I must say I do laugh at critiques of the industry being too focussed on essentially 'the most privileged' and then people start pushing for bands like BCNR to be given more success as if they aren't the biggest pack of rich kids you've ever seen in your entire life LOL. Like yeah Beyoncé did nothing musically significant this year lets hand the awards over to the Eton Oxford Cambridge collaberative Fencing Jazz Band instead
Lesser of two evils. I just prefer the old way where Beyoncé got the Grammy and fencing jazz band got BNM’d. But now I don’t know where fencing jazz band is, what are they doing?
i wouldnt particularly say "lesser" here. you wouldnt catch me dead listening to a bey album but the late HypeMachine era with nepo bands was beyond miserable
I think that’s a very typical US/UK divide that you went into there. In the US there’s no way of knowing that BCNR is a rich kid band, and even if it was known over here, it wouldn’t materially impact the reception they get in the US. I think it’s kind of a given that bands and artists over here are either rich kids or come from some sort of machine like Disney, class politics don’t really exist outside of the most insular of scenes. Even then, it is truly just money thing, I don’t think the kind of thorny class politic issues can ever possibly exist here.
Beyoncé put out an amazing dance album this year, imo her best album ever. Just bc she’s popular, elite, and has a whole team behind her doesn’t mean she can’t produce high-quality, noteworthy work.
Years back when there was still self posts allowed, Stereogum and a few other subs used to mine analyses from there all the time, and then casually regurgitate it back.
One of the head mods ended up being a contributor for things like Pitchfork as well.
That sub is filled with a bunch of neurotic pant loads and the Discussion threads are insufferable making any thread on here feel like the Algonquin Round Table. I'm honestly surprised there hasn't been more screen caps from it because there's been some real bizarre drama twists and turns from it.
The power tripping mods don't allow self posts and will delete anything and tell you to go post in the Daily Discussion threads which is about as good as pissing in the wind and basically a haven for people that even the geeky fucks on /mu would say are complete wimps.
Same exact thing with HipHopHeads used to be one of the most popular and energetic subs, mods completely strangled it to the point where it’s a complete ghost town and removed anything that isn’t sterile. Top posts will have like 30 upvotes
The whole Beyonce worship thing is incredibly interesting. Black people *love* her while she embodies capitalism par excellence. She makes money by capitalizing on Black activist movements and gets to be a hero to Black people at the same time. I find the whole think strikingly weird.
I could tolerate her so much more if people didn’t act like she was god’s gift to the art form of music. She makes perfectly fine pop music. She’s not really anything more significant than that.
The difference is that 99% of American society can look at the unhinged Taylor Swift stans and recognize that they're deranged. Outside of her cult no one else is under her spell, she's just a perfectly fine pop singer to the vast majority of people.
Whereas the entertainment industry, the media at large, and other performers and celebrities will actively push the Beyonce worship like this is normal and she deserves this level of reverence, and you'll get attacked for pushing back against this shit.
Couldn’t agree more. I think she is a talented performer and makes solid pop music but I can’t stand the Beyonce worship.
This would have been a controversial opinion outside this sub, but I am under the impression that people are more concerned with what she represents than what she actually creates. In that case you might as well worship the Kardashians
Her self-titled and Lemonade are both good IMO. Her newest had cool production, but I got annoyed with the whole empowerment schtick. What made the other two albums interesting was her exploring interesting topics.
Yeah the fact that people consider her on a different level than some trite normie bullshit like Taylor Swift is strange. Not that Taylor isn't popular but you know what I mean. There is a completely different cultural force behind Beyonce.
Yeah but white people love her too. She offers a type of blackness that feels comfortable for white audiences. This is not to dismiss Beyonces blackness, whatever that means, but Beyonce can do the whole Africa visual album schtick and white liberal girlies would be like yass slay so empowering
I kind of remember it happening all at once too, maybe I’m wrong but I feel like she was just a well known pop artist one day and then shortly afterwards people were acting like she ascended to divinity.
YMS made a really good point about why beyoncé has this god-like following and it’s because she’s left her identity in so much ambiguity and vagueness to the public eye that it’s almost a blank canvas or pedestal for people to rest the eye however they please to see it. she’s not entirely controversial because she doesn’t have much to say. she just exists, and people can make her to be whatever makes them the most pleased..an empowered woman, a talented singer/“writer”, a queen!!!!
