollywood studios used to do in the 20s and 30s - pair off their young talent for publicity purposes and send them out on "dates" which would then be covered in the press. Of course the ubiquitous/atomized amateur surveillance network - artists' and celebrities' comings and goings being documented by fans in the moment wherever they happen to be - renders that impossible, too.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Sunday, December 13, 2020 8:57 AM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Pom I don't know what you look like irl but the past two days I can't shake the image of Linus looking for the The Great Pumpkin

lol, that's me!

are u trying to tell me that there are 2 canadian people who don't know each other irl

It's a big country, you know.

come on, what're ya talkin aboot

I'll let you in on a secret: our aboots are insincere, we're hamming it up for the US crowd.

I don't listen to music for emotional expression or whatever you would call the activity that could be done or experienced sincerely or not. One of the reasons I haven't watched films for like 25 years is that I find it impossible to avoid experiencing the art in those terms, and I dislike that. But I experience music in other registers, where emotions could be a side-effect but not at all the point.

the only way I could explain this would be in mathematical terms, like the relation between elementary things like the integers & abstract structures. while everything supervenes on the relations amongst the integers, one can experience the higher-level relations in non-reductive terms. the analogy here would be that emotional responses are like the integers & sincerity like a relation amongst the integers, but other modes of response are built on those objects & relations & have their own resonances. when I read musicians on their art it's these other modes I want to glimpse, and of course it's what I listen for.

otherwise I wouldn't know how to make sense of say James Brown at the Apollo.

wd u call music the sum of an infinite series then

no

Anyway, pursuant to "authenticity" and "sincerity"-- I think it's just a result of the compositional process, with the "composition" including an acknowledgement of the creator's assets, biography, and the context within which the work is created.

This is to say: any artist at any given time is not just "making work", but is also tasked with creating work that is attached to both their personhood, and the context (i.e. time and space) of its creation. Ives was writing some piano shit, but he was also "writing some piano shit while holding down a day job in insurance", and also "writing some piano shit that anticipated pomo theory, dovetailing with Satie's own ideas", and also "writing work that would be ignored immediately, but awarded the Pulitzer many years later".

The "authenticity" of Ives' music-- or Bach's, or Kate Bush's, or Taylor Swift's, or Bobby Shmurda's-- is tied to the biography and context. Sometimes the artist makes conscious compositional decisions to relate the work to their biography or the context of its creation (KB writing about her son, TS writing about an ex, Shmurda writing about crime). Other times an artist might seek to subvert this connection ("Jenny From The Block"). Other times an artist might blithely ignore biography and context, and allow the listener to make their own conclusions.

But yeah, I don't think it's possible to listen to music discretely removed from biography or context. I think that "sincerity" and "authenticity" are a little too ham-fisted as observations-- we all know TS is a rich white lady with tonnes of money who has done some extremely admirable things in her adult life and some other less-admirable things. How effectively does her new songs interact with context and her own personhood? How effective is she at achieving her goals? (which, to my mind, is the goal of any pop star: to create a massively saleable work that relies upon the capacity for the listener to project their own experiences on to the musical material).

And no, I don't know any of the other Canadian regulars on this board irl except Craig D. and sean; I met s1utsky at a party once, maybe twice

Sincerity is not an attribute inherent in an artwork, but a perception the spectator brings to it, and then projects back onto the artwork and maybe the artist. The artist may try various techniques to arouse this perception in their audience, or in rare cases might eschew it.

This topic made me think of Christgau's Bee Gees reviews; he criticizes Main Course for "an unpleasant tension between feigned soulfulness and transparent insincerity", but says of Children of the World, "their closed-system commitment to a robot aura renders embarrassing questions about whether they mean what they're singing irrelevant, which is good". So what is bad about the earlier album is that they are trying to hide insincerity, whereas a year later they have embraced it.

I don't think it's any less useful a critical yardstick than saying if a record "rocks" or not. Everyone will have their own judgement about it.

Iced Earth have a song that the guitarist (Jon Schaffer) wrote about a best friend growing up at the friend's mother's behest. It sounds like he wrote it in five minutes as an obligation:

"I had a friend many years ago
One tragic night he died
The saddest day of my life
For weeks and weeks I cried"

and it's a crowd favorite that usually ends shows

Recently I've started playing a LOT of viola, like, 2-3 hours a day. I'm learning Bach cello suites. Lillian Fuchs does some amazing recordings of them on the viola-- her performance of the notoriously unplayable 6th Cello Suite is sublime, and led to Pablo Casals to tell her that he preferred that particular suite on the viola, rather than the cello.

I started learning the 6th Cello Suite. There are two different viola adaptations of the work. One keeps it in the original key (D-major), and the other transposes it down a fifth (G-major). The possibility of playing the suite on gut strings (or wound gut strings) is not possible for me... my technique is not strong enough to wrangle the low responsiveness of these strings.

So, already, the authenticity of the performance is compromised-- not playing this 17th century work in the correct time period, nor the correct context, nor the correct instrument, nor (necessarily) the correct key, nor even with the correct strings.

The 6th Cello Suite, as noted by Anna Magdalena, was written mysteriously for a five-stringed instrument. Not strung like a gamba, but in open fifths, like what a transverse stringed player might call a "gran viol". But the range was distinctively "celloistic"-- so, what the fuck was this supposed to be played on?

About thirty years ago it was definitively determined that there was a 17th century instrument called a violoncello da spalla-- five strings, played like a viola, cello range. There are two manufacturers of this instrument, a weird life-coach-y Capitalist out of The Hague whose videos feel like odd motivational speeches, and a much-more-stock Baroque-for-the-people American grump who likes to talk shit about the Dutch guy. A Russian player has mastered it, and plays what we can effectively state is probably "THE" most "authentic" performance of the 6th Bach Cello Suite:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbH3JYfRjOQ

I listen to it and hear Malov's exquisitely tasteful (and authentic) ornaments in the Prelude. I hear his artistically divergent (and yet still authentic) decision to make the end of the Prelude plaintive, rather than triumphant. I note that the reverb on the recording is natural room reverb (authentic).

My own thirst for the most authentic experience with regards to this particular suite compels to send this video to any wealthy friend or relative in the hopes that one them takes pity on me and orders me a violoncello da spalla so that I may learn, and perform, this work. I have waking fantasies of being Tafelmusik's go-to performer of the spalla.

Anyway, all this is to say, Taylor Swift is a rich white lady who made an album

Clipping are another group who have often had 'theatre kid', 'insincere', 'not really very street are they' nonsense criticisms thrown at them, because they have a sonically expansive approach to hip-hop. There's nothing insincere about how or why they make their music though, or their belief in their art

Oh and there's another criticism of Taylor Swift right there - money is no object to her, but is she employing violoncello da spalla players on her records? Is she hell lol

I don't think of music as sincere - as if it was a person - but rather as convincing, which has much more to do with craft, including emotional craft. I assume that being a good artist requires sincerity and love and passion, just because of the lifetime dedication it requires, then again you might have a couple Nick Kyrgios for every 100 players, people who either hate themselves or the process, but I don't preoccupy myself with discovering those - the thought never ever touches me.

With that said, I do avoid "insincere" genres which would variously include, say, mawkish tearjerkers or PC music / 1000 gecs to name a few extreme examples. I am sure both the artists and fans genuinely find meaning in it, I just don't connect to it in any way so I pass. To the question of how to correctly describe this gap without presuming of the artist's intentions, well, it should be enough to say 'I cannot love you, you haven't engaged me' and it does not really matter in whom the fault lies (you, poor Taylor, the culture), the 'art dialogue' didn't happen.

If you're puzzled about this, maybe you should also be puzzled that no two person's tastes agree and align perfectly.

(in all seriousness, good luck in your quest! time for canada to rustle up another arts grant imo)

Taylor is employing Rob Moose as her string arranger and that's good enough for me, he's the best

Anyway, all this is to say, Taylor Swift is a rich white lady who made an album

Good posts, fgti. As you can see, it's all about the quest for the Great Pumpkin.

But this talk of playing Bach's 6th Cello Suite on a violoncello da spalla also goes to show that sincerity and authenticity do diverge on a conceptual level. Although drawn to a similarly unattainable goal, historically informed performances seem less quixotic than claims of being able to distinguish between sincerity and its opposite. HIP's tenets are clearly audible when put into practice.

Sincerity is not an attribute inherent in an artwork, but a perception the spectator brings to it, and then projects back onto the artwork and maybe the artist. The artist may try various techniques to arouse this perception in their audience, or in rare cases might eschew it.


not disagreeing but it seems kind of funny to be to discount the fact that investment in an artist personally, especially now, is how stans and hives are experiencing the music

in fact it's actually a pretty complex web of reading the music in the context of social media posts, IG stories, gossip reporting, interviews, a highly developed cast of cinematic universe characters relative to that particular artist (villain Scooter Braun, ex boyfriends, the Kardashians in the case of Kanye), fans are feel more intimate, more PERSONALLY connected to the artist then ever before

which, sure, that's an illusion, but it's pretty hard to say that sincerity or authenticity are gauche or dumb when there's an entire highly funded industry and social media infrastructure devoted to driving that into people's heads

and again and again many artists, say Cardi B, for example argue that it's not artifice, that she is who she says she is in the music, and you can watch her on IG live being that person in real life

some of these arguments, ancient Xgau takes, seem true in some ways but very outdated in others and purposely ignoring the massive sea changes in culture, media and technology that have taken place

Taylor is employing Rob Moose as her string arranger and that's good enough for me, he's the best

― flamboyant goon tie included, Sunday, 13 December 2020 15:50 (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

Oh good, haha. I *was* joking with the line about her not putting every unorthodox instrument imaginable on her albums, but equally I'd be curious to hear her push her arrangements further!

Iced Earth have a song that the guitarist (Jon Schaffer) wrote about a best friend growing up at the friend's mother's behest. It sounds like he wrote it in five minutes as an obligation:

"I had a friend many years ago
One tragic night he died
The saddest day of my life
For weeks and weeks I cried"

and it's a crowd favorite that usually ends shows

― Lover of Nixon (or LON for short) (Neanderthal), Sunday, December 13, 2020 4:35 PM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Some people find no deeper way to express themselves, and that's fine (if a little embarrassing). I was just asked this morning why we don't cry at burials and how cold it makes us seem, and the explanations I blurted about acceptation and inner sadness didn't seem very convincing to the person. Just different expectations and norms I guess. In that sense, how high do we reserve ourselves the right to set the bar in our expectations from an artist ? There is something a little unfair here: it's okay for me not to cry at my grandmother's ceremony, but on TV maybe we'd appear as a bunch of insensitive bastards.

Just different expectations and norms I guess.

For sure. I mean, paid mourning is a thing in some cultures.

I don't think it's possible to listen to music discretely removed from biography or context.

Of course it is. All of this discussion is centered on personality-driven music, which is to say, pop. (And some slightly more underground music as well, of course: Are the members of Cannibal Corpse sincere when they sing about mutilating women? I don't think so, but do you wish they were? On the other hand, I think GG Allin really was sincere about his performances. That sincerity did not improve or detract from the final product, which was largely determined by what he'd had for lunch before the show.)

Can you listen to the music of Autechre, or Roland Kayn, or even Philip Glass, free of biography or context, though? Absolutely. It's "organized sound," in Varèse's phrase. And what does "sincerity" mean when dealing with someone performing the music of a composer who's been dead for hundreds of years? Which of Glenn Gould's two versions of Bach's Goldberg Variations is more sincere?

Haha, you've met me briefly, fgti.

apparently he fgti about it

Only other contenders for most sincere band might be Minor Threat/Fugazi.

Low are pretty sincere.

have we gone full circle back to indie is real / pop is fake again

Tbf I don't think that view has ever carried much weight on ILM.

well, the whole PC Music fight came as the result of PC Music playing around with the idea of fakeness and artifice. grown adults acted like terrible babies when confronted with this, and ignored the sincere & exuberant musicality of the whole enterprise

I don't think anyone here is arguing that.

A lot of this comes down to recent arguments about a few artists, most notably TS and the 1975.

Rush are p indie tbf.

Feel like this question is some kind of Uncanny Valley Tar Baby of Bad Faith that should not be engaged with directly but only as reflected through a shield or projected through a hole in a paper plate. So many ways for music to be good that to worry about whether the artist is sincere or not seems to beg some kind of question.

otm

The scare quotes are there for a reason.

is this thread abt mj cole?

The scare quotes are there for a reason.

Thought Momus one time said something about Moronic Ironic Scare Quotes but all I could find was me attributing that to him.

This line of inquiry seems to have struck a nerve with you. Interesting.

Underneath the question seems to be some desire to go on a fool’s errand to find a Universal Sincerity Tester similar to a Theorem Proving Machine, like Gödel never happened. Euler (back) to thread!

Because I am not ‘sincere’ and don’t want anyone to know, but you’ve found me out, Encyclopedia Pom!

No, not at all, it's merely a nagging question that bears exploring, whether it yields a theorem or not (spoiler: it does not). I happen to find such things interesting. You seem to be offended by my finding such things interesting, which is… interesting.

xp

And I would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for this pesky thread!

Sorry. :(

I might find it annoying, yes, you’ve done it again, Holmes, because to me it’s own the order of Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?

But what do you really mean, Pom?

Determining whether someone is sincere or not in their art is self-evidently a pointless, nasty business, not worth engaging with on any level.

Being annoyed at musicians who do a weird bad impression of a sensitive guy without actually doing the work of trying to express anything, well, isn't that just a natural reaction?

^this!

Seems apropos:

i was literally a virgin when i wrote the heart in a blender song

— eve 6 feet under (@Eve6) December 18, 2020

Thanks, now I'll have that song stuck in my head for the next 48h.

RENDEZ-VOUS THEN I'M THROUGH WITH YOU

Tweet checks out.

I always connected with this tune and imagined it was pretty sincere without the quotes but I don’t know if I can expect much else to measure up to this standard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWn9ocrMhlE

It's a very good and very moving song that certainly *sounds* sincere and that's ultimately all that matters, yeah.

So that’s all it was about after all, and the rest of this thread was just a kooky dream?

Maybe, maybe not. No one's forcing you to play these speculative games if you don't find them enjoyable, you know.

I mean, I also get a kick out of theological discussions despite my being a nonbeliever.

What about this one?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D0nMzHjMR8

Perhaps. It clearly seems to be aiming for it fwiw.

This one?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftOCvwrygCI

Is sincere synonymous with confessional?

Is this sincere?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lxp7WVXiXU

The confessional tends to aspire towards the sincere but the sincere doesn't need to be confessional.

What if someone’s being sincerely ironic, or arch? (Sorry, I haven’t read the whole thread.)

Ay, therein lies the rub.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EExWrybama8

How about this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU8T7oY0iO8

Just a notch below this one of the scale of sincerity:

just in case there was a demand for an acoustic cover of "I Kill Everything I Fuck"

So sincerity and vulgarity are not exclusive?

Came across this, which might be relevant:

There is a powerful urge to treat performance as a form of autobiography, and since most love songs, in particular, are part of a long chain of melancholy, they are often interpreted as expressions of pain by the singer in question. Even when the same song is sung by dozens of different performers, one of them is usually singled out as the most authentic, often the one who is believed to have lived the song most fully. Holiday understood this inclination better than others, and as she grew older, she seemed consciously to choose songs that underlined what she had become for many: Our Lady of Sorrows.

Racism, drug and alcohol abuse, and the brutality of some of the men in her life were sufficient to justify her mournful repertoire and a style that reinforced it. But suffering and pain are neither necessary nor sufficient to produce a great artist. Holiday was the singer she was because she knew how to rise above the easy pathos of so many of the songs that came her way and to bring a dignity, depth, and grandeur to her performances that went far beyond simply displaying the bruises she suffered.

Szwed, John. Billie Holiday (p. 3). Penguin Publishing Group.

Interesting, thanks. That's partly what I was trying to get at with my Shostakovich/Beethoven Quartet anecdote upthread.

See the quote at the end of the first paragraph here: https://reader.exacteditions.com/issues/35016/page/37

"I've found that sometimes when you start doing very purified structural things you get really emotional music," Sheff observes. "It's curious and it happens all the time. On the other hand, when you start doing emotional things it can bring in all your habits and not make a very interesting structure."

If this thread were "Sincerity: classic or dud", I'd have gone with dud. It's too rudimentary a way to approach art. Maybe that's a function of my having become a music lover in the early 1980s, when the artifice of pop was as much its subject as concrete things like boys & cars.

That "Blue" Gene Tyranny quote reminds me of a famous André Gide quip: 'C'est avec les bons sentiments qu'on fait de la mauvaise littérature'. It's not so much a denial of the possibility of instilling so much as an ounce of sincerity into the work (which remains a valid hypothesis) as a creative rejection of it.

See also: T. S. Eliot's contention that 'Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.' Except, of course, he snarkily added that 'only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things'. While 'sincerity' is something that the artist is tasked with resisting, there must be something there to resist.

Was ABBA 'sincere'?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS2lWkn4g9g