Lana Del Rey

i mean i want to know HOW robert wyatt's "sea song" makes me FEEL, or at least why it captures and retains my attention. or indeed why LDR doesn't do this at all.

and the answer isn't just that the wyatt sounds "melancholy" or has a "swelling mellotron" or something. which is nearly as far as rock criticism will usually go in describing a piece of music. perhaps they would try to convey the dynamics of the song in a metaphorical way, which is valid. but it is still imprecise.

I can see the strength of that kind of criticism but I think it's alienating to most readers.

On another note…

P!tchf0rk prediction?

8.1

― piscesx, Thursday, January 26, 2012 5:08 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

5.9

― Meme Rogers (DL), Thursday, January 26, 2012 5:14 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Lana Del Rey
Born to Die
Interscope; 2012
By
Lindsay Zoladz
January 30, 2012
5.5

Because Rob was first? And the format wasn't hackneyed at that time?

Except that most pop music (wide definition of the term here) is not really complex enough to make that kind of analysis particularly interesting or appealing or worthwhile, certainly not as far as LDR is concerned.

Actually if critics did care about this stuff as much as the care about other things it would have completely altered the underlying structure of pop music decades ago.

Except that most pop music (wide definition of the term here) is not really complex enough to make that kind of analysis particularly interesting or appealing or worthwhile, certainly not as far as LDR is concerned.

i very very strongly disagree. good pop music isn't "simple", it's just complex in different ways from the mahler. i sincerely believe that. i'd read a formal analysis of the cookies' "take good care of my baby" as soon as i'd read an analysis of the kindertotenlieder. it's just that nobody wants to write the former!!!

as for LDR, yeah, i imagine any analysis would be pretty concise. and might have to explain to me how it is so fucking boring. :)

I think this is done all the time in dance music writing, it just doesn't resemble traditional musicology.

That's why I was surprised by shakey's quote.

Heaps of dance music criticism gets very specific about the rhythmic effects, the production techniques, the kind of synthesisers used, the deliberate use of bpms etc. etc.

tim, can you point me to an example. i don't read dance music writing. that sounds exciting TBH. dance music fans seem more amenable to thinking about their favorite genre in formal terms.

to follow up on previous post, i'd read in a heartbeat an essay that simply described and analyze how the different melodies and counter-melodies in "cry me a river" (the j.t./timbaland record) thread through the record, and how they provide patterns of sameness and difference, convergence and divergence, etc. our brains enjoy a pop song's complex mix of familiarity and newness, and describing how that works in a dynamic process over 3 or 4 minutes is a totally admirable and worthy endeavor. that nobody seems interested in doing. :(

Do you think that's because most people aren't interested in reading it? Not being snarky - it just seems like a niche approach.

And growing up I found a lot of that criticism afflicted by what I would call an emotive paucity, excellent descriptions of what the music sounded like and in one sense how it functions, but so myopically focused that it failed or never bothered to connected that functioning to bigger picture concerns in any manner beyond the rote.

xx-post - it's not really that exciting most of the time!

that nobody seems interested in doing. :(

isn't it more that few rock critics have the skills to do it?

i'd be totally interested in reading essays from that perspective - as i've said before here, even offhand comments along those lines on sundry pop songs from people like DJP or K8 can be v enlightening.

i don't have anything like the background or training for it but even my very very basic knowledge of music theory seems to be more than a lot of rock critics - the number of times i see musical terms misused, ouch.

Do you think that's because most people aren't interested in reading it? Not being snarky - it just seems like a niche approach.

i don't know about that! i've never heard that mahler piece but the para amateurist quoted immediately made me want to.

as tim said taking this approach doesn't have to mean taking this approach exclusively.

many xposts

lex, exactly -- few are qualified to do it. and thanks for making my point for me: i'm not asking that everybody do this sort of thing. just that it would be kind of useful and fun to have it as part of the dialogue. to open up a little space in pop music criticism for formal analysis (and not just fleeting observations but reasonably sustained analysis).

