the 1975

Nah I think it occasionally or judiciously deploys irony but the effect is more like a pastiche of samples utilized to create unstable meanings thru contrast, calling the whole thingironic though is way way off imo

I like many 1975 songs but the last song we reviewed just sounds like a sonic mess, regardless of the lyrics.

ok sure calling the entire song ironic is maybe needlessly imprecise, but certainly many parts of it, particularly the parts generating the most controversy, are ironic in the literal sense

the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.

I don’t think that’s what they’re doing in any of those examples

huh

Peak emo problems https://t.co/DK7JwOfeOv

— matty (@Truman_Black) August 17, 2018

"the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect."

I guess by that definition it's ironic, but on another level it seems almost painfully sincere

I thought we all learned after Daft Punk's Discovery that the question "are they being ironic or not" is a bad question to ask, because everyone has different notions about what the object of ironic treatment is. A lot of art employs ironic (or at least "knowing") gestures so as to express something sincerely felt.

I think any approach to Matt's lyrics here is helpfully informed by awareness of his lyrical approach in general, which was always a pastiche of quotations albeit in less obvious form:

"Your obsession with rocks and brown and fucking the whole town's a reflection on your mental health"

"I used to think you were cool and I believed you had a wonderful vision / But I soon found out you're a terrible friend and your mother's on the television"

"And why stay if you hate it so much? You think you're well cool / You just write about sex and killing yourself and how you hardly ever went to school"

(see also a slightly different take on "Me" - all things "Matt" has said but all of them in quotation marks. In those circumstances the title itself becomes subtly ironic)

All of the above lyrics are things people are saying back to Matt about himself, and he passes them on to the listener without framing or judgment, which in turn implies that there is some truth value to them - or, more precisely, I consider them to be Matt saying that any third party view of him probably has as much truth value as anything he might say on the topic ("truth is only hearsay") (the debut album could have been called "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I Am").

This is a thread that runs through pretty much all of the band's songs. In that light, I consider the pastiche of "Love It If We Made It" to be saying something quite different from "lol how could anyone think or say these things" - almost the opposite, in fact. The song is saying "these are things that people think and say and do and there is no answer to any of it." It's elegiac, and the only irony is in the delivery of that elegy in the sense of not explicitly spelling out what it's doing, in the same sense that Matt's earlier lyrics don't seek to draw attention to their own dialogic structures or the reasons for those structures.

(I added the comment about "Me" in parentheses at the end - obviously that song is not an example of what is described in the next paragraph, but is instead the opposite - Matt is relaying stuff he has said and is passing judgment on it)

^yes, great posts

i cant help but feel condescended to when im told im supposed to dislike this, like i cant make the cognitive leaps required without someone holding my hand to say (and it's bad that society is like this)

'actually it's about ethics in music journalism'

LMFAOOOOOOOK

I agree, the 1975 are basically rockstar letting kids murder prostitutes in grand theft auto

^^^a good example of irony btw

idk there is some bad faith arguing in this thread that isn’t coming from deej and is coming from a place of “disagreement expressed somewhat clunkily means you hate me” - and i’m saying that as a woman fwiw

also reminder that no one has to read any ilx thread ever

dag you ruined my four-consecutive-complaining-posts bingo

“Actually it’s about trying to own ppl online”

maura otm, heated differences of opinions about pop songs can feel like personal attacks, but that's not necessarily the place they are coming from.

the "personal attack" is in bringing something I wrote for a different website here -- by name, which means it is Googleable -- to call me a troll.

Fair. I think it's fine to discuss it, don't think we need to call each other trolls or insane because we disagree.

Insane Troll Posse

It probably would have been easier to ask the mods to googleproof your name than having a total meltdown across multiple threads

ffs lay off

given that I have never seen any evidence of moderators existing, let alone doing anything, in the several years I have posted here, that seems doubtful

Ban l0u1s jagg3r

see

this is what happens when u create a board full of ppl whose job it is is to have opinions.

everyone thinks their opinion is amazing
no-one listens to anyone
and no-one knows when to shut the fuck up

i could not give less of a fuck about any of this but the fact that someone would post under the same name on multiple websites that discuss the same topic and then act confused that those streams would cross is funny

yes, and believe me, I am thoroughly regretting that decision

you've never made any effort at all to be anonymous on ilx so like, i'm not sure what you were expecting?