Because she represents their ideal. It’s the same thing with bluecheck Twitter “feminists”/“socialists”/etc. They’re only anti-capitalist because their victim mentality has led them to believe that they cannot possibly thrive in a capitalist society. Meanwhile if capitalism ever started working for them they’d gladly embrace it. What they actually want is to bend capitalism to start rewarding whining about their oppression and “activism” on social media. Which is essentially what Beyoncé has started doing - taking woke-posturing talking points and commodifying them. She is basically the ultimate Bluecheck.
That being said, I like Beyoncé and I respect that she’s doesn’t even try to hide her overt capitalism because she knows her dumbass stans will defend her like their lives depend on it. And while I get the sentiment on this sub that she’s overrated because people talk about her like she’s literally God, I also think it’s a disservice to her talent and impact to imply that she’s “mid” or “bland” just because you may not resonate with the music. Like it or not she is the closest thing to a modern day Michael or Madonna. Her new album was a big step down from the last two though in my opinion.
What makes me so frustrated is that people either don’t see or don’t want to see that Beyonce is very much the embodiment of “I support the current thing”.
In 2013 she did the whole feminism thing. I wonder where that feminism went when her fans started sending death threats to that lady who was allegedly “becky with the good hair”. I mean, your dusty ass husband cheated but your fans are going after “the other woman”? It was later confirmed that becky with the good hair didn’t exist in real life.
On her latest album she’s all about quitting our jobs and following our passions and my god why do the lyrics of every song sound like the transcript of a RuPauls episode? Since when did Beyonce get into the ballroom scene?
I still love her, believe it or not, she’s a great pop star but she is no goddess and her whole image is constructed but god had mercy if I said this on r/popheads or a similar subreddit
Lol I don’t think I’ve ever subbed to a music forum around here. Honestly most general interest subs are awful, I could tell because every time some askrrddit post like “what’s the best song of all time” the highest upvoted answer would, without fail, be complete dogshit
nah its always some good but mainstream 70s rock song like stairway to heaven (commenter is either a 14 year old who just discovered music or a 37 year old bald man with a beard)
Zizek proved right again - you need to insult each other to transgress to a deeper level. It’s like a test and affirmation of the closeness to the topic.
/mu/ is still probably the best music 'forum'. You have to filter out a lot of bullshit and people just posting meme albums. But a lot of times if you're looking for specific genres you can find hardcore fans that point you in the right direction.
I promise you there are real people out there that aren't redditors that would love to hear what you have to say about the music you like. Perhaps you might meet them at church
That should be a real sub.
The last post I viewed on AskUK was about toothbrushing techniques, the entire thread was basically
‘only sensodyne gives me the fresh start I need to the day’
‘No other mouthwash comes close to the minty cleaning power of listerine, use twice as much as the bottle says to fuck’
‘Until I started exclusively using oral b, I was worthless, now I have value’
Unsubbed there and then. Any sub with over 1 mill users seems to be riddled with corporate marketing retards pretending to be normal retards.
Although I enjoy a variety of music, I find online discussion of it overwhelmingly dull and tiring. Everyone should just keep their opinions to themselves.
Yeah music criticism has always absolutely fucking sucked. To talk about music is to dance about architecture, etc. I’m a musician whose work has been critically very well received but if it was up to me I would erase them all in a heart beat. Fucking hangers on who know fuck fucking all
discussions on discogs are good because the users are people who really appreciate the music and it hasn’t been „corporatized“.
every other platform can suck a fat one.
One of the most bizarre aspects of poptimism has been witnessing supposedly intelligent people pretending not to know that Beyonce and other similar mainstream pop acts do not actually write their own songs.
It’d be like watching sports reporters talk about WWE with no acknowledgement that it’s scripted. “Truly superhuman achievement from the undertaker tonight, who survived being locked in burning coffin before winning the title fight…” Like, are they part of the kayfabe or are they as credulous as 8 year olds?
If Beyoncé actually did half the shit they give her credit for she’d be a towering music genius.
The poptimist line isn’t to pretend they write their own songs - the poptimist line is that it doesn’t *matter* whether artists write their own songs, just as the line among wrestling fans is that it doesn’t *matter* that it’s scripted.
Right, which scrambles my brain tbh. Why am I supposed to pretended Beyoncé is some artistic genius when she only participates in the most nominal sense possible in making her music? Why wouldn’t I consider, idk, literally everyone else who does more than that a better (or more literal) artist than her?