And growing up I found a lot of that criticism afflicted by what I would call an emotive paucity, excellent descriptions of what the music sounded like and in one sense how it functions, but so myopically focused that it failed or never bothered to connected that functioning to bigger picture concerns in any manner beyond the rote.

well yeah that's terribly hard to do. we know so little about how and why music affects us emotionally. few people attempt to write about this let alone succeed. however musicologists have been trying. starting with the great leonard meyer. i don't think it's impossible. and even if you don't make the leap to emotion, there's a lot of interest (to me anyway) in just breaking down ... or reverse engineering, if you will ... the music and its formal patterning.

but yeah even within the academy this sort of thing is a niche. traditional musicologists aren't much interested in popular music, and those writing about popular music (aside from ethnomusicologists) are largely interested in pop music as a social phenomenon.

so maybe not many people want to read it. but that strikes me as a shame and probably symptomatic of what's traditionally been on offer. again, i'm not asking for a wholesale transformation in how pop music criticism is written, just a little space for something different.

Makes me think of this piece:

http://rougesfoam.blogspot.com/2009/06/loving-wonky.html

btw this book is not light reading but it is crazy awesome: http://www.amazon.com/Emotion-Meaning-Music-Phoenix-Books/dp/0226521397

there are a few books that have followed in its wake; just check the "people also bought..." list on the amazon page.

Of course this remains the gold standard for me:

http://www.garagemusic.co.uk/2step.html

I think as well that with a lot of today's music the good music criticism has already absorbed or created its own equivalent of formalist music criticism and anything more comes at the risk of being misapplied: rap of course is all about the grain of the voice, the texture of words and their juxtaposition and all those other things that get wrapped up in the idea of "flow" - "wrapped up", but also frequently unwrapped and broken down and debated in minutiae by fans as well as critics. e.g. to use an ILX home grown example, deej and jordan's 30 best gucci mane tracks of 2008.

for me at least, the dance music equivalent of "flow" is "groove", and again I think a lot of music writing spends a huge amount of time trying to break down how this functions. I think I tend to be more allusive than formalist in my own approach but I think both methods can get you to the destination, capturing and pinpointing exactly what it is that leaps out at you and grabs hold of your heart or your hips in a way that at first seems almost beyond words.

i very very strongly disagree. good pop music isn't "simple", it's just complex in different ways from the mahler

I didn't say it was "simple", but no, 99% of pop music isn't as complex as Mahler. It doesn't really matter, because complexity is far from being the only virtue, I'm just questioning whether that level of analysis of LDR would be of interest to anyone really.

I think this guy writes about pop craft/composition in a really refreshing way: http://plaguehouse.blogspot.com/2010/08/madonnas-holiday.html and http://plaguehouse.blogspot.com/2010/11/hang-with-me-how-to-finish-song.html

Also the guy who does Pushing Ahead of the Dame frequently drops musicological science without being ostentatious or dry, eg:
http://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/absolute-beginners/

i dunno amateurist, i have actually had musical training, played trumpet for somewhere around 10 yrs & took theory classes in college, but I don't really think much of that stuff is necessarily applicable. There are certain times that i enjoy knowing say what a hemiola is, or find it useful in some manner or another, but the overarching goal of writing, it's fairly marginal stuff, because you're trying to communicate ideas to people who also are unlikely to have that knowledge, and really if they don't then it's probably not that interesting of a point anyway. its like needing to know klingon in order to enjoy star trek or something

I kind of think formalist music criticism (or at least its take-up) is hindered by the preciseness of the vocabulary. The gap is too huge so why bother.

Partly thinking that because I know amateurist is coming from a film background - which has a formalist tradition that is a lot less precise/dryer than musicological formalism. See something like this: http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2010/09/15/bond-vs-chan-jackie-shows-how-its-done/

My favourite reviews ever were Record Mirror's late 80s, concise-as-hell descriptions of the club tracks of the day.. many 'burbling bobblers' and 'squelchy parping' acid lines. It's easier to do this with more distinctive stuff of course.

