thread to dis hyped releases that you don't get/don't like/wanna complain about

Obv I don't know but I never really questioned TS's authenticity. If anything, it might be more of an "all bad poetry springs from sincere feeling" situation imo. Don't know the new album, though.

xp They are the same to me... albums that have what I'd describe as "broad usage"-- it can be political, it can sell cars, it can suit hotel lobbies, it can accompany closing credits.

Tbc her music sounds like she's also lying to herself.

xp

Mezzanine is considerably more interesting than that, especially 'Inertia Creeps'. But you're not wrong, fgti.

I listened and I was reminded of how I felt when I first listened to "Mezzanine" at the end of 1998, and "Play" at the end of 1999.

Did you not like Mezzanine? (semi-xp; I see what you're saying, I guess)

I started with Untitled (Black Is) and my initial thought was, "This is like if Soul II Soul had made Black Messiah" and to me that was a very good thing. I would like to know more about your (presumably negative) response though.

I enjoy Rise and the Cleo Sol records, but they're undeniably over-hyped (esp on ilm) for being basically what Simon Reynolds would call "record-collection rock." There's plenty of RCR or RCR-ish stuff I myself like or even love (Ghost Box, Broadcast, etc.). What's weird is hearing people talk about them like they're singular geniuses while also describing their music in pastiche formulas like [post-punk + disco + neo-soul]

i listened to sault and found it kind of landfill-y idk

Nicolas Jarr reminds me of Play sometimes but I don’t hold it against him

I like all these albums! "Broad usage" is an observation, not a dis... I personally gravitate toward work that is "narrow usage", like, my aoty is "Shutting Down Here", which you won't hear anywhere except in my apartment when I'm cooking

If you remove the spectre of authorship from these albums I've mentioned (a Banksy-adjacent English collective with Tricky and Liz Fraser? a problematic vegan Christian ex-punk blue appropriationist? an anonymous collective?), these three albums-- or others like them, see idk Prefuse 73, St. Germain-- feature loving and zeitgeist-y production, but most notably derive their vocal performances from a variety of sources, which subsumes any attachment of authorship. That is: there is a diffusion of identity insofar as vocal contributions are concerned. This decision effectively creates music that is perfect for "broad usage"-- with the "producer's voice" becoming the fulcrum of the work, and the vocal performances being basically a variety show, the music feels more attached to a particular time than a particular artist.

*blues, not blue

xp

To me, Taylor Swift writes like an ex-precocious-kid whose mental and emotional growth was stunted by early fame and who has very little actual imagination. She has a keen eye for detail in the things that have actually happened to her, but she's lived in a bubble since age fifteen and she writes like it.

The most interesting thing about her is her personality - the intense ambition, the work ethic, the compulsive need to have everyone like her, the constant blood feuds and vengeances. When she mines that - goes, "what kind of a person is Taylor Swift and how did I get that way?" - she's got something real to work with. There was a lot of that on Lover, which is why I liked Lover. But when she lets her imagination "run wild," imo, it only runs as far as the local all-white high school. It's like she was cut off from the world at a formative age and has tried to reconstruct it from YA novels and made-for-Hulu movies, which I'm pretty sure is what actually happened.

i really love some pop music and artists, even albums that came out this year (including the kylie minogue album which everyone seems to dislike). i think my issue with taylor swift is that she's too alpha, not that she's shallow or w/e. like the girl in high school who is prom queen and also debate team champ and wants to be valedictorian. speaking of projection!

i think it's honest and appropriate to project at least a little bit in one's likes and dislikes. we all have egos ffs. not everything has to be appreciated on its own terms. just because it can be argued that most things are created with a kind of pureness or generosity of spirit does not mean that we have to meet everything in that space - who has the time and energy for that? i mean unless you're a music critic and it benefits you to do so.

btw, do people say salt or soo

i think it's at a point for me where i am kind of too old to truly understand a lot of contemporary pop music; for which i'll just use taylor swift as the zeitgeist example. sometimes new things will resonate, but more often than not, i don't even really dislike it. just very indifferent. i don't want to say that "it all sounds the same man!" because it doesn't. there's a huge distance between the sounds of lizzo and billie eilish. but —and again, this is almost certainly a generational thing— it usually feels like there is a lack of sincerity. i feel nothing from what i've heard of that music. i don't judge or begrudge anyone my age (or older) that enjoys that kind of music, i just know that i'm kinda sorta wasting my time by giving it my attention for any extended period because it almost always leaves me feeling frustrated and unsatisfied.

