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

pair off their young talent for publicity purposes and send them out on "dates"

fwiw this is the vibe i get from camila cabello and shawn mendes

just heard a few songs off the new sault albums & found them to be insipid

like christ there were practically explainers about Pete Davidson references on that Ariana Grande record, and I've read similar things about Swift like oooh massive shade to this ex boyfriend...I feel like you're constantly being told no this isn't up for interpretation

lmao, you’re too plugged in / that’s on you. That stuff is so easy to ignore, just stop reading about it.

lmao, you’re too plugged in / that’s on you. That stuff is so easy to ignore, just stop reading about it.

Ah, but I have been told by a poster I won't name for fear of it having a summoning effect that to not deal with this stuff, and focus one's critique of the art on the music rather than the lyrics and the backstory, is disrespectful to the artist and their art.

Well, I don’t know who that mystery poster was, but I strongly disagree.

I'm not even particularly plugged in that shit was all over

what I'm saying is that these artists are making the music in these contexts and for fans that are far more connected than me

so is to ignore how it operates within this context, created and designed seems...weird

I know/work with people who would call themselves (for example) “big Taylor Swift fans” whom I don’t believe get into minute parsing of the lyrics, or then other kind of discourse that music nerds / superfans (like us) get into. And even if you follow those artists on “social,” they don’t necessarily get into that stuff. Taylor posts about Scooter Braun, but not her lyrics!

Many people don’t read about or discuss music in any forum, and still follow it / buy records / go to concerts... I’ve learned this thru experience, it seems weird to me too, but it’s true!

i think casual fans more than any other assume the artist is being sincere and sincerely expressing themselves though

also if you think I'm a dummy just say so and can the patronizing tone pal

Come on, this is TS's most recent tweet. She explicitly describes what the lyrics to several of her new songs are about:

I have no idea what will come next. I have no idea about a lot of things these days and so I’ve clung to the one thing that keeps me connected to you all. That thing always has and always will be music. And may it continue, evermore. evermore is out now: https://t.co/QYMUTL0IAj pic.twitter.com/tlSmahDkBi

— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) December 11, 2020

Lol, ok, fair enough. (ums – I’m honestly sorry if I sound patronizing! I don’t think you’re a dummy. I thought we were just rapping)

(I do think you can ignore all that stuff when you listen to an album, though, and it doesn’t have to taint the experience.)

hey no worries morris sorry if I misread your tone

just heard a few songs off the new sault albums & found them to be insipid

― imago, Sunday, December 13, 2020 10:51 AM (one hour ago)

lol dude, as much as I think Sault are a valid target for this thread, going from this thread to checking out a few songs is a little self-fulfilling prophecy, no?

Also, apols if you already know this but: the main production force in Sault produced the Little Simz thing from last year that, iirc, you were super into

xp

Taylor has carefully trained a lot of her fans to look for codes in her liner notes and Easter Eggs in her videos, all of which link up with hints she drops in her social media. Hence the people who respond to, say, "All too Well," not with, "wow, I really relate to that line about the refrigerator" or whatever, but rather with "OMG Maggie Gyllenhaal when are you going to give Taylor back her scarf???"

True, this is the subset of her fans who are online a lot, but that's a lot of people, and whether you look for that stuff in her songs or not, knowing that she put it there on purpose to be decoded is part of the way I experience her lyric-writing.

I don't know if I find her sincere or insincere, but I do find her to be intensely self-conscious, in a way that makes sense for someone who's had media attention trained on her since she was fifteen. Sometimes that self-consciousness manifests in ways I find irritating - her current indie stuff, for instance, comes across to me as affected and self-satisfied. Sometimes it makes her moments of emotional honesty, like "The Archer," seem more powerful, because I get the sense of someone for whom it is very, very hard to admit real weakness, and so that honesty seems like it's pushing through layers of self-protection. But even this is working within a celebrity context where we all know far too much about Taylor, so that a line like "All of my enemies started out friends" seems painfully honest in part because we've watched it happen.

I definitely shouldn’t have used her as an example (I don’t “follow” her). Whenever I happen to look at her Instagram, it just seems to be pictures of staircases and stuff.

have checked out sault in the context of listening to the entire poll lobby playlist (ongoing)

there are other things i would dis(s) but life's too short

the little simz album was great but mostly due to the performance of simz herself idk

Ah ok fair enough!

i didn't mind sault's 5 and 7 records - there's something there, just needs to be weirder and wilder imo, atm it doesn't really have much personality

Pretty much, and I'd also like to echo boxedjoy's description of the lyrics as 'very didactic'.

great posts ums, thanks

culture and stan culture and the industry is so incredibly invested in the "intense personalization" unperson mentioned upthread, like christ there were practically explainers about Pete Davidson references on that Ariana Grande record, and I've read similar things about Swift like oooh massive shade to this ex boyfriend...I feel like you're constantly being told no this isn't up for interpretation - this is how X album is positioned in this star's life journey right now and here's x and x and x lyrics about it

So I get that projecting high school feelings on to a pop star's persona or your impression of them as a person isn't a great way - in the abstract - to judge art, it feels like a lot of things in late capitalism, it's basically made inescapable (like using Uber or something) by forces much bigger than you, but you're a dumb asshole if you do it

I completely agree with this. But I do sort of recognize a difference (and maybe it's a false distinction) between someone like Ariana Grande who strikes me as very much a curated product - like, Ariana writes a tweet about a relationship, and her team of songwriters writes a song about the tweet which is then seen as intensely personal and autobiographical - and people like Taylor Swift or Miley Cyrus who are trying to act as independent artists but have to work within a context of having been hyperfamous since their teens, so that anything they write about themselves is going to comment on/interact with this very public persona that's been established for them.