I do hanker for some insight, especially regarding stuff I've yet to hear, as regarding 'how does this make me feel' and 'how does it make that happen'. This doesn't have to be musicological, indeed it can be pleasingly abstract and speculative, 'cause that's what you're dealing with.

waiting for pitchfork to disown lana & pan the fuck out of her album once they see light

― cuddles (the kid), Friday, September 16, 2011 11:48 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

P!tchf0rk prediction?

8.1

― piscesx, Thursday, January 26, 2012 12:08 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

5.9

― Meme Rogers (DL), Thursday, January 26, 2012 12:14 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the kid and DL get the prescience award i guess

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyk4sx8l3J1qano1po3_250.gif

never forget 01.30.12

XD

Personally I love thinking about pop music through the lens of theory/composition/arrangement/production etc. The gold standard for me is Alan W. Pollack's writing about The Beatles.

I wrote a few pieces where I tried to do the same thing -- one about Bowie's Life On Mars, one about The Zombies' Rose for Emily, and two about my own songs -- but I definitely struggled to make them accessible to a broad audience. Then again I was explicitly coming at it from the angle of compositional analysis rather than a broader "music crit" perspective.

This all just makes me think of the Beatles joking about how they were being praised for their use of aeolian cadences.

Oof on that pitchfork review. "Like a faked orgasm".

Again they mention her being critiqued on her appearance, and how i signifies sexism. Tbf, I think if a band came out that had a male who gave himself lip injections we'd hear the same kind of stuff.

But they were using aeolian cadences and it might be interesting to talk about them.

Like your Zombies analysis a lot, Steve!

@jesshopp Jessica Hopper
Funny how a lot of the Lana Del Rey review are more or less aesthetic slut-shaming, esp. when you isolate the critical phrases/language used
34 minutes ago via TweetDeck

@jesshopp Jessica Hopper
This attitude about her audacity, sexuality, trying too hard, coming on too strong, how cheap a ploy her looks/sound/lyrics are.
33 minutes ago via TweetDeck

aw sod em they gave Kanye a 10 and it's more like a 4 so what do they know. props to DL for his crystal ball skillz.

I've said this before but I would support jail for people who write about music but don't have a basic working knowledge of musical terminology - it's weird to me that people who within their own genre concerns would naturally say eg "don't write about [genre] unless you know a little about [genre]" zag into it's-all-subjective territory when the confines broaden

aw sod em they gave Kanye a 10 and it's more like a 4 so what do they know.

you were the one anticipating it!

Granted, I have not heard the album, but this is because I found the musical arrangement of "Video Games" so limp and off-putting, particularly when combined with such a blank vocal performance, that I felt no connection to the song and no desire to investigate her any further.

"Oof on that pitchfork review. "Like a faked orgasm"."

I don't think that's a bad call or necessarily laden with misogyny, since 1/2 of the album's lyrics are candyfloss lolita-inspired porn with a sophisticate sheen so it appeals to people who think they are above katy perry's whip cream shooting boobs.

'national anthem' has the line 'blurring the line between real and the fake' which is the most overtly telling lyric on the record. I realized this morning that I like this album for the exact same reason I liked watching the Hills.

i like harvilla a lot

as for LDR, yeah, i imagine any analysis would be pretty concise. and might have to explain to me how it is so fucking boring. :)

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Monday, January 30, 2012 5:08 AM (5 hours ago)

upthread there's a wide swath of ILX digging "video games", people with some pretty disparate tastes who tried to break down why the song is effective. it's weird to read your detailed breakdowns of what's wrong with music criticism when your repeated analysis of "video games" consists of "it's so boring!"

the cover posted above points out why the song is great, the chorus sounds bigger than everything else around it. the cover also highlights how the pleasurable frisson of the original track is derived from the disconnect between the words and the tone. married to a peppier track the irony in the words gets drained, however there's still a darkness to the chord progression - the shift at the end of "only worth living if somebody is loving you / baby now you do" is like a drop of blood in the water:

http://soundcloud.com/resistorsings/video-games

I suspect ppl who are hating on "video games" will get surprised when they enjoy somebody else's cover of it.