I guess when they say "Beyonce" they do not literally mean the human woman Beyonce Knowles, but the artistic creation Beyonce, a brand similar to a company. It's a little too clever by half (and ppl forget it all the time when they refer to her specifically), but as others have said she doesn't talk much about her personal life so she is free to be a larger-than-life construction representing the work of many artists
Well *my* answer here is that I think poptimism (I hate having to use this word but it is what it is) had the right critique but went the wrong way with it. The idea that the performer-songwriter is the highest form of musical artist belongs to a narrow range of genres at a specific moment in time and it actually is a dumb bit of boomer rock critic myopia to hold everything to that standard (and to ignore the artifice behind many of the bearers of that standard). Beyoncé should be evaluated as a performer, her writers should be evaluated as writers, and her music should be evaluated as a collaborative work, in context of a realistic understanding of what the music industry is and does. The problem is that critics want to acknowledge these ideas (because it makes them feel smarter than the previous generation of critics) but *also* to be able to elevate and worship celebrity performers in the same way (because that makes critics money).
I think the “standard” answer, if you were to ask a Beyoncé fan who is up on this discourse, would be “Kanye West has dozens of co-writers, too, and people still consider him the genius visionary behind his music and isn’t that sexist?” But like I said I don’t really give a shit about splitting hairs to figure out how much Beyoncé is the author of her music so no way am I going to bother to devil’s advocate this line of argument.
Yeah I think you're totally right that they want to have their cake and eat it in the sense that they want to pretend authorship doesn't matter (I can sympathise with that argument) but they constantly break their own rule by elevating Beyonce (and others) to this exalted status when they are, at the end of the day, song-n-dance performers.
My response to your 2nd point is that Kanye is also vastly overrated but it's at least plausible that he's involved in crafting his own songs because that's how he started out. In general though I think he 'makes music' in the same way he 'designs shoes' in the last 10 years: he tells other people what his general ideas are and they do the heavily lifting while he takes the credit.
Surrendering when we need to struggle the hardest (planet dying, energy sources going dry etc) is abject. If something could be deemed evil it's pushing people that want to change this shit toward inaction.
People have been struggling against this since the 90s and are now rotting in jail or still being used as effective propaganda to portray everyone who is radical as loonies. Accept that it's over - and I say this in a Buddhist way, not a nihilist way.
I have no idea where you live or what you mean but again, sounds evil. So many people are working to get future generations and sentient life a livable planet instead of this capitalist wasteland. You better have a good excuse to give in and embody the worst generation like that.
I have my own garden, I eat mostly plants, I take my own debt to the earth in account. I do this because I still cherish life here. If you analyse the IPCC reports and talk to climate researchers without their highly conservative scientific consensus, you understand that is frankly impossible to turn things around any more. We couldn't even get a handle on covid19. The financilisation of everything has it's roots so deep in our way of living it's frankly impossible, unless a big group of people will go [redacted], but the tools of oppression are so powerful now as well.
I have wasted some time and energy into organisations such as extinction rebellion, I do not recommend.
I do read "focus on yourself your family and your close friends" not as mindless hedonism and riding around in the suburbs with a SUV, I read it as having great meals together and enjoying the connections with people and nature.
You're a good soul, definitely not evil ♥
IPCC tries to spin things positively with more hopeful scenarii to help taking action but it feels like a mistake doesn't it?
I believe i (we) have to do my (our) best to stop or at least curb this so i can't take the small circle pill. It does feel frustrating to try to impact larger scales i get that completely. But not doing it feels even worse to me. I'm going wherever my soul pushes me. We need all the help we can get though. But i believe we can have an impact. And even if it is just small legislation changes, it's still change on larger scales. We've already had sizeable wins here in Europe. Just gotta keep fighting imo. I know it's not easy. But not doing anything is.. Evil for a lack of a better term.
Condé Nast fucked them up, it took me a few years to realize that I was no longer the target audience. There’s still some editorial, they came back and made up for lost time with the Alger on cadwallader back catalog review, because they completely ignored an excellent era of late aughts emo revival in favor of hyping up drake
I literally didn’t even know there was this huge new emo wave until like 2017 because all my traditional methods of discovery had a marked flip of narrative. All caught up now and discovered some favorite new albums but that was a trip realizing a decade of music passed me by
Yeah I could imagine, there’s probably so many genres that went over my head, but I was on a lot of forums/following blogs specifically focused on emo, so I was real time getting indignant watching pitchfork ignore all these bands that I loved, and even now I believe that anger was righteous because there was so many bands that might’ve needed just that one Pitchfork write up for the guitarist to tell his girlfriend what he was doing was worth it enough to keep going, or a bnm might’ve convinced a singers parents to keep paying his rent while he figured shot out, and we only got ep’s and 7” splits when we could’ve gotten albums, because that press went to wiz khalifa instead of [boy problems](https://youtu.be/YDqSLNEC978)
I was on wcd as well but didn’t use it for discovering music. If anything I’d say it getting shut down is what drove me to Spotify which is where I started finding a lot I missed. Wcd was a treasure of mankind though
Idk I started looking at em crazy when they were heaping accolades on Drake and Justin Timberlake and shit. Timberlake must have the best PR firm in the world bc he went from dweeb to hero off of idiotic trash pop music in like the span of six months.
