Music critic in being critical of music shocker

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Next best thing? "Botherd" says McCormick

Most of this article made me go 'oh, what a load of t0ss', but there's a point lurking about in there somewhere: does an artist need more than one great album in order to become AMAZING? Does an artist even need more than one great song? Does a string of consistently 'very good' albums count for anything if there are no dazzling peaks?

Comments

[martinv.livejournal.com]

That is an article full of crap, but I do agree with his point about artists taking the next step.

Personally, to care much about an artist I do think they have to have released more than one great song. That doesn't stop me loving an individual song at all. But I would never say 'I love X artist' just because I've heard one single and enjoyed it. I'd rarely even do it after a debut album. I usually make my decisions about whether I'm bothered about a band after hearing two albums/ two sets of singles from two albums if I'm less involved. I don't really know whether this is important or interesting.

That article made me think that I've never seen so much blind critical consensus on 'who's going to be big this year' than in 2008.

Joe Lean and the blah blah blah
The Ting Tings
Duffy
Adele
and if the author is a bit more indie inclined
Vampire Weekend

Every. Single. Article.
Yawn.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Tell me about it. It's as if the entire music industry has collectively decided that if they all work together and promote the same things, it can make everyone concerned a lot more money. The grim inevitability of Adele's massive success was set in motion so long ago. She's terrible, too. Duffy isn't so bad, but hardly exciting. As for the other two...no, you do not get to have names like that and my respect at the same time.

I got the Vampire Weekend album in the post yesterday. Straight into the bin, probably.

Re: original qn - I think things like songwriting often benefit from being allowed to develop over time, and this doesn't happen so much any more? I can't think of many songwriters who peaked with their first album. This isn;t the case so much with performing.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

> This isn;t the case so much with performing.

Good call - cf Steps. Intensive performance like that can give brilliant results but to sustain it for more than an album or two gets tricky. The songs didn't get any worse at all but the glassy smiles are painfully obvious circa 2000.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think the idea is to make everyone concerned "SOME money" rather than 'more'. Everyone is clinging to the same rafts.

Rock and roll is no longer in the business of living fast and dying young

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

There was an article in the New York Times last week about Natalie Merchant, if anyone remembers her and 10,000 Maniacs. She's got no record deal at all, and focuses much more on performing. Ten years ago one would have scoffed at her the way I currently scoff at tours by Nazareth and Smokie in the former Soviet Union - "artistic career over, no longer popular, playing on nostalgia, etc." But with all this talk about changing business models for the industry, artists making money from performance not record sales, etc. its difficult to be so disdainful. I mean, is Natalie Merchant any more artistically bankrupt than Bob Dylan or REM?

I think the answer is "no" BUT the key is that both of those artists built up a portfolio of GRATEness. "Don't You Want Me" is AMAZING but I wouldn't honestly tell you I thought the Human League were AMAZING. Men At Work had two #1 singles from their first album; would anyone call them AMAZING? No. So I think there needs to be a body of work; I also think that being able to peak interest more than once (so there's a time factor, too) is part of what convinces people about an artist.

Re: Rock and roll is no longer in the business of living fast and dying young

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. However there is a flip side of the longevity coin: U2 have managed to release an ENORMOUS amount of sh1te compared to their awesome singles. Thanks to Bonio's annoyingness this isn't even a factor in considering whether U2 are amazing or not!

Re: Rock and roll is no longer in the business of living fast and dying young

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

hmm - YMMV: with a very very few exceptions I ignore all U2 after Zooropa (similarly all REM after Automatic for the People). It kind of forces you to put the band into historical perspective, i.e. "U2 was an AMAZING band" as if they'd broken up 15 years ago

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The whole argument is predicated on the unspoken assumption that listeners need to trust an artist because otherwise they will be wasting money. This obviously no longer applies for a lot of listeners, even legal downloaders because you can HEAR music or samples of it so easily for free whether you buy or not. I simply don't need to know whether an act has a track record or not - if I hear a new thing is good, I can check it out, doesn't matter who it's by. My top 10 lists this year were full of people - MIA, Groove Armada, Good Charlotte - who had previously released music I thought sucked. In the old days of "building a relationship with an artist" I simply wouldn't have listened to their new records.

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

I think the whole argument is predicated on the assumption that listeners need to trust an artist because it is more satisfying. Which it is! I like most of the tracks posted here, but I’m not going to go to these people’s shows, or spend massive amounts of time talking about them on the Internet, or even seek out other tracks by them – that’s what my obsession with Kara DioGuardi is for. And actually, no, the argument isn’t about trust, it’s about caring – listeners need to care about an artist, and it’s how often do you care about people you just met? My top 10 included plenty of people I hadn’t heard (or had heard and vehemently disliked) till this year, too, but including Leona Lewis in my top 10 tracks of 2007 =/= giving a shit about Leona Lewis in 2008. In fact, I'm probably going to spend 2008 being really excited about A Tribe Called Quest and Arthur Brown.

otherwise they will be wasting money

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

although on one hand i think you're largely right about this, the flipside of the coin is also that with everything so accessible now, it's your time and energy you have to ration. no, it doesn't take that long to find and listen to something new, but it does take a certain amount of discipline to weed through all the noise. at this point, it usually takes repeated mentions, often coming from different places, before I'm motivated to try something completely new (or who have sucky track records).

(One should also note that this article was by someone who is not just anticipating existing acts vs. new ones, but who is expecting that next classic record that Oasis still have in them, not to mention REM and U2.