Intrigued by Jessica Hopper's response there. First time I heard the album I figured that the relentless sexual passivity and gaze-pandering would get her a rough ride from a lot of feminist critics but I guess the ferocity of the LDR-bashers has triggered a more complex response.

Great call by Harvilla re: Garbage's Milk. Been trying for ages to work out exactly which beats-and-strings 90s pop record Born to Die most reminded me of, and it's this. Also, his last paragraph is a way better take on the "we should be ashamed" idea than the one in the NYT.

can't read beyond him referring to james murphy as "the bard"

I don't think that's a bad call or necessarily laden with misogyny

Yeah, I meant it as, that's a pretty harsh review. I don't really scan for misogyny and I think most of the time it's another strawman.

i loved "milk"! yeah that is a good comparison, sound-wise if not nec the rest. "milk" was a real anomaly in garbage's discography though, whereas i feel the flaw of LDR's album is trying to stretch her shtick out to an unsustainable point

It's good. Very goofy and OTT in an early-P4k way but it suits his theme.

I think Harvilla gets closest to my own response in that I find even the crassest cliche overloads kind of endearing. Like National Anthem obviously isn't subtle social satire but the bluntness, the chintziness, the secondhand language, all serves to make its point brilliantly nonetheless.

accusing her of trolling is pretty accurate too

harvilla's review is good except for the part where he tries to force you to admit that this particular collection of cliches can't help but be appealing.

Tbf, I think if a band came out that had a male who gave himself lip injections we'd hear the same kind of stuff.

yeah, but we don't put the same social pressure on male pop stars to look surgically perfect. blaming female artists for subjecting themselves to what so many fans (male and female) demand strikes me as incredibly cruel.

harvilla piece is great

blaming female artists for subjecting themselves

esp when "blaming" = protracted convulsions of collective slut-shaming

someone please point out where it is argued that Lana Del Rey got lip injections because of fan demand...?

also have you seen Pete Burns lately?

But they were using aeolian cadences and it might be interesting to talk about them.

For sure; there's a lot more to say about The Beatles or whoever using this or that compositional device than just identifying it with a funky name and explaining it in dry music theory terms; e.g. who else has used the same device, how have they used it, does this particular usage satisfy or confound our expectations, etc. It's about making connections and highlighting those subtle bits of artfulness which an untrained listener might miss but could appreciate with a little guidance, the same as any kind of analysis. Discussions of quote music theory unquote may be off-putting because the terms sound really arcane and academic, but it's just music, it exists wherever music exists.

this is because I found the musical arrangement of "Video Games" so limp and off-putting, particularly when combined with such a blank vocal performance, that I felt no connection to the song and no desire to investigate her any further.

There's definitely something kind of alienating in the canned orchestation on the track; I think it's to do with the fact that on first blush they sound enough like real strings, and they're deployed in a stylistically-consistent way that references other music that would have used real strings, but they're synthesized. And then you wonder, am I meant to be convinced that these are real instruments? Or is the first-blush resemblance to real instruments, followed by the discovery on closer inspection of their fakeness, the whole point?

I remember cocking an eyebrow when I came across someone praising the song's "string arrangement." I mean I guess setting your keyboard to a string sound is a string arrangement. But I think it's kind of a microcosm of the question about to what extent the track, and LDR's persona, is meant to be an ironic performance. I've seen videos of the song being performed live with actual string players and it felt like there was a little less ambiguity to it, a little less room for irony or double meaning. Which is why I think the track is cool with a more straight-up video-gamey sound to it.

I seem to remember mocking the hyper hygiene of n'sync at one point in my life