I haven't listened to either Salut record all the way through yet, but they have that cleanroom sound that, yeah, reminds me of stuff from late 90's end of year lists. Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space is another one. My initial impression was "this is AOTY list music" and "AOTY list music is a genre"

btw, do people say salt or soo

― flamboyant goon tie included, Saturday, December 12, 2020 7:23 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is one of those bands that i'm literally never going to speak aloud to anyone

"this is AOTY list music" and "AOTY list music is a genre"

lol otm imo

haha this will be a fun EOYs

sault's sound IS kinda hollow but they have some undeniable jams anyway

It’s interesting to me that both Taylor’s fans and detractors focus on her lyrics so much.

Everything about Taylor Swift's seems like music that was market-researched before it was made.

Speaking to that as well as the emotional heft (or lack thereof) in her lyrics, I often think of the only recent TS I heard multiple times in recent memory, which is "Style." While the chorus in particular is very catchy and she performs it as well as her non-voice can, the lyrics are quite literally the vision of what a 14-year-old thinks an older teenager's life is like.

Joshua Cl0ver used to excoriate me on the internet for hating on Tay-Tay so much, saying that I was anti-populist and out of touch with the pulse of the masses. My retort remains, "If the pulse of the masses is some market-tested crap thrown to an idiot populace by a multinational corporation, then count me the fuck out."

sault's sound IS kinda hollow but they have some undeniable jams anyway

― stylish but illegal (Simon H.), Saturday, December 12, 2020 12:32 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i don't really get "hollow"; is this the part of their sound that reminds me of esg

i liked the sault record, just didn't love it. gonna relisten to it at some point.

i thought i would participate in the eoy thing this year just because i heard a handful of albums i absolutely love. i'm blown away and inspired by people who can listen to and appreciate a million different things tbr. it's just definitely not the way i relate to and enjoy music at my best. i guess in a sense i think it's ok for people to not like things and to project a little bit wrt their reasons.

It’s interesting to me that both Taylor’s fans and detractors focus on her lyrics so much.

they started it!

I do wonder how much of this sort of stuff annoys me *because* of the hollow signifiers that make up so much of the lyrical content.

there was another thread somewhere that posited the notion of an emergent genre made up of all these critically acclaimed records- idea should be explored further imo

most of this stuff doesn’t move me but what pop music didn’t (seem to) lack sincerity? genuine q i know it’s completely subjective & prob generational

there was another thread somewhere that posited the notion of an emergent genre made up of all these critically acclaimed records- idea should be explored further imo

Yeah def, bump if you can find this?

"this is AOTY list music" and "AOTY list music is a genre"

…and ILM is no less into it than other online spaces that are primarily devoted to pop music (writ large).

what pop music didn’t (seem to) lack sincerity?

This is very subjective, of course, but when I listen to Billie Eilish I hear someone who appears to be more in tune with her own emotions, whose persona is less of a self-deluded front than Tay-tay's. I have no way of proving this and it may well be utterly false, but it's what their songs respectively exude (to my ears, at least).

When I tried Sault I thought they were ok but I was nagged by the fact that I could imagine their music on an iphone advert. My stupid taste's erratic and based on going down niche rabbit holes, so when I listen to stuff that's hip I kind of feel like I'm intruding somehow (speaking of projection)

I'd recommend getting past that. Sault is the opposite of Apple adverts. No PR, no fluff, literally gave away their music, people love it purely word-of-mouth, no hype. It's just fucking great.

most of this stuff doesn’t move me but what pop music didn’t (seem to) lack sincerity? genuine q i know it’s completely subjective & prob generational

The difference is in the explicit personalization of pop songwriting now, and I'm not sure how far back it goes, but I'm gonna say that maybe Madonna is the root of it? In that her songs hew to pop norms but are still coded as personal, meaning they're "about Madonna" in a way that Supremes songs were not "about Diana Ross," like, nobody believed that "Love Child" was about Diana Ross really having had a child out of wedlock. But now everybody reads pop songs — Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Selena Gomez, Katy Perry, on and on and on — as being about the singers' real lives, and that ultimately comes off insincere.