I'm curious - are there any really personally famous artistes whose music demands to be taken as impersonal?

techno/EDM artists maybe?

in retrospect I think we can blame The Beatles for some of this "cult of personality, the songs are really about x" stuff

I don’t “follow” her

You don't have to look hard. The filmed concert from the 1989 (?) tour that was up on Apple Music at the time included all kinds of shit like videos of her celebrity friends like Selena Gomez talking about baking cookies at TS's house, TS telling the audience they were all her personal friends, bringing other celebrity friends on stage to meet the audience.

I'm curious - are there any really personally famous artistes whose music demands to be taken as impersonal?

I think Mariah Carey is very successful at this, to such an extent that I would bet a lot of people don't even know she writes her own material; they likely just assume that she has squads of contributing songwriters like every other giant pop icon.

Okay, I've now listened to a huge number of songs by the 1975, and am convinced that I was wrong before— it's not really made for people like me, but I can appreciate how they're playing with pop tropes both sonically and visually.

I've actually been investigating why I have such a visceral reaction against groups like the 1975 on first listen, and I think that much of it just has to do with lack of exposure— when I was in high school, I didn't care for Jimmy Eat World, but I knew "The Middle," and can now appreciate how perfect it is as a song.

For about the last fifteen or so years of my life, I've pretty studiously ignored pop-rock oriented music, while keeping up nominally with popular hip-hop and RnB. But the lack of exposure has led me to hear certain types of sounds and immediately react negatively toward them, partially because I just have little reference point for what it is— I've quite literally missed much of the past 15 years of non-dance and non-"urban" popular music, and while at this point I'm fine with have that be the way it is, it has led me to judge music unfairly...even quite recently!

in retrospect I think we can blame The Beatles for some of this "cult of personality, the songs are really about x" stuff

Hm, on the surface, this is pretty far removed from how I see the Beatles' relationship to their audience, public personae, and public discussion of their own lyrics. Could you expand?

Lesson being, I should keep my ears open more often. Like, uh, I recently discovered that I like a lot of Linkin Park songs.

I still don't understand the love for Taylor Swift, but I have given up there.

xp Sund4r I was mostly thinking abt the John and Yoko thing and how that was reflected in some later period songs

You don't have to look hard. The filmed concert from the 1989 (?) tour that was up on Apple Music at the time included all kinds of shit like videos of her celebrity friends like Selena Gomez talking about baking cookies at TS's house, TS telling the audience they were all her personal friends, bringing other celebrity friends on stage to meet the audience.

I don’t watch that stuff! Maybe I’m the weird one here – but I consider myself a fan of her music, buy her records, etc., and I don’t engage in any of that.

(I did try watching a little of the thing on Disney+, where she sits around talking about the songs, and I thought it was boring as shit)

Plastic Ono Band is probably the first album that demanded to be taken as a "real" statement on the artist's life, with the assumption that the audience is ready to be fascinated. There was also the paradoxical element that Lennon was tearing down the artifice of celebrity, which I don't think anyone says of Taylor Swift.

plastic ono band is a good call in that it operates under the assumption that the you know a lot about lennon's life, childhood, the whole break up of the beatles saga etc

I mean, projecting sincerity, direct personal connection, and autobiographical expression have afaict been a part of TS's deal all along so it doesn't seem unfair to critique her on those grounds.

people have talked in similar ways about Beethoven for 200 years. this is just certain romantic ideas about art and heroism adapted for a neoliberal clickbait era isn't it

it's generally obnoxious but a lot more so if you don't like the artist to start with. I don't get the need for all this analysis to justify the initial distaste. reminds me of the interminable debates about M.I.A. 15 years ago, except Taylor is actually popular so the discourse around her is harder to avoid

I don't get the need for all this analysis to justify the initial distaste

lol sorry

projecting sincerity, direct personal connection, and autobiographical expression have afaict been a part of TS's deal all along so it doesn't seem unfair to critique her on those grounds.

This seems common to so many singer-songwriters though. I just take at face value that they are doing that, and then it’s a matter of whether the music connects with me or not. That’s just me personally.

TS: the smugness of dismissing music out of hand because you supposedly dislike being ‘challenged’ vs the smugness of writing a bible-length theoretical epic that carefully explains why Tay-tay sux.

No better thread to type it, I guess: every time I see people fawning over a new Arthur Russell thing that has been unearthed, I wanna scream we get it. you like your music fags to be dead. it makes the music so much more meaningful. thank you for reminding me. I feel like you're just rubbing it in my face at this point. "oh, haven't you heard the new Arthur? also, why don't you die? die, die, die."

I don’t smugness inherent in either of those things tbh

xp

I def agree, my post was facetious more than anything.

No better thread to type it, I guess: every time I see people fawning over a new Arthur Russell thing that has been unearthed, I wanna scream we get it. you like your music fags to be dead. it makes the music so much more meaningful. thank you for reminding me. I feel like you're just rubbing it in my face at this point. "oh, haven't you heard the new Arthur? also, why don't you die? die, die, die."

― flamboyant goon tie included, Sunday, December 13, 2020 11:46 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

A million times this.

And I too am a huge fan and rinse every new thing that is unearthed!

I honestly never thought of it like that, and although I'm really glad Knudson is doing that work I can see the point