OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

i think charles manson has been successfully cancelled

she is still straight up playing Gary Glitter songs

FREE MIKE LEANDER

wait, Paul McCartney hasn't played She's Leaving Home since 2003, maybe Mike Leander is cancelled (even more so than cancered)

WTF @ this “cancelled” bullshit.

You know who else's early branding would be considered offensive by today's standards? pic.twitter.com/7bGFZTu4vT

— Jeremy Gordon (@jeremypgordon) November 18, 2018

....... vice isn't exactly virtuous!!

Sadly, Dos & Don'ts Have Been Problematic This Whole Time

It is a really fascinating irony

Wonder if that links to a broader problem: as all culture is mongrel, you can't criticise cultural appropriation from a position of innocence

why ppl in the west have always been drawn to classical antiquity revivals, positioning themselves as new athenses/romes iirc

ftr i wasn't trying to be sarcastic i was just making a dumb joke. vice is actively racist trash that is a lot more than 'compromised like we all are' or whatever. cultural exploitation is lame. arguments in defense of it sound like trickle-down economics to me. that being said i don't really want to read an article about gwen stefani doing it written by a newly woke twenty-something for vice dot com but best of luck to that person u no.

We're going to fight like fuck to have Gwen Stefani recognised as problematic.

What the hell is this, from LA Weekly

Blackbear is more than just a musician. He is one of the most talented, hard-working, dedicated and strong artists to enter the studio. Aside from his ability to create hit records seemingly effortlessly, it’s his real-life experiences battling anxiety and substance abuse that he bravely recounts through his lyrics. Records like “Anxiety” and “If I Could I Would Feel Nothing” give hope and strength, allowing his growing fan base to not only relate but to find comfort.

Real name Matthew Musto celebrates many successes, including three independent albums and sold-out shows across the world. In 2017, he landed his first placement on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Do Re Mi” from Digital Druglord, with the remix featuring Gucci Mane accumulating 88 million views on YouTube and counting.

Now at 27 years old and in the best headspace he’s been in for a long time, Blackbear plans to take his already flourishing career to the next level. With his forthcoming project titled Anonymous coming on Valentine’s Day, fans can look forward to some of his best work yet

I guess LA Weekly is the one that was bought out by a secret ownership group and they fired all the writers? It shows.

Now at 27 years old and in the best headspace he’s been in for a long time,

is the writer his therapist?

Reads like a copy-paste job from a PR kit, and probably is.

Signed: Matthew T. Musto.

Real name Matthew Musto celebrates many successes

I guess LA Weekly is the one that was bought out by a secret ownership group and they fired all the writers? It shows.

Yes, they recently appointed a new PR guy who immediately put another of his own businesses on the cover.

same writer

Poppy is a surreal yet intriguing artist. One look at her Instagram, which boasts an impressive 770,000 followers, and willing participants are sucked into a wormhole. Aside from the damn near perfect still photos, her page contains videos that will have you screaming “Who is Poppy?” and wanting to know more.

The artist, real name Moriah Rose Pereira, is a one-off who sings, dances and creates art on the daily. The welcome page of her website reads, “Are you ready for your salvation?” With statements like “Robots are going to take over the world,” this divine creature is intriguing.

lmao ^^

"is a one-off" ?

unique, broke the mold, etc

surreal yet intriguing

xpost: is that a generally accepted definition of "one-off"?

honestly, that LAWeekly is publishing stuff like Keyes posted is super sad. guess i should pitch in on that thing Jeff Weiss (and others, I'm sure) has been pushing on Twitter.

speaking of la weekly

Discovered tonight that a critic who was "dragged" a few years ago for writing a sexist column has rebranded as an explicitly conservative writer (but not MAGA, of course) -- amazing to witness a grift hatch in real-time

— Jeremy Gordon (@jeremypgordon) November 27, 2018

I don't want to bag on the LA Weekly writer I quoted by name because I assume she's a struggling young person who has to produce these pieces by the dozen in 25 minutes each in order to scrape together a living wage. But there is some kind of special off-ness to the way those are written that goes beyond just "this was done in a hurry," I think, and I can't quite place it.

it reads like a copy of a copy of someone else’s marketing copy

editors would help

they'd help drive up costs you mean!!!

it reads like a copy of a copy of someone else’s marketing copy

Yeah, I was gonna say — it reads like a bad high school or college newspaper piece, Google-translated to another language and then back to English.

the naked careerism of some of the longtime L.A. Weekly folks who were deigned worthy enough to stick around is pretty off-putting, but those weren't the writers i used to like there.

I wouldn't have ever put Falling James and 'naked careerism' in the same sentence.

Via the Belle and Sebastian thread (and Wikipedia), I discovered this now-deleted OG Pitchfork gem:

https://web.archive.org/web/20030604193859/http://pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/b/belle-and-sebastian/boy-with-the-arab-strap.shtml

whatever an Arab Strap is, it should be used to batten down the crap song hatch

That's an awesome review that doesn't deserve to be mentioned in this thread. J@son Jos3ph3s is still active on twitter, btw.

"awesome" is pushing it, "lazy" and "by the numbers" is a better description

but yes, it doesn't belong on this thread

I give the review a 5.9

I give it a... 0.8

They always used to slag off popular albums. Their policy in those days was pretty much “If you’ve heard of it, it must not be very good.” I guess it helped get clicks though.

Their policy in those days was pretty much “If you’ve heard of it, it must not be very good.”

What webcomic do you write for with this idea?

Hologram Concerts Don't Suck, You're Just a Hater

professional troll Eve Peyser goes to a show where a video recording of a Roy Orbison impersonator with a CGI Roy Orbison face stuck on him is projected in front of an orchestra, just like the real Orbison played with

but is there holographic clingfilm

holografanfic

she really capitalized on that bari weiss kissyfest huh

she's having quite a year

very excited to not know who this is, thank you for not linking sic

Twitter things you def need to care about for 5 seconds

https://www.stereogum.com/2025587/vox-lux-review-natalie-portman-death-of-poptimism/franchises/sounding-board/

otm

But at what cost? Maybe poptimism’s fatal flaw is placing too much of our hopes and ideologies on an art form that cannot support or sustain them. Or maybe it doesn’t matter

if you peer deeply into the clause "or maybe it doesn't matter" you will see the phrase "i really regret pitching this dumbass idea" slowly clarifying itself in the dimness

lol

how many times does somebody need to rewrite the "we've gone too far, time to reinstate cultural hierarchies" handwringer?