I mean ppl did that with dylan or lennon. ofc that’s considered more rock than pop these days. but I sort of see the point. not sure sure if or why it’s necessarily bad

When she mines that - goes, "what kind of a person is Taylor Swift and how did I get that way?" - she's got something real to work with. There was a lot of that on Lover, which is why I liked Lover

i think this is otm! i really loved lover bc it so much of it seemed to engage with her own created personal narratives over the course of her own career in a real and honest way. but my two favorite songs on the album ("cornelia st." and "death by a thousand cuts") seem to elide direct biography (despite "cornelia st."'s location), and i think they're stronger for how she decenters herself and tries to locate familiar feelings and hurts in contexts that aren't her own

But when she lets her imagination "run wild," imo, it only runs as far as the local all-white high school

well, this is true of the trio of interconnected songs on folklore, and i basically agree that a high school love triangle is a little hard to invest in from my own adult perspective (it was way more fun when fans were reading queerness into it, much as that was obviously all wrong). but i think it sells the rest of the work short. "tolerate it" nails a feeling i've felt echo from adolescence into adulthood (much as one can say there's even a demarcating line between the two that isn't a total invention), not a note of it strikes me as false. and "happiness" feels like the most adult song she's ever written, completely able to see the memory of a relationship from every angle

i know this post is vmic and this is the wrong thread for it but oh well

lmao that first paragraph is a mess

@ ultros, @ Soundslike: it sounds like advert music to me, and the "no PR, literally gave it away" is an angle that is perfect for advert music (see also: Banksy, vegan Christianity). Again: not a dis!

i don't really get "hollow"; is this the part of their sound that reminds me of esg

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Saturday, December 12, 2020 2:35 PM (twenty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

OK I'm gonna need a track ref to back up this seemingly very-notm comparison, if you're right then maybe I was listening wrong

If there was anything I felt was "missing" from my completely unfiltered enjoyment of those Sault records it was Hannett-y iciness

pop artists have always been basically archetypes though? i think playing with persona is just another tool in the toolbox - it just doesn't work for me when i don't care for the persona! i think of my favorite pop artists - janet jackson, sade - and i guess i'm into the "adult pure lover" persona. hard to argue that these artists are living that reality, they're just distilling it into its purest form (and they have to have some special access to it in order to do so, imo). it's not "real" or "sincere" necessarily, it's hyper-real and hyper-sincere.

xpost to unperson

I never re-listened but iirc there were ESGish vibes on 5 and 7, maybe more their later stuff though than "UFO" or anything Hannett-y

I'd be curious to hear this "critically acclaimed music is a genre" argument as I'm having a hard time imagining the musical equivalent of Oscar-bait or w/e

Ah so I haven't checked out those releases but I'll do so!

"critically acclaimed music is a genre" I've argued for fifteen years that the rise of decimal-based evaluative systems and RYM-style aggregators will favour music that is "quantitatively good" rather than "interesting, original, 'artistic'", both in the creation-process and the culling-process. I'd argue also that although this still remains the case (Phoebe Bridgers) this is becoming less-the-case over time (Backxwash)

I'm having a hard time imagining the musical equivalent of Oscar-bait or w/e

not critics’ lists but there is certainly such a thing as”grammy bait”

still v tickled by this naming of the notion of EOY-bait; in certain hands (mine) it could be very dangerous and annoying

I've first-hand seen indie film production houses who've garnered Oscar-nominations for their past work absolutely set this success as a benchmark, and make production choices with the goal for a repeat colouring their decision-making. Similarly, certain album-makers or adjacent administrative bodies absolutely make decisions with a goal of "widespread critical acclaim" (as opposed to, say, an effective realization of a nebulous artistic goal), just as others are aiming for "chart success" or "usage in the club". This isn't to say that Sault are doing this by any means tho. Taylor Swift wrt Folklore? probably.

I remember when Tegan woke up one day and said "that's it, I'm tired of this" and told Sara that they were gonna start making hit records, and they changed their process. Interestingly, they always had an audience, but zero critical attention; critical adulation only came when they made the deliberately decision to "make hits"

xxp such as this “Black Pumas” group

@fgti: Cleo Sol "A Rose in the Dark" is from the same Sault people, but her voice is centered and ergo might appeal more? Idk, it's basically neo-soul though and while often quite lovely isn't as much fun as, say, Ari Lennox imo

xp that post does clear it up for me, thanks!

to expand: the "bait" being an influence on the artistic process rather than a recognizable set of generic sonic signifiers makes sense to me

Personally, I think of Swift’s lyrics as sort of in the realm of ’80s Paul Simon (coming from a very different perspective, of course). You may find them cloying / insincere / limited in their pov / whatever, but that doesn’t make the album any less good (for me).

I gd love that Cleo Sol album and didn't know there was a connection, thx :)

lol what a disaster for this thread :)

_ I'm having a hard time imagining the musical equivalent of Oscar-bait or w/e_

not critics’ lists but there is certainly such a thing as”grammy bait”