Fun Stuff > BAND
Tolerance
a pack of wolves:
--- Quote from: KharBevNor on 18 Nov 2007, 13:32 ---Fuck that.
What I've always loved is how people tend to have absolutely no problem with elitism in the visual arts, or film, but will defend chart pop music till they die. This sort of hypocrisy is most noticeable in journalists from New York. It's a stupid position. When you defend chart music, you are saying that there is as much merit in 2 Fast 2 Furious as Man With a Movie Camera.
Think about that whenever you say that a Britney Spears song is 'not that bad' or that Justin Timberlake is 'well crafted'.
Just think.
--- End quote ---
No, your argument makes no sense. Saying that there are things of merit in certain pieces of popular music does not mean you're saying that everything popular ever is as good as everything else. I can't see how you could possibly have reached this conclusion, it would be like saying Waking The Cadaver have exactly as much merit as Blut Aus Nord since they're both metal bands and your argument conflates everything in hugely broad categories.
'Sexyback' is a decent song. Not amazing, it's no 'Toxic', 'Something Kinda Oooh' or 'Umbrella' or anything but it's solid enough. I shook my ass when they dropped it at the club last night, and that's exactly the point of it. It's dance music, it's designed for people to move their bodies to. As for pop being worthy of serious attention... frankly I think it's ridiculous to suggest that because something's popular it's not worthwhile. It affects the piece, certainly, but the massive popularity makes it if anything more worth looking at than something only a handful of people will hear. It's more of a presence in a society's culture.
As for elitism in the visual arts, a lot of that stems from modernism, and modernist elitism was largely about trying to keep working class people out of culture. Much as I enjoy modernist art of various forms I take a certain satisfaction from reading and enjoying TS Eliot when he would have hated the fact that somebody of my class was able to understand his work, so I have no respect for that attitude.
On a slight tangent, Girls Aloud are continuing to completely dominate pop. Superb, Timberlake will never touch them and they piss all over 99% of the dreary indie and metal bands people who bash pop generally cream over.
SeanBateman:
No way are you claiming that fucking Rhianna is better than JT.
That song is so obnoxiously repetitive, without the exciting backdrop that sexyback provides.
Sexyback is one of the worst songs on the record though.
monkandmovies13:
--- Quote from: Dirk Hopeless on 18 Nov 2007, 16:10 ---No way are you claiming that fucking Rhianna is better than JT.
That song is so obnoxiously repetitive, without the exciting backdrop that sexyback provides.
Sexyback is one of the worst songs on the record though.
--- End quote ---
I'm happy that I can now say that I have that record on my iPod and really really enjoy it. But I disagree. I think SexyBack is actually one of the best.
And I like that song, but it gets annoying much quicker than SexyBack.
a pack of wolves:
Rhianna is definitely not better than Timberlake. I have never understood the fuss about Pon De Replay, it's such an unremarkable song and Shut Up And Drive is average at best. I oscillate wildly when it comes to Umbrella, sometimes I find it underwhelming but at others I really get into it. I think part of it's that it was a number one for so very, very long and there's something about that coupled with the almost noise backing part on the chorus and the umbrella metaphor... something about all that being quite so popular really draws me to it, but then just as often it'll fall back into just being ok. Jay Z needs to fuck right off from that track though, so superfluous.
KharBevNor:
See. Told ya.
Anyway, I think Jacksons safe, I said pop musics decline began after 84, I'm not enough of a git not to accept that Thriller is, objectively, some good pop music.
Justin Timberlake though, seriously? Actually, mentioning him in the same sentence as Michael Jackson makes some sort of sense, as I suppose you could describe Justin Timberlake as a crap, white Michael Jackson wannabe.
Also, artistry? Seriously? Man, there ain't much artistry to be found in pop music. It's more a combination of good market research, technical proficiency and HUGE amounts of money. Vocal tuning and pitch correction are fiddly, and require expensive software to pull off well, but they're not exactly profound artistic statements or particularly talented. Arranging samples of Soft Cell and paying proffessional session musicians to rip off old Motown tunes in an arrangement dictated by a syndicate of song-writers and lyricists to pander to specific market demographics, all with no other express purpose than to make huge quantities of cash? Nah, fuck it. Sorry. Soulless garbage.
Edit: Elitism in the visual arts stems from Modernism? Say what? And I'm not arguing for elitism, I'm arguing for a universal application of the concept of artistic merit.
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