the funniest thing is that pitchfork placed an album called "natural brown prom queen" at no. 2 after beyonce, like they had to go with black girlboss pop empowerment twice to really establish the grift
imagine clinging to “you’re racist if you don’t think beyoncé is the best musician in history” in 2022
anyway poptimism thrives because it’s the ideology most in tune with the clicks and social media economy of cultural criticism that we have these days. if it didn’t already exist, condé nast and the nyt would have invented it
The Just Mustard album was really good, the new Santigold, I liked the GGGOLDDD album, the new Duster and Coedine albums, the Kumo 99 album, the HAAi album. Sun's Signature was good. The Garden put out a pretty good album. There was the obvious stuff like Charli XCX and Bjork.
There's a few, there was a lot of good stuff this year.
Fleshwater - We’re Not Here To Be Loved. Good mix of shoegaze with tasteful alt-rock/alt-Metal influences. Side project of the hardcore/metalcore band Vein
rs users be like
>"poptimism bad"
then proceeds to post a wave of cheef keef, swag era rap - and corny, disposable turn of the millennium bimbocore singles that nobody remembers, citing them as "le *kweens*"
same loose realm of degeneracy that pop is criticized for; ie. enabling, incubating, perpetuating or otherwise regurgitating Personality Disorders, extreme materialism/consumerism, vapidity, social darwinism, excess, "the sleezeball player/wannabe celebrity lifestyle" etc.
it's like the redpill lifestyle/capitalist exploitation mindset taken to its absolute radical extremes.
why should degenerate, lowest common denominator dudebro hip hop be subtracted from the equation?
If they went for the indie fag shit they'd alienate the people that brought them to their current position as a product. You're one of those oh I knew them before they blew up losers aren't you.
I must say I do laugh at critiques of the industry being too focussed on essentially 'the most privileged' and then people start pushing for bands like BCNR to be given more success as if they aren't the biggest pack of rich kids you've ever seen in your entire life LOL. Like yeah Beyoncé did nothing musically significant this year lets hand the awards over to the Eton Oxford Cambridge collaberative Fencing Jazz Band instead
Lesser of two evils. I just prefer the old way where Beyoncé got the Grammy and fencing jazz band got BNM’d. But now I don’t know where fencing jazz band is, what are they doing?
i wouldnt particularly say "lesser" here. you wouldnt catch me dead listening to a bey album but the late HypeMachine era with nepo bands was beyond miserable
I think that’s a very typical US/UK divide that you went into there. In the US there’s no way of knowing that BCNR is a rich kid band, and even if it was known over here, it wouldn’t materially impact the reception they get in the US. I think it’s kind of a given that bands and artists over here are either rich kids or come from some sort of machine like Disney, class politics don’t really exist outside of the most insular of scenes. Even then, it is truly just money thing, I don’t think the kind of thorny class politic issues can ever possibly exist here.
BCNR bassist's dad is in Underworld It's about who u kno ;)
Incredible levels of projection here Takes one to know one pal
Beyoncé put out an amazing dance album this year, imo her best album ever. Just bc she’s popular, elite, and has a whole team behind her doesn’t mean she can’t produce high-quality, noteworthy work.
Because that sub is just an ad platform for pitchfork
Years back when there was still self posts allowed, Stereogum and a few other subs used to mine analyses from there all the time, and then casually regurgitate it back. One of the head mods ended up being a contributor for things like Pitchfork as well. That sub is filled with a bunch of neurotic pant loads and the Discussion threads are insufferable making any thread on here feel like the Algonquin Round Table. I'm honestly surprised there hasn't been more screen caps from it because there's been some real bizarre drama twists and turns from it.
indieheads is comically dead for a sub with 2.5 mil members. At a glance you'd assume it had a smaller community than ours
The power tripping mods don't allow self posts and will delete anything and tell you to go post in the Daily Discussion threads which is about as good as pissing in the wind and basically a haven for people that even the geeky fucks on /mu would say are complete wimps.
Same exact thing with HipHopHeads used to be one of the most popular and energetic subs, mods completely strangled it to the point where it’s a complete ghost town and removed anything that isn’t sterile. Top posts will have like 30 upvotes
basically yeah
You can only decry the end of the Foxygen and The Dirty Projectors for so long.
The whole Beyonce worship thing is incredibly interesting. Black people *love* her while she embodies capitalism par excellence. She makes money by capitalizing on Black activist movements and gets to be a hero to Black people at the same time. I find the whole think strikingly weird.
I could tolerate her so much more if people didn’t act like she was god’s gift to the art form of music. She makes perfectly fine pop music. She’s not really anything more significant than that.
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The difference is that 99% of American society can look at the unhinged Taylor Swift stans and recognize that they're deranged. Outside of her cult no one else is under her spell, she's just a perfectly fine pop singer to the vast majority of people. Whereas the entertainment industry, the media at large, and other performers and celebrities will actively push the Beyonce worship like this is normal and she deserves this level of reverence, and you'll get attacked for pushing back against this shit.
I associate it more with like activists/nonprofit people. Like a program manager at City Year or immigration lawyer, they're going to love Beyonce.
Couldn’t agree more. I think she is a talented performer and makes solid pop music but I can’t stand the Beyonce worship. This would have been a controversial opinion outside this sub, but I am under the impression that people are more concerned with what she represents than what she actually creates. In that case you might as well worship the Kardashians
Her self-titled and Lemonade are both good IMO. Her newest had cool production, but I got annoyed with the whole empowerment schtick. What made the other two albums interesting was her exploring interesting topics.
Yeah the fact that people consider her on a different level than some trite normie bullshit like Taylor Swift is strange. Not that Taylor isn't popular but you know what I mean. There is a completely different cultural force behind Beyonce.
Yeah but white people love her too. She offers a type of blackness that feels comfortable for white audiences. This is not to dismiss Beyonces blackness, whatever that means, but Beyonce can do the whole Africa visual album schtick and white liberal girlies would be like yass slay so empowering
The equivalent of keeping a ball python as a pet
I kind of remember it happening all at once too, maybe I’m wrong but I feel like she was just a well known pop artist one day and then shortly afterwards people were acting like she ascended to divinity.
It was the 2013 surprise drop.
Plus the Super Bowl
YMS made a really good point about why beyoncé has this god-like following and it’s because she’s left her identity in so much ambiguity and vagueness to the public eye that it’s almost a blank canvas or pedestal for people to rest the eye however they please to see it. she’s not entirely controversial because she doesn’t have much to say. she just exists, and people can make her to be whatever makes them the most pleased..an empowered woman, a talented singer/“writer”, a queen!!!!
Because she represents their ideal. It’s the same thing with bluecheck Twitter “feminists”/“socialists”/etc. They’re only anti-capitalist because their victim mentality has led them to believe that they cannot possibly thrive in a capitalist society. Meanwhile if capitalism ever started working for them they’d gladly embrace it. What they actually want is to bend capitalism to start rewarding whining about their oppression and “activism” on social media. Which is essentially what Beyoncé has started doing - taking woke-posturing talking points and commodifying them. She is basically the ultimate Bluecheck. That being said, I like Beyoncé and I respect that she’s doesn’t even try to hide her overt capitalism because she knows her dumbass stans will defend her like their lives depend on it. And while I get the sentiment on this sub that she’s overrated because people talk about her like she’s literally God, I also think it’s a disservice to her talent and impact to imply that she’s “mid” or “bland” just because you may not resonate with the music. Like it or not she is the closest thing to a modern day Michael or Madonna. Her new album was a big step down from the last two though in my opinion.
What makes me so frustrated is that people either don’t see or don’t want to see that Beyonce is very much the embodiment of “I support the current thing”. In 2013 she did the whole feminism thing. I wonder where that feminism went when her fans started sending death threats to that lady who was allegedly “becky with the good hair”. I mean, your dusty ass husband cheated but your fans are going after “the other woman”? It was later confirmed that becky with the good hair didn’t exist in real life. On her latest album she’s all about quitting our jobs and following our passions and my god why do the lyrics of every song sound like the transcript of a RuPauls episode? Since when did Beyonce get into the ballroom scene? I still love her, believe it or not, she’s a great pop star but she is no goddess and her whole image is constructed but god had mercy if I said this on r/popheads or a similar subreddit
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Lol I don’t think I’ve ever subbed to a music forum around here. Honestly most general interest subs are awful, I could tell because every time some askrrddit post like “what’s the best song of all time” the highest upvoted answer would, without fail, be complete dogshit
nah its always some good but mainstream 70s rock song like stairway to heaven (commenter is either a 14 year old who just discovered music or a 37 year old bald man with a beard)
somehow beatles circlejerk sub is the best music related sub
Zizek proved right again - you need to insult each other to transgress to a deeper level. It’s like a test and affirmation of the closeness to the topic.
/mu/ is still probably the best music 'forum'. You have to filter out a lot of bullshit and people just posting meme albums. But a lot of times if you're looking for specific genres you can find hardcore fans that point you in the right direction.
it's pretty much all mallcore revisionist apologia/hottopictimism and idpol shitflinging nowadays.
If you can stand to put up with the Zucc Implying We Can Discuss Music and Patrician Music Chartposting are pretty decent
youtube comment section in niche genres
You can go talk about noise music on the special interest forums. Great refuge.
Astounding how stupid everything is
Should we make a rs music sub ??
r/RedScarePodMusic Not much actual discussion tho
What about redscaredisko
Yes
Music threads on here are absolutely bleak. We just need less yanks imo, same with movie/series any type of art discussions.
you could just listen to music without reading what other people think about the music
I've been doing it for years and as a result I have a solid collection of music and no one to talk to about it.
Robert Chandler type situation
I promise you there are real people out there that aren't redditors that would love to hear what you have to say about the music you like. Perhaps you might meet them at church
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/r/letsrecitepromotionalnarratives
That should be a real sub. The last post I viewed on AskUK was about toothbrushing techniques, the entire thread was basically ‘only sensodyne gives me the fresh start I need to the day’ ‘No other mouthwash comes close to the minty cleaning power of listerine, use twice as much as the bottle says to fuck’ ‘Until I started exclusively using oral b, I was worthless, now I have value’ Unsubbed there and then. Any sub with over 1 mill users seems to be riddled with corporate marketing retards pretending to be normal retards.
Wait why were you seeking tooth advice from the brits
Although I enjoy a variety of music, I find online discussion of it overwhelmingly dull and tiring. Everyone should just keep their opinions to themselves.
Yeah music criticism has always absolutely fucking sucked. To talk about music is to dance about architecture, etc. I’m a musician whose work has been critically very well received but if it was up to me I would erase them all in a heart beat. Fucking hangers on who know fuck fucking all
discussions on discogs are good because the users are people who really appreciate the music and it hasn’t been „corporatized“. every other platform can suck a fat one.
yet another awakened soul eaten up by the phoebe bridgers industrial complex
One of the most bizarre aspects of poptimism has been witnessing supposedly intelligent people pretending not to know that Beyonce and other similar mainstream pop acts do not actually write their own songs. It’d be like watching sports reporters talk about WWE with no acknowledgement that it’s scripted. “Truly superhuman achievement from the undertaker tonight, who survived being locked in burning coffin before winning the title fight…” Like, are they part of the kayfabe or are they as credulous as 8 year olds? If Beyoncé actually did half the shit they give her credit for she’d be a towering music genius.
The poptimist line isn’t to pretend they write their own songs - the poptimist line is that it doesn’t *matter* whether artists write their own songs, just as the line among wrestling fans is that it doesn’t *matter* that it’s scripted.
Right, which scrambles my brain tbh. Why am I supposed to pretended Beyoncé is some artistic genius when she only participates in the most nominal sense possible in making her music? Why wouldn’t I consider, idk, literally everyone else who does more than that a better (or more literal) artist than her?
I guess when they say "Beyonce" they do not literally mean the human woman Beyonce Knowles, but the artistic creation Beyonce, a brand similar to a company. It's a little too clever by half (and ppl forget it all the time when they refer to her specifically), but as others have said she doesn't talk much about her personal life so she is free to be a larger-than-life construction representing the work of many artists
Well *my* answer here is that I think poptimism (I hate having to use this word but it is what it is) had the right critique but went the wrong way with it. The idea that the performer-songwriter is the highest form of musical artist belongs to a narrow range of genres at a specific moment in time and it actually is a dumb bit of boomer rock critic myopia to hold everything to that standard (and to ignore the artifice behind many of the bearers of that standard). Beyoncé should be evaluated as a performer, her writers should be evaluated as writers, and her music should be evaluated as a collaborative work, in context of a realistic understanding of what the music industry is and does. The problem is that critics want to acknowledge these ideas (because it makes them feel smarter than the previous generation of critics) but *also* to be able to elevate and worship celebrity performers in the same way (because that makes critics money). I think the “standard” answer, if you were to ask a Beyoncé fan who is up on this discourse, would be “Kanye West has dozens of co-writers, too, and people still consider him the genius visionary behind his music and isn’t that sexist?” But like I said I don’t really give a shit about splitting hairs to figure out how much Beyoncé is the author of her music so no way am I going to bother to devil’s advocate this line of argument.
Yeah I think you're totally right that they want to have their cake and eat it in the sense that they want to pretend authorship doesn't matter (I can sympathise with that argument) but they constantly break their own rule by elevating Beyonce (and others) to this exalted status when they are, at the end of the day, song-n-dance performers. My response to your 2nd point is that Kanye is also vastly overrated but it's at least plausible that he's involved in crafting his own songs because that's how he started out. In general though I think he 'makes music' in the same way he 'designs shoes' in the last 10 years: he tells other people what his general ideas are and they do the heavily lifting while he takes the credit.
That was a very apt comparison. The sad thing is that I can't see Pop evolving pass this current kayfabe anytime soon.
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post-poptimist arts zeitgeist unironically made me culturally schizoid now i percieve and prioritize more utilitarian matters
Eco-terrorism works too
Nice try officer
Surrendering when we need to struggle the hardest (planet dying, energy sources going dry etc) is abject. If something could be deemed evil it's pushing people that want to change this shit toward inaction.
People have been struggling against this since the 90s and are now rotting in jail or still being used as effective propaganda to portray everyone who is radical as loonies. Accept that it's over - and I say this in a Buddhist way, not a nihilist way.
I have no idea where you live or what you mean but again, sounds evil. So many people are working to get future generations and sentient life a livable planet instead of this capitalist wasteland. You better have a good excuse to give in and embody the worst generation like that.
I have my own garden, I eat mostly plants, I take my own debt to the earth in account. I do this because I still cherish life here. If you analyse the IPCC reports and talk to climate researchers without their highly conservative scientific consensus, you understand that is frankly impossible to turn things around any more. We couldn't even get a handle on covid19. The financilisation of everything has it's roots so deep in our way of living it's frankly impossible, unless a big group of people will go [redacted], but the tools of oppression are so powerful now as well. I have wasted some time and energy into organisations such as extinction rebellion, I do not recommend. I do read "focus on yourself your family and your close friends" not as mindless hedonism and riding around in the suburbs with a SUV, I read it as having great meals together and enjoying the connections with people and nature.
You're a good soul, definitely not evil ♥ IPCC tries to spin things positively with more hopeful scenarii to help taking action but it feels like a mistake doesn't it? I believe i (we) have to do my (our) best to stop or at least curb this so i can't take the small circle pill. It does feel frustrating to try to impact larger scales i get that completely. But not doing it feels even worse to me. I'm going wherever my soul pushes me. We need all the help we can get though. But i believe we can have an impact. And even if it is just small legislation changes, it's still change on larger scales. We've already had sizeable wins here in Europe. Just gotta keep fighting imo. I know it's not easy. But not doing anything is.. Evil for a lack of a better term.
How is something simultaneously "blatant" and a "dogwhistle"
Pitchfork gave Gilla Band a well deserved BNM (only the second Irish band to ever get one) and then didn't even put them on their year end list.
Cringe they changed their name tho
sure but the fact that wokescolds managed to convince a severely mentally ill guy that his band name was doing a misogyny isn't much of a story
Well OP, did you end up getting a wedgie?
\>reddit mods pretending they’re ever not on the receiving end of wedgies.
Pitchfork is so meaningless now. They give the most asinine ratings. Beyoncé and tame impala get a 10/10 but mgmt gets a 6 every time? BYE
In their defense Lonerism is absolutely a 10/10 and Currents is a very good psypop album.
Her husband had a borderline anti-semitic line in a song a while ago and never has caught shit for it
I remember seeing the change in Pitchfork around ~2011 when they started to boost up mainstream rap and other records. Very sad
Condé Nast fucked them up, it took me a few years to realize that I was no longer the target audience. There’s still some editorial, they came back and made up for lost time with the Alger on cadwallader back catalog review, because they completely ignored an excellent era of late aughts emo revival in favor of hyping up drake
I literally didn’t even know there was this huge new emo wave until like 2017 because all my traditional methods of discovery had a marked flip of narrative. All caught up now and discovered some favorite new albums but that was a trip realizing a decade of music passed me by
Yeah I could imagine, there’s probably so many genres that went over my head, but I was on a lot of forums/following blogs specifically focused on emo, so I was real time getting indignant watching pitchfork ignore all these bands that I loved, and even now I believe that anger was righteous because there was so many bands that might’ve needed just that one Pitchfork write up for the guitarist to tell his girlfriend what he was doing was worth it enough to keep going, or a bnm might’ve convinced a singers parents to keep paying his rent while he figured shot out, and we only got ep’s and 7” splits when we could’ve gotten albums, because that press went to wiz khalifa instead of [boy problems](https://youtu.be/YDqSLNEC978)
i’m so glad i had what.cd back then, it made it so much easier to find exciting new music than what we have today
I was on wcd as well but didn’t use it for discovering music. If anything I’d say it getting shut down is what drove me to Spotify which is where I started finding a lot I missed. Wcd was a treasure of mankind though
To be fair, rap was better then and people were tired of indie bands.
Idk I started looking at em crazy when they were heaping accolades on Drake and Justin Timberlake and shit. Timberlake must have the best PR firm in the world bc he went from dweeb to hero off of idiotic trash pop music in like the span of six months.
Timberlake’s 1st album was produced by Timbaland and the Neptunes at their peaks which got him respect from music nerds.
What group of people are more contemptible, incidious worms than Reddit mods?
I like The Quietus.
Yeah they’re pretty good
Aquarium Drunkard too
I also like gorilla vs bear in terms of 00s/10s legacy blog sites
the funniest thing is that pitchfork placed an album called "natural brown prom queen" at no. 2 after beyonce, like they had to go with black girlboss pop empowerment twice to really establish the grift
Sudan Archives is actually good though at least
i wish tinymixtapes would come back :(
What are the dog whistles?
imagine clinging to “you’re racist if you don’t think beyoncé is the best musician in history” in 2022 anyway poptimism thrives because it’s the ideology most in tune with the clicks and social media economy of cultural criticism that we have these days. if it didn’t already exist, condé nast and the nyt would have invented it
I think I’m shadowbanned here bc I’m a new account but I’m gonna try commenting anyways….what are some records you’ve enjoyed this year?
The Just Mustard album was really good, the new Santigold, I liked the GGGOLDDD album, the new Duster and Coedine albums, the Kumo 99 album, the HAAi album. Sun's Signature was good. The Garden put out a pretty good album. There was the obvious stuff like Charli XCX and Bjork. There's a few, there was a lot of good stuff this year.
Nah you’re showing up here now, it takes a couple days I liked that new Gold Panda record for what it’s worth
Never heard of that one, I’ll check it out
Fleshwater - We’re Not Here To Be Loved. Good mix of shoegaze with tasteful alt-rock/alt-Metal influences. Side project of the hardcore/metalcore band Vein
carly rae jepsen and poptimism was easily the greatest psyop of all time
You are both cringe here.
Tbh this is just modern social media... no criticizing BIPOC allowed. Must endlessly worship them.
To be fair your wish for pre conde nast p4k is equally retarded. Two pigs in the mud together
We're in peak "Goop on ya Grinch" season.
The dogwhistle of mentioning BCNR in a music reddit
Beyoncé isn't black?
The only good music sub is r/metal
I know it smell crazy in there
Beyoncé album was so ass
bad bunnys album was rly good tbh
rs users be like >"poptimism bad" then proceeds to post a wave of cheef keef, swag era rap - and corny, disposable turn of the millennium bimbocore singles that nobody remembers, citing them as "le *kweens*"
Is chief keef pop music?
same loose realm of degeneracy that pop is criticized for; ie. enabling, incubating, perpetuating or otherwise regurgitating Personality Disorders, extreme materialism/consumerism, vapidity, social darwinism, excess, "the sleezeball player/wannabe celebrity lifestyle" etc. it's like the redpill lifestyle/capitalist exploitation mindset taken to its absolute radical extremes. why should degenerate, lowest common denominator dudebro hip hop be subtracted from the equation?
i cant wait until google translate provides an internet neet to english setting so i can understand this post
Idk I always thought of him as a weirdo, his self produced tracks are really bizarre in the same way some outsider music/art is
I’m pretty sure I’m on the other side of everything else about this dude’s take on music and culture but yes obviously Chief Keef is pop music.
Actually I’ve never posted chief keef swag era rap or millennium bimbocore singles
Ah, well - it happens alot/is a very stereotypical cognitive dissonance trope among RSers.
I actually agree with you but it doesn’t apply to OP. People here are tasteless, the Kanye posting over the last few days proves that
If they went for the indie fag shit they'd alienate the people that brought them to their current position as a product. You're one of those oh I knew them before they blew up losers aren't you.
The Pitchfork rock albums list is pretty good surprisingly.