Should Musicians Criticise Their Own Music?

Me too. In fact, I think my favoring of this perspective might be why 90% of my lyrics are in second-person, so as to help me stay objective about my own output.

Of course, the way I "write" is more like "channeling" outside sources & energies (how hippy is that?) than it is an expression of my"self" or my opinions, for the most part.

I think, if a musician can't criticize their own work, it seems to imply that they find what they're doing is already as good as it could be, and therefore come off as though there's nothing left for them to learn or any growth for them as musicians. Something like that.

In the case of Oasis, it's just plain honesty. :D

a thread whose premise is interesting, linked from the "albums disowned by their creators" thread by the pinefox & worthy of another look

I think (and this is coming off a recent thing where I explained where a line break was in a Joan Crawford song and a small but passionate number of Crawfordites were stunned because they'd been listening to it another way -- a way which makes, to my ear, almost no sense at all) that people, especially young ones, tend to run a rather long way with the idea that an artist's view of their own work isn't definitive. which: it isn't! there are plenty of examples of artists thinking less of their best-loved work and more of their less-heard work, and that seems natural and obvious to me: what an artist will enjoy in their own work is, I think, almost obviously going to be something different from what the audience will enjoy. but I find an artist's view on what's good in their work, what works and what doesn't, what sounds good or bad -- interesting; and I think there's a lot of cold-facts stuff that leads to truer, better readings (e,g,, knowing the circumstances surrounding the recording and release of Pink Moon helps us understand the record better; this does not seem like an odd or extravagant claim to me).

We live in a time when artists who hold noxious opinions are rightly held to account for them, and when artists' noxious behavior leads many to reevaluate their relationship to the work; "how do you think about artists' opinions of their work" seems a question worth looking at anew, maybe?

do you have any examples of problematic artists that have dismissed some of their work? or albums where the artist remains proud of them? hearing anything from Rumours, particularly one with a Lindsey vocal, in any kind of positive, empowering, or inspirational bit in a movie or commercial or tv show always makes me nauseated, considering what he did to carol ann harris. but i'm not sure that's what you're asking. and yeah i absolutely agree that it's important & often insightful to weigh both your own opinion of the work & the artist's, and the circumstances under which it was made. Songs: Ohia's "Farewell Transmission" certainly becomes more powerful and enthralling once you learn that it was recorded in one take with no rehearsals featuring players that learned the chords moments before the tape started running.

another one your post made me think of - Neil Young's contract protest with Geffen in the early 80s that resulted in Trans & Everybody's Rockin - a righteous troll that produced at the very least two fairly interesting curios from an important career/legacy artist. is that muddied by Neil's increasingly blatant hucksterism & money-grabbing (particularly that photo of him & Trump)

do you have any examples of problematic artists that have dismissed some of their work?

glassjaw have disowned their first album bc of how misogynistic it is

Beastie Boys apologized for their early career

Tori Amos joked that boys for pele would be hard to listen to now, which is fine because her break up threw her into a super low point. I started a thread on artists who accurately dismissed their work but this one seems fine. In that thread I posted the example of Lana no longer singing "he hit me and it felt like a kiss" as that was an abusive relationship she wanted to move on from

do you have any examples of problematic artists that have dismissed some of their work?

I wasn't really thinking about problematic stuff generally except to draw a parallel -- culturally we are, at present, very interested how the way artists treat other people leads us to listen to/watch/read their work, for sure. I'm wondering whether we might also reexamine the question of how artists view/read/think about their own work and ask whether it's more interesting than it was in the go-go Barthesian 80s

I liked the line in question the way it was just fine - very much in fact- and feel that you have taken something from me.

xp personally i've always sought out as much information as possible about the circumstances & context of the work in addition to the artist's opinions/assessment of it. but only to supplement my own enjoyment & interpretation of the work, usually after I've listened to or watched or read the thing so much that I feel that superfan need to dig deeper. and in the end make up my own mind. it's really valuable and important imo- because then you might gain some insight on their general work habits / state of mind that could inform other parts of their body of work.

I feel like a lot of contemporary musicians could learn a lot from the adage, "You are your own worst critic."