I'm expecting that I can go about my day-to-day business without something I wrote on an entirely different site being dragged into a thread I have deliberately not been participating in, in order to pile onto it and call me a troll. this really doesn't seem like much to ask

idk, if i go somewhere else and post a bunch of bullshit as call all destroyer (idk if what you posted elsewhere is bullshit, i'm just saying) and ppl on ilx talk about it, don't i just have to roll with that?

katherine, why do you even care that a gaggle of doughy aging nerds have a different opinion than you about a band for teenagers writing the Pepe version of Say Anything’s “Admit It!”

katherine otm

Pieces of criticism get discussed and picked apart on here all the time and have since the beginning. I don't think that's so unusual. Not exactly sure why we'd be focusing only on Katherine's blurb when that feature had about 20 different critics chiming in.

It would be one thing if people just wanted to talk about the ideas in the article but thats not what seems to have happened. Dragging someone’s work into ilx in order to score poitns seems... vulgar

There seems to be tension here b/w a person’s identity as a music writer and as an ILX poster.

Presumably if k didn’t post here then specifically referring to her take in this thread would not be an issue?

I don’t think there’s ever been a hard and fast rule around that though.

Yeah, I've rarely seen a call for a regular poster to defend something they wrote elsewhere.

Probably only amongst the goon crew.

the issue is that I had previously not been posting in this thread, deliberately, out of deference to the people in it who seem to want an entirely positive discussion, which, fine, whatever, it isn't my thread. this is not trolling; it is in fact the opposite of trolling. if I wanted to troll I would have posted my review to the thread to kick the hornet's nest. but instead the hornet's nest was kicked for me anyway, turning an otherwise pleasant afternoon and evening to shit

It’s no consolation i’m sure but kicking hornets’ nests is the larger part of what ILM does.

see

this is what happens when u create a board full of ppl whose job it is is to have opinions.

everyone thinks their opinion is amazing
no-one listens to anyone
and no-one knows when to shut the fuck up

― Squeaky Fromage (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, August 16, 2018 10:09 PM (twenty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^

wld probably be best for everyone to wrap this up for now & collectively agree to not touch this thread for a few hours at least

I’m a little surprised ILM seems to love the 1975 this much that they’re kinda protected from critcisim. Love it if we made it doesn’t really seem like the kind of thing you lot would like—the social commentary seems a little on the nose and besides we live in an ocean of nonstop social and political commentary right now and do we really meed more stuff about trump in our music?

I’m not against it, I’m just not sure it is done successfully here

treeship, these are terrible posts. please reconsider

It would be one thing if people just wanted to talk about the ideas in the article but thats not what seems to have happened. Dragging someone’s work into ilx in order to score poitns seems... vulgar

― Trϵϵship, Thursday, August 16, 2018 10:30 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is not what happened u moonfaced simpleton

the link was literally shared by one of the co-authors, alfred soto lol

i engaged w [censored by the police]'s blurb bc i generally follow her ideas more than other posters on the board, no offense to alfred soto. i also engaged w. the ideas i didnt 'drag someone's work to ilx in order to score points' lmfao

this argument is insane, though to be clear, no one in this thread is

presumably if k didn’t post here then specifically referring to her take in this thread would not be an issue

Specifically referring to someone also not the same thing as specifically referring to someone along with a question to them with 'you' in it and a seeming presumption that they'll be reading

which turned out to be correct

iain's blurb basically admits that he can't enjoy the song because he spends too much time online -- this is not the band's fault

This is an interesting response but seems contradictory to Kevin's point that the awfulness is mainstream!

Again, the song reminds me of people who seek out awful abuse online to retweet it for commentary - it's really easy to see that there's a lot awful things out there, and that is worth talking about, it's the specific way to do so that I disagree with