"Unearned emotion"

but if you switch it away from sorrow to larfter, i think a crit of "unearned hilarity" will read (of course i find everything funn,y but then i'm a full-on girl-who-loves-too-much)

I think people use this term with music because -- as with, let's say, poetry -- it seems as if a lot of artists think the point is to just emote, emote, emote, as if there's no question of whether the listener will be drawn in or involved in that emoting. Artists who do this tend to really take in those people who are already disposed toward their particular sort of emoting, but to really put off everyone else -- people who may well have enjoyed that drama if only it'd been explained to them why they should care. Hence the stage analogy: we can all appreciate melodrama, but on some level we have to be shown something in the characters (over an hour or over three minutes) that leads us to care.

(Make of that what you will.)

[1] (as I recall -- it's been 8 years since I read it)

so does anyone have examples of songs which have this quality?

ie a fancy way of saying you don't like something.

this also asks the question of whether current tides of pop appeal more because 'the people' are more predisposed to their emotive contents (sketchy term alert) or because the songs are crafted to draw a larger crowd in. or perhaps this is just tenuous framework.

Well, it kind of does. Of Rosalind, he says, "She hath forsworn to love, and in that vow / Do I live dead, that live to tell it now". You can see the contrast between the beginning and end of the play as unearned emotion vs. earned emotion.

Like say look at "people = shit" by slipknot. Are they trying to "earn" their anger or are they just putting it out there? And do they WANT to draw you in or repulse you -- or is it precisely the idea of plain undirected anger as being generally socially repulsive that they want to use to draw their audience in?

I guess I also dislike the phrase because it seems so arrogant -- like who's the abiter who gets to decide when emotion is "earned" or not or does the very fact of its existance justify itself. AKA do we listen for artists like ourselves, or because we are drawn to the foriegnness?

There's something pretty anti-rockist about where I'm going, I think.

Also it's well and good to point out other uses of emotion in art but when it comes down to it no one says "unearned emotion" about Brecht: it's really only handy to describe things where you're reasonably sure the artist is shooting for a traditional dramatic-involvement effect.

but remember the track is supposed to be dropped into a dj set.

You're right, the context of a set might shift it a little but I imagine it might still bug me: that breakdown is so "aww shucks give me a hug" that I sort of want, like, one of those three-minute trance snare rolls to lead me into it. Further metaphor for "unearned emotion" in this particular case -- too many shots of the victorious planting of the flag, not enough shots of the climbing of